Introduction to the History of Philosophy

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Hilliard, Gray, Little, and Wilkins, 1832 - 458 pages
 

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Page 37 - When we read with attention the poetical and philosophical monuments of the East, above all, those of India which are beginning to spread in Europe, we discover there many a truth, and truths so profound, and which make such a contrast with the meanness of the results at which the European genius has sometimes stopped, that we are constrained to bend the knee before the philosophy of the East, and to see in this cradle of the human race the native land of the highest...
Page 447 - The simple, but empirically determined Consciousness of my own existence, proves the Existence of objects in space outside myself. Proof I am conscious of my own existence as determined in time, and all determination in time presupposes something permanent in the perception.
Page 122 - ... forms a single proposition, a single formula, which is the formula itself of thought, and which you can express, according to the case, by the unit and by the multiple, the absolute being and the relative being, unity and variety, etc.
Page 29 - ... but to this method is it not possible to add another, not more certain, but more luminous ? What is psychological analysis ? It is the attentive observation of facts which constitute human nature. These facts are complicated, fugitive, obscure, scarcely apprehensible by their very intimacy ; the consciousness which is applied to them is an instrument of extreme delicacy : it is a microscope applied to things infinitely small. But if human nature manifests itself in the individual, it manifests...
Page 240 - There is nothing in the world which has not its necessity for existing, and which does not therefore represent an idea. " Yes! gentlemen, says our author, give me the map of any country, its configuration, its climate, its waters, its winds, and the whole of its physical geography; give me its natural productions, its flora, its zoology, &c. and I pledge myself to tell you, a priori, what will be the quality of man in that country, and what part its inhabitants will act in history, — not accidentally...
Page 131 - ... abstractions, but he identifies the object of his inquiry with an abstract idea. According to his theory, the three elements of pure Reason, the idea of the Finite, the Infinite, and their relation, do not afford a passage to the Divine existence, " for these ideas are God himself.
Page 38 - ... but he did not possess them in the same manner. There is no privilege, there are no castes in the human race. Man is equal to man ; and the only difference which exists, which could exist between man and man, is the difference of more or less, that is, the difference of form. A peasant, the lowest of peasants, knows as much as Leibnitz about himself, about the world, and about God, and about their relation ; but he has not the secret of his knowledge ; he renders to himself no account of it ;...
Page 321 - God is every thing, and man nothing," can be a great man. War and philosophy are the only two lines of life which are favorable to the developement of great men. "Who are they," he asks, "who have left the greatest names among men ? They are those who have done their countrymen the greatest good, who have served them most effectually ; that is, who have made the greatest conquests for the ideas, which in their century were called to dominion, and which then represented the destinies of civilization...
Page 142 - God, if he is a cause, can create ; and, if he is an absolute cause, he cannot but create ; and in creating the universe he does not draw it forth from nothingness, but from himself. God therefore creates, he creates by virtue of his creative power ; he draws forth the world not from nothingness, which is not, but from him who is absolute existence. An absolute creative force, which cannot but pass into act, being eminently his characteristic, it follows, not that creation is possible, but that it...
Page 442 - I believe that in Christianity all truths are contained ; but these eternal truths may and ought to be approached, disengaged, and illustrated by philosophy. Truth has but one foundation ; but truth assumes two forms, mystery and scientific exposition; I revere the one, I am the organ and interpreter of the other."§ Infidelity has, in most cases, assumed this guise of philosophical explanation of the truths of Christianity.

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