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"Some years ago the following pages would have been reckoned one of the greatest presents which the learned world could have received. The Life of the famous Lord Herbert of Cherbury, written by himself, would have excited the curiosity of the whole republic of letters. Perhaps a less proportion of expectation may attend this its late appearance. Not that the abilities of the noble writer have fallen into disesteem. His reign of Henry the eighth is allowed to be a masterpiece of historic biography. But they were his speculative works, which, raising a multitude of admirers or censors from their acuteness and singularity, made lord Herbert's a name of the first importance. The many great men, who illustrated the succeeding period, have taken off some of the public attention; for it is only a genius of the first force, whose fame dilates with ages, and can buoy itself up above the indifference which steals upon mankind, as an author becomes less and less the subject of conversation. Speculative writers, however penetrating, however sublime their talents, seldom attain the seal of universal approbation, because, of all the various abilities which Providence has bestowed on man, reasoning is not the power which has been brought to standard perfection. Poetry and eloquence have been so far perfected, that the great masters in those branches still remain unequalled. But where is that book of human argumentation, where that system of human opinions, which has not been partly confuted or exploded? Novelty itself in matters of metaphysical inquiry often proves, in effect, a confutation of antecedent novelties. Opponents raise the celebrity of the doctrines they attack: newer doctrines stifle that celebrity. This is a truth, which the bigots of lord Herbert's age would not have liked to hear; but what has happened to many other great men, has been his fate too: they who meant to wound his fame, extended it: when the cry of enthusiasts was drawn off to fresher game, his renown grew fainter. His moral character recovered its lustre, but has fewer spectators to gaze at it. This introduction to his life may not be improper, though at first it may mislead the reader, who will hence perhaps expect from his own pen some account of a person's creed, whom a few Scottish zealots once represented as having none at all. His lordship's thorough belief and awful veneration of the Deity will clearly appear in these pages; but neither the unbeliever nor the monk will have farther satisfaction. This life of a philosopher is neither a deduction of his opinions nor a table of philosophy--I will anticipate the reader's surprise, though it shall be but in a word: to his astonishment he will find, that the history of Don Quixote was the life of Plato"--Book. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved).

Philosophy and religion.

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"The leading words of my title-page call for a precise definition, in order that the reader may clearly discern the aim of the discussion to which I invite his attention. By morality I mean that sentiment of selfhood or property which every man not an idiot feels in his own body. It is a state of conscious freedom or rationality, exempting him from the further control of parents or guardians, and entitling him in his own estimation and that of his fellows, to the undivided ownership of his words and deeds. It is the basis of conscience in man, or what enables him to appropriate good and evil to himself, instead of ascribing the former as he may one day learn to do exclusively to celestial, the latter exclusively to infernal influence. The word is often viciously used as a synonyme of spiritual goodness, as when we say, "A is a very moral man," meaning a just one; or, "B is a very immoral man," meaning an unjust one. No man can be either good or evil, either just or unjust, but by virtue of his morality; i. e. unless he have selfhood or freedom entitling him to own his action. This is a conditio sine qua non. The action by which he majority or manhood, what every man, as man, possesses in common with every other man. By religion I mean -- what is invariably meant by the term where the thing itself still exists -- such a conscience on man's part of a forfeiture of the Divine favor, as perpetually urges him to make sacrifices of his ease, his convenience, his wealth, and if need be his life, in order to restore himself, if so it be possible, to that favor. This is religion in its literal form; natural religion; religion as it stands authenticated by the universal instincts of the race, before it has undergone a spiritual conversion into life, and while claiming still a purely ritual embodiment It is however in this gross form the germ of all humane culture. Accordingly we sometimes use the term in an accommodated sense, i. e. to express the spiritual results with which religion is fraught rather than the mere carnal embodiment it first of all offers to such results. Thus the apostle James says: Pure and undefiled religion (i. e., religion viewed no longer as a letter, but as a spirit), is to visit the fatherless and the widow, and keep oneself unspotted from the world (i. e., has exclusive reference to the life). We also say proverbially, handsome is that handsome does; not meaning of course to stretch the word handsome out of its literal dimensions, but only by an intelligible metonomy of body for soul, or what is natural for what is spiritual, to express in a compendious way the superiority of moral to physical beauty. My reader will always understand me, then, as using the word religion in its strictly literal signification, to indicate our ritual or ceremonious homage to the Divine name. Now morality and religion, thus interpreted, are regarded on my title-page as concurring to promote the evolution of man's spiritual destiny on earth"--Introduction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).

Philosophy and religion.

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Faith --- Philosophy and religion

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Faith --- Philosophy and religion

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Philosophy and religion