"Rationalism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... little to teach a disciple of Bayle, Fontenelle, and Montesquieu. They were, almost without exception, a group of second-rate and insignificant writers whose 'onslaught' upon current beliefs was only to a faint extent 'systematic and reasoned.' The feeble and fluctuating rationalism of Toland and Wollaston, the crude and confused rationalism of Collins, the half-crazy rationalism of Woolston, may each and all, no doubt, have furnished Voltaire with arguments and suggestions, but they cannot have seriously influenced his thought. Bolingbroke was ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... peculiar clearness, but invested with the mysterious charm which always dwells in that uncertain region; and the shrewd flash of her eye, and the keen, bright smile with which she answered the wondering question, 'What do you suppose it was?' or, 'What could it have been?' showed how evenly rationalism in her mind ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... a member of the Baptist Church; but the transcendentalism and rationalism of the place quite swept him from his spiritual moorings. In a recent address before a literary society in Washington, D. C., he is represented to have maintained that Mohammedanism was better for the indigenous ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... population. Several generations have elapsed since the nations of the West have drawn the sword in religious controversy, and the evil memories of the gloomy past have soon faded in the strong, clear light of Rationalism and human sympathy. Indeed it is evident that Christianity, however degraded and distorted by cruelty and intolerance, must always exert a modifying influence on men's passions, and protect them from the more violent forms of fanatical fever, as we are protected ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... innocent scientific description of how certain earthly things came about; or, if it is anything more than this, it is an attack upon thought itself. If evolution destroys anything, it does not destroy religion but rationalism. If evolution simply means that a positive thing called an ape turned very slowly into a positive thing called a man, then it is stingless for the most orthodox; for a personal God might just as well do things slowly as quickly, especially ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... definite dogmatic system; but could have a free hand so long as they did not wantonly come into conflict with some of the legal formulae laid down in a previous generation. The actual teaching showed the effects of the system. It had been easy to introduce a considerable leaven of the rationalism which suited the lay mind; to explain away the mysterious doctrines upon which an independent church had insisted as manifestations of its spiritual privileges, but which were regarded with indifference ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... interference on His part, though His existence might be necessary for its conservation. A view so sharply opposed to the current belief could not have made way as it did without a penetrating criticism of the current theology. Such criticism was performed by Bayle. His works were a school for rationalism for about seventy years. He supplied to the thinkers of the eighteenth century, English as well as French, a magazine of subversive arguments, and he helped to emancipate morality both ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... almost exclusive influence to political theories, and almost entirely to omit what we take to be the much more important reaction upon theory, both of human nature, and of the experience of human life and outward affairs. He makes no allowance among innovating agencies for native rationalism without a formula. His brilliant success in other applications of the Historic Method has disposed him to see survivals where other observers will be content with simpler explanations. The reader is sometimes tempted to recall Edie Ochiltree's rude interruption of Mr. Oldbuck's ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... seem to fit in right." Sometimes Ernest thought his friend was unlucky. When that idea occurred to him, he sighed and shook it off. For Ernest believed there was no help for that; it was something rationalism did not explain. ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... convulse the church had not yet begun. 'You may smile,' Mr. Gladstone said long after, 'when told that when I was at Oxford, Dr. Hampden was regarded as a model of orthodoxy; that Dr. Newman was eyed with suspicion as a low churchman, and Dr. Pusey as leaning to rationalism.' What Mr. Gladstone afterwards described as a steady, clear, but dry anglican orthodoxy bore sway, 'and frowned this way or that, on the first indication of any tendency to diverge from the beaten path.'[41] He hears Whately preach a controversial ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... mean, in the expression it gives, under cover of legends, prophecies, or mysteries, of the effort, the tragedy, and the consolations of human life. Such a moral fable is what Christianity is in fact; but it is far from what it is in intention. The modernist view, the view of a sympathetic rationalism, revokes the whole Jewish tradition on which Christianity is grafted; it takes the seriousness out of religion; it sweetens the pang of sin, which becomes misfortune; it removes the urgency of salvation; it steals empirical reality away from the last ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... If rationalism meant being rational (which it hardly ever does) he might at every stage of his life be called a red-hot rationalist. Thus, for instance, he very early became a Socialist and joined the Fabian Society, on the executive of which he played a prominent part for some years. ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... instrument designed For the New England tour—refined From secular drosses, and inclined To an unworldly turn, (combined With no sectarian bias;) Then, travelling by stages slow, Under the style of Knott & Co., I would accompany the show As moral lecturer, the foe 590 Of Rationalism; while you could throw The rappings in, and make them go Strict Puritan principles, you know, (How do you make 'em? with your toe?) And the receipts which thence might flow, We could divide between us; Still more attractions to combine, Beside ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... convinced that agnosticism is respectable; they are eager for anti-dogmatic books, written by men of mark. They couldn't endure to be classed with Bradlaugh, but they rank themselves confidently with Darwin and Huxley. Arguments matter little or nothing to them. They take their rationalism as they do a fashion in dress, anxious only that it shall be "good form". Then there's the other lot of people—a much larger class—who won't give up dogma, but have learnt that bishops, priests, and deacons no longer hold it with the old rigour, and that one ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... or should be, independent of all help, and that the human reason is all-powerful and can comprehend the universe by its own unaided power.[110] Repulsive also were their pride, their rejection of the emotions, their hard rationalism. The battle of Philo against the Stoics is the battle of personal monotheism against impersonal pantheism, of religious faith and revelation against arrogant rationalism, and of idealism against materialism. ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... unbeliever gave him a keener sympathy with those who were in that distressing condition than could be felt by any one who had not so suffered, and fitted him, perhaps, more than any one who has yet lived to be the interpreter of Christianity to the Rationalist, and of Rationalism to the Christian. This, accordingly, was the task to which he set himself, having been singularly adapted for it by Nature, and ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... proposed to enter into the Rationalism of the last century, therefore; or to inquire into the causes of the barren lifeless shape into which Theology then, for the most part, threw itself. I have never made that department of Ecclesiastical History my study: and who ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... always formed. On my way to the park, I was accompanied for some distance by a certain policeman, (whose acquaintance I had formed during the week); to him I expressed my surprise at seeing Great Britain compromise the sacredness of the Sabbath with radical Republicanism and Rationalism! "Well," said he, "If we let them have their own way, they will come here and hold their meetings and after they have listened to their leaders awhile and cheered right lustily, they will scatter and that is the end of ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... exactly beyond that plain this vale of the Elsa, itself leading up directly towards Rome? I say, nowhere in the world is such a coincidence observable, and they that will not take it for a portent may go back to their rationalism and consort with microbes and make their meals off logarithms, washed down with an exact distillation of the root of minus one; and the peace of fools, that is the deepest and most balmy of all, be ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... were all interested in the human soul, and unwilling to sacrifice it to the demands of a rationalistic science or metaphysics. In seeking to rescue it, the great criticist, piloted by the moral law, steered his course between the rocks of rationalism, sentimentalism, and scepticism. It was his solution of the controversy between the head and the heart that influenced Fichte, Schelling, and Schleiermacher. They differed from Kant and among themselves in many respects, but they all ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... (1091-1153), the strenuous opponent of Abaelard, and the great upholder of mysticism against rationalism in the early scholastic period when the two were not yet reconciled, gave utterance, in the course of his mystical effusions, to some special views ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... the history of freedom—freedom, at any rate, of thought and of speech. It is only when peace and freedom have been established that discussion is practicable or possible. A number of histories have been written in recent years describing the rise of rationalism, as it is called, and the role of discussion and agitation in social life. Draper's History of the Intellectual Development of Europe and Lecky's History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... which generally captivates us, whether in nature, in man, or in our own breasts. Men whom we understand, whose motives we see before us like an anatomical preparation, leave us cold, like the characters in most of our novels. Nothing spoils our delight in life and men more than this ethic rationalism which insists upon clearing up everything, and illuminating every mystery of our inner being. There is in every person a something that is inseparable—we call it fate, the suggestive power or character—and he knows neither himself nor ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... development that has been seen before in history, of an excess of development and specialization in a direction that appears to be off the main line of progress, or at least is an anachronism. Germany has shown us the effects of rationalism, some would say a morbid and hypertrophied reason. This rationalism is certainly in part a product of systematic education and propaganda, a conscious exploitation of science, and it is in part temperamental. Such a result is always possible in a ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... The influence of Rationalism, as inaugurated by Ingersoll in America and Bradlaugh in England, was the opening wedge. Christian Science, mothered by a woman, incorporated the phrase "Father-Mother-God" into its literature, and unity has been the avowed ideal of all the variety of new cults and philosophies presented ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... containing on the fly-leaf an autograph remark by Bishop Bloomfield. It is in these words, "No Christianity here." It is said of that period of time, by a noted minister of the Church of England, that a dry rationalism had taken possession of the church, and that all the powers of her best intellects were engaged in hot contests with Deists and Unitarians; that an equally dry morality and stoical praise of "Virtue" formed the chief ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 9. September, 1880 • Various
... the new religion. It was to be made dependent on human speculation—a most dangerous error, since it reintroduced the very wisdom which knew not God, and which the Apostles ignored. It ushered in the reign of rationalism, which still refuses to abdicate her throne, and which is absolutely rampant and exulting in the great universities of the most learned and inquiring ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... precept and example. If they have not yet a philosophy, they will create one, and it will far surpass all previous systems; for in the writings of the Greek Fathers are to be found the germs of a broader, a deeper, and a truer philosophy than the dry, meagre rationalism of the West—a philosophy founded not on the logical faculty alone, but on the broader basis of ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... lost.'" [Footnote: This proof of Christ's divinity from the Old Testament was considered of the highest importance in the time of the Apostles; but Schleiermacher, in his strange system, which may be called a mystic Rationalism, endeavours to shake the authority of the Old Testament in a most unpardonable and incomprehensible manner. This appears to me as if a man were to tear down a building from the sure foundation on which it had rested for 1000 years, and imagine it could ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... commonly understood, by aesthetic. The loveliness of the Christian legend—from that he started. He dealt with the New Testament very much as he had formerly dealt with the Elizabethan poets. He would have no appeal to the vulgar by aggressive rationalists. Let rationalism filter down in the course of time; the vulgar were not prepared for it as yet. It was bad that they should be superstitious, but worse, far worse, that they should be brutally irreverent, and brutal irreverence inevitably came of atheism preached at the street corner. ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... and country residences—for the most part so ignorantly applied, that the Genius of Architecture might almost be frightened from our shores by the spectacles reared here to vex and astonish the next ages. To bring about a reform, to lead the way for rationalism, in the noblest of the practical arts, Mr. Ruskin has approved himself worthy by his previous works. The Stones of Venice will increase the fame won by his "Modern Painters." The Literary ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... forced to serve, in order to be somebody, when away from the ancestral home. They were important, not by their possessions or their descent, but by the position in which they stood towards the emperor. Peter had imbibed too much of the rationalism of the West to be a persecutor. He was severe with the schismatics, who existed only as opponents of change and enemies of civilisation; and as there were no Jews in Russia, he decreed that in future there should be none. But he built churches ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... that it introduces, as it were, a harmony and consistency into the treatment which Europe has meted out to witches from the earliest times down to about two centuries ago, when the growing influence of rationalism discredited the belief in witchcraft and put a stop to the custom of burning witches. Be that as it may, we can now perhaps understand why the Druids believed that the more persons they sentenced to death, the greater would be the fertility of the land. To a modern reader the connexion at ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... temple of science. Even from its lofty minarets the philosopher may summon the faithful to prayer, and the priest and the sage may exchange altars without the compromise of faith or of knowledge.' Infidelity has shifted the battlefield from metaphysics to physics, from idealism and rationalism to positivism or rank materialism; and in order to combat it successfully, in order to build up an imperishable system of Christian teleology, it is necessary that you should thoroughly acquaint yourself with the 'natural sciences,' with dynamics, ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... America afterward. Some of his friends traced to the same cause his low estimate of German literature and even his political aversion to the German Empire. He could not forget that Germany had been the fountain of rationalism, while German Evangelical Protestantism was more schismatic and further removed from the medieval church than it pleased him to deem the Church of England to be. He had an exceedingly high sense of the duty of purity of life ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... men who have, in the breaking down of the old Puritanical faith, and the dying out of the later Unitarian rationalism, advanced and established the Anglican church so notably in the New England hill-country, by a wise conformity to the necessities and exactions of the native temperament. On the ecclesiastical side he was conscientiously uncompromising, but personally he was as simple-mannered ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... indeed all matters requiring a laborious and accurate investigation of details were alien from the bent and habits of his mind; and his exegetical studies, such as they were, took place at a period when he had little better than the meagre Rationalism of Eichhorn and Bertholdt to help him. Of the opinions which he imbibed from them, some abode with him through life. These however, along with everything else that can justly be objected to in the 'Remains,' do not form a twentieth part of the whole, and may easily be separated from the remainder. ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... that Washo religious activity has not been affected by the tremendous changes which have taken place in western Nevada and eastern California. I suggest that rather than disappearing under the withering rationalism of civilization the religion of the Washo has simply altered and expanded to serve ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs
... Syllabus present the principles which it was the object of the Vatican Council to carry into practical effect. The Syllabus stigmatizes pantheism, naturalism, and absolute rationalism, denouncing such opinions as that God is the world; that there is no God other than Nature; that theological matters must be treated in the same manner as philosophical ones, that the methods and principles by which the old scholastic doctors cultivated ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... flag-staff. Let us be jealous for the truth, but let it be a godly, that is to say, a loving jealousy. When we contend for purity of doctrine and for purity of worship, when we protest against popery and priestcraft, when we resist rationalism and infidelity, when we do battle now for national religion, as we call it, and now for the freedom of the church, let us do it all in love to all men, else we had better not do it at all. If we cannot do it with clean and all-men-loving ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... the middle of the eighteenth century, in the period of cold orthodoxy and solid learning which immediately preceded the rise of rationalism, as well as in that of incipient free thought, we meet not only with the historians of theological literature already named above, but with historians of thought like Brucker, and of the church like Mosheim, possessed ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... her eyes growing large and soft with wonder. But her rationalism asserted itself and her glance grew shrewd again. "Of course that's all nonsense. What more likely for you to think, when you knew it was her throat that ailed her?" Seeing that in her enthusiasm for a materialist conception of the universe she loosed her grip of the doorhandle, he ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... Islands and elsewhere) the feeling of kinship with animals is said to exist without the belief that they are ancestors, or the animal is regarded as the representative of a human ancestor rather than as itself the ancestor. This latter view may be a bit of euhemeristic rationalism.[854] ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... period was followed by the century of the Reformation, and that again by the inauguration of the era of modern philosophy, while the eighteenth century has been claimed as the Saeculum Rationalisticum, the age of rationalism, in which the claims of reason were pushed to the forefront in the domains of religion and politics. Nothing remained after that but an age of physical science, and surely enough has been given us in the nineteenth century which may ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... a Scottish author, educated as a lawyer, composed vigorously written histories of Scotland and of the reign of Queen Anne. Lecky wrote in a pleasing style a History of England in the Eighteenth Century, besides a History of Rationalism in Europe, and a History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne. In ecclesiastical history, Milman, whose leading work is the History of Latin Christianity, Dean Stanley, and Bishop Creighton have ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... experience, whereas the English have never been able to discover anything in the political experience of their neighbors, except an awful example of the danger of democratic ideas and political and social rationalism. ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... corresponded. I ought to have met Dr. Martineau. I should have visited the Reverend Stopford Brooke, who could have told me much that I should have liked to hear of dear friends of mine, of whom he saw a great deal in their hours of trial. The Reverend Mr. Voysey, whose fearless rationalism can hardly give him popularity among the conservative people I saw most of, paid me the compliment of calling, as he had often done of sending me his published papers. Now and then some less known correspondent would ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... the noblest instincts of the Elizabethan age. Ralegh's efforts to grasp as a whole the story of mankind, Bacon's effort to bring all outer nature to the test of human intelligence, were but the crowning manifestations of the two main impulses of their time, its rationalism and its humanity. Both found expression in the work of Hooker; and coloured through its results the after history of the English Church. The historical feeling showed itself in a longing to ally the religion of the present with the religion of the past, to find a unity ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... is liable to topple over. If the rite is a sacrament, then it should be performed on all, and a proselyte should not be admitted without being circumcised, and, if a hygienic measure only, the same rule holds. These Jews evidently ignore the rationalism that governed the promulgation of the Mosaic law, and its recognition of the inseparability of the moral from the physical ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... by ignorance, and complete illusions suggested to us by our blind senses. The Buddhists, on the other hand, deny either subjective or objective reality even to that one Self-Existence. Buddha declares that there is neither Creator nor an Absolute Being. Buddhist rationalism was ever too alive to the insuperable difficulty of admitting one absolute consciousness, as in the words of Flint, "wherever there is consciousness there is relation, and wherever there is relation ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... these opposing elements was in its own way setting aside the Holy Scriptures, and exalting human wisdom as the source of religious truth and knowledge. Rationalism idolizes reason, and makes this the criterion for religion. Romanism, claiming for her sovereign pontiff an inspiration descended in unbroken line from the apostles, and unchangeable through all time, gives ample opportunity for every species of extravagance and corruption to ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... Christ's claims and testimony. It would place him before the world as a false teacher, a fraud, a charlatan. Loyalty to the Word, and to the Incarnate Word, demands, therefore, that we should clearly understand the end to which this rationalism is drifting. For Christ's testimony concerning the Old Testament Scriptures, which will be presented later in this discussion, is so thoroughly in conflict with the modern critical assumptions that it must be disposed of by those ...
— The Testimony of the Bible Concerning the Assumptions of Destructive Criticism • S. E. Wishard
... contains one small and forgotten fact. For he remembered how he had himself thought of Jeanne d'Arc years ago, when, hardly more than a schoolboy, he had first come to the boarding-house. Long since the pulverizing rationalism of his friend Dr. Warner had crushed such youthful ignorances and disproportionate dreams. Under the Warnerian scepticism and science of hopeless human types, Inglewood had long come to regard himself as ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... followed the same path—which means that in matters of morality, instinct (or as Christians call it, "Faith," or as I call it, "the herd") has hitherto triumphed. Unless one should make an exception in the case of Descartes, the father of rationalism (and consequently the grandfather of the Revolution), who recognized only the authority of reason: but reason is only a tool, and ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... terrible example of intellectual gravity beyond redemption, a man with opinions such as cannot be held "without grave personal sin on his part" (as was once said of Mill by W.G. Ward), the representative in his single person of rationalism, materialism, atheism, or if there be any more abhorrent "ism"—in token of which as late as 1892 an absurd zealot at the headquarters of the Salvation Army crowned an abusive letter to him at Eastbourne ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... sometimes, as all men feel, the need of a supreme celestial Guide: in the noble Ode which Ruskin loved he seems to find it in Necessity or Fortune (Od. I, xxxv); and once, when scared by thunder resounding in a cloudless sky, recants what he calls his "irrational rationalism," and admits that God may, if He will, put down the mighty and exalt the low (I, xxxiv). So again in his hymn for the dedication of Apollo's Temple on the Palatine (I, xxxi) a serious note is struck. He will not ask the God for rich cornfields ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... knows or needs to know. A modern man finds it hard to hold his own attention throughout a page of it, even for historical purposes. "Phlogiston" and "vortices" had their day and are forgotten. Eighteenth-century deism and nineteenth-century rationalism interest nobody any more. Eighteenth-century economists argued in favor of stimulating population in order to make wages low, and thereby win in international competition. They never had a compunction ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... accepting it as "the code of rigorism" treats it as if it were identical with any moral system calling for any measure of self-discipline or associated with any type of religious-mindedness.[13] He also identifies it with rationalism in ethics as such, as if any rationalistic ethics, merely because it calls for some measure of discipline of the passions by "reason," is ipso ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... simple wholesome rag of four against one, carried him off under the cloud of horror created by this impropriety and so saved him, still only slightly wetted, not only from this indignity but from the experiment in rationalism ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... differences produced by the action of the so different social and intellectual influences under which he grew up. His nature was intensely imaginative, and so was preserved from the dwarfing effect of French rationalism and materialism: their clay could not hide his light or close his eyes, for imagination sees at all points and through all disguises, and so his spiritual and intellectual nature was kept alive when all Art around him was sinking into mere shapely clay. Classic taste and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... further still, and question the very foundation of Christianity itself? The results of this unbridled liberty of thought made themselves felt in religion, in philosophy, in politics, in literature, and in art. Rationalism became fashionable in educated circles, at the courts, and at the universities. Even Catholics who still remained loyal to the Church were not uninfluenced by the spirit of religious indifference. It seemed to them that many of the dogmas and devotions of the Church were too old-fashioned, ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... from solution was conclusively shown by the correspondence which appeared in the Times in May 1903, occasioned by some remarks made at University College by Lord Kelvin in moving a vote of thanks to Professor Henslow after his lecture on "Present Day Rationalism." Lord Kelvin's claim for a recognition of the fact that in organic nature scientific thought is compelled to accept the idea of some kind of directive power, and his statement that biologists are coming once more to a firm acceptance of a vital principle, drew from several distinguished ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... Meriting Heaven Dust to Dust Human Countenance Lie useful to Truth Science in Roman Catholic States Voluntary Belief Amanda Hymen's Torch Youth and Age December Morning Archbishop Leighton Christian Honesty Inscription on a Clock in Cheapside Rationalism is not Reason Inconsistency Hope in Humanity Self-love in Religion Limitation of Love of Poetry Humility of the Amiable Temper in Argument Patriarchal Government Callous self-conceit A Librarian Trimming Death Love an Act of the Will Wedded Union ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... Christ as his true Master. Yet he was practically Unitarian, and his later years belied the promise of his brilliant beginnings. Though a member of the Brahmo-Somaj, he split the body in two by his violation of its prohibition of child-marriage, and wasted his strength in attempts to combine Western rationalism with the ecstatic fervors of the East. As the result, the Brahmo-Somaj has declined, until in numbers and influence it has now hardly more than five thousand adherents in all India. Mozumdar was one of its representatives ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... Hebrew and Canon of Christ Church, and as he had been for some years the close friend of Frank Newman's brothers, it was inevitable that the former should see a great deal of him at that time. He was delighted with Pusey's first books; but it was for the "pietism and rationalism" which he found in them, more than for any hint of the spirit of Churchmanship which distinguished his other works so much. J. H. Newman had been a tutor at Oriel College since 1826. Oriel College, Rev. Thomas Mozley tells us, was then "held to be in the very front of academic ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... human, but in things Divine it is the subtle English form of rationalism. This is no time to explain, Phoebe; but human sense and intellect are made the test, and what surpasses them is only admired as long as its stringent rules do ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Indian Muhammadans can have a strong liking to the English Government, but this reforming party wishes to reconcile itself to the new order of things, and to identify itself with our rule so far as the Quran permits. In religious belief these reformers range from strict orthodoxy to rank rationalism. Their leader is an able and ardent advocate of Islam, though he has thrown off what he deems unauthorized and hurtful accretions, and many of his followers no doubt agree with him. A Bengalee Muhammadan, a graduate of Cambridge, has published a book ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... tenets handed down from father to son are adhered to without wavering, and at the same time without apparent enthusiasm. Catholics and Protestants live amicably side by side; but intermarriages are rare, and conversions from Rome to rationalism infrequent. The Sunday services of the little Protestant church are often attended by Catholics. Strangers passing through Osse, market-folk, peasants and others, never fail to inspect it curiously. The Protestant pastor is looked up to with respect and affection alike by Catholic and Protestant ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... Tyndall was called upon to respond.] on which all Englishmen must heartily invoke the blessings of prosperity and of peace restored [cheers], to a man whose subtle and well-balanced mind has delighted, now in tracing through the centuries the growth of the spirit of Rationalism, now in following the history of morals in Europe, through the first eight centuries of our era, and more lately in illuminating the great page of English history in the century which precedes our own, Mr. ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... influences. On the one hand, he was in contact with such men as Jowett, Nettleship, and Thomas Hill Green: on the other hand, with Swinburne, Burne-Jones, and the pre-Raphaelites. Thus the awakened spirit felt the dominion both of a high spiritual rationalism, and of the beauty of flesh and the charm of the earth. A visit to Italy in company with Shadwell, and his study of the Renaissance there, made him an enthusiastic humanist. The immediate product of this second awakening was ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... let him be imbued thoroughly with these; and I think there will be little chance of him drifting into infidelity. I think on the contrary he will be far more devout. He will be let into such views of the wisdom, love and power of God as will more than offset any tendency to rationalism. ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... satisfaction of self the law of their lives; because, in consequence, they regarded happiness as the chief object of pursuit and the one thing worth striving for; because, under the influence of the current rationalism, they tried to escape from their spiritual perplexities through logic and speculation. They had, therefore, to set themselves right upon all these matters. They had to learn that not self-satisfaction but ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... Invasion of Scepticism. Rationalism of Cotton Mather, and its cause Blaise de Vigenere Erastus Bekker, Lubienitzky, Pierre Petit Bayle Fontenelle The scientific movement ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... dawn that followed the night which fell upon our Church in this land, when the patriarchal luminaries of her early history had set on earth to rise in heaven. When the General Synod came into being, Rationalism still was in the ascendant in Europe. The names of Gabler and Bretschneider, of Wegscheider and Roehr, were names which had been held high in honor in the Lutheran Church in Germany. That Church had become ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... confidence of such a crime." Sir Thomas Browne, who was a great physician as well as a great writer, was called as a witness, and swore "that he was clearly of opinion that the persons were bewitched."—Lecky's History of Rationalism, vol. i. ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... interregnum," Ib. p. 217. "Protestantism as now constructed will first decay; because it is to be divided into two,—the smallest party will go back into Catholicism; the other will go forward into Rationalism. And then, after a succession of eventful years, a political revolution will hurl the Catholic superstructure to the earth, and the prismatic bow of promise will span the heavens. The children of earth ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... who reaches Catholicity by the philosophical road, as Brownson did, by no means pretends that the problem of human destiny can be solved by mere force of reason: Catholicity is not rationalism. Nor does he pretend that the product of reason's action, the knowledge of human immortality and liberty and of the being of God, place man apart from or above the universal action of God upon all souls by means of a visible society and external ordinances: Catholicity is well named; ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... quality of Holmes is what we may call his rationalism, his habit of taking nothing for granted, of judging every matter by observation rather than by tradition or sentiment or imagination; and herein he is in marked contrast with Longfellow and other romantic writers of the period. We shall enjoy him ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... of those years of study was my 'History of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe,' which appeared in the early part of 1865. With many defects, it had at least the merit of describing with great sincerity the process by which the opinions of its author had been formed, ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... womenkind read to me a great deal, but I dare not ask for much science, and am not sure that I could stand it. I enjoyed Tylor ('Researches into the Early History of Mankind,' by E.B. Tylor. 1865.) EXTREMELY, and the first part of Lecky 'The Rise of Rationalism in Europe,' by W.E.H. Lecky. 1865.); but I think the latter is often vague, and gives a false appearance of throwing light on his subject by such phrases as "spirit of the age," "spread of civilization," etc. I confine my reading to a ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... a philosophy. Temperament is a factor in all philosophizing. Rationalists and empiricists. The tender-minded and the tough-minded. Most men wish both facts and religion. Empiricism gives facts without religion. Rationalism gives religion without facts. The layman's dilemma. The unreality in rationalistic systems. Leibnitz on the damned, as an example. M. I. Swift on the optimism of idealists. Pragmatism as a mediating system. An objection. Reply: philosophies have characters like men, and are liable to as summary ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... 60. RATIONALISM.—As the content of a philosophical doctrine must be determined by the initial assumptions which a philosopher makes and by the method which he adopts in his reasonings, it is well to examine with some care certain broad differences in this respect which characterize different ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... positiveness, the rationalism of youth, it seemed that the strikes and lockouts, the overproduction and misery could not possibly result simply from ignorance and want of thought and feeling. We needed more dramatic factors than ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... the Protestants especially were kindled to an enthusiasm, pertaining to theological questions, which we in these times can but feebly realize; and the Germans were doubtless the most earnest and religious people in Europe. In those days there was neither religious indifference nor scepticism nor rationalism. The faith of the people was simple, and they were resolved to maintain it at any cost. But there were religious parties and asperities, even among the Protestants. The Lutherans would not unite with the Calvinists, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... distinct from the metaphysical abstractions propounded by the monks of Nepal. Its observances in Japan have undergone a still more striking alteration from their vicinity to the Syntoos; and in China they have been similarly modified in their contact with the rationalism of Lao-tsen and the social demonology of the Confucians.[3] But in each and all the distinction is in degree rather than essence; and the general concurrence is unbroken in all the grand essentials ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... scored, for the relation between an object and the idea that truly knows it, is held by rationalists to be nothing of this describable sort, but to stand outside of all possible temporal experience; and on the relation, so interpreted, rationalism is wonted to make its ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... being driven to the slaughter-house, with much shouting and beating with sticks and barking of dogs. The explanation of this event which he puts in Fazio's mouth is entirely conceived in the spirit of rationalism. What was there to wonder at? There was a butcher's shop in the street, and animals going to slaughter would naturally be met there. Why should a man fear to meet a cow? If it had been a bull there might have been something in it. Then with ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... nations. The events of a single century proved that, far from being able to govern other peoples, Spain was incapable of self-government on any rational principle. Whatever may have been the policy thrust upon the chief of Latin Christianity in the desperate struggle with militant rationalism, the repressive measures which it felt bound to adopt were eminently pernicious to a race like the Italians, who showed no disposition for religious regeneration, and who were yet submitted to the tyranny of ecclesiastical discipline and intellectual ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... finds himself indifferent on many points (on the reality of witchcraft, for instance) concerning which Browne's more timid, personally grounded faith might indulge no scepticism, forced himself, nevertheless, to detect a vein of rationalism in a book which on the whole much attracted him, and hastily put forth his "animadversions" upon it. Browne, with all his distaste for controversy, thus found himself committed to a dispute, and his ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... immortality, and who rejected Christianity as a historic or dogmatic faith, to accept so much as she did of the better spirit of religion and to be so keenly in sympathy with it. It was from the general scepticism and rationalism of the times she learned to reject all religion as false to truth and as not giving a just interpretation of life and its facts. It was from Feuerbach she learned how great is the influence of religion, how necessary it is to man's welfare, and ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... {ant. 477} reasoning ratiocination rationalism; dialectics, induction, generalization. discussion, comment; ventilation; inquiry &c. 461. argumentation, controversy, debate; polemics, wrangling; contention &c. 720 logomachy[obs3]; disputation, disceptation[obs3]; paper war. art ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... thought. The seventeenth century had, for the most part, been interested in theology and government; and its preoccupation, in both domains, with supernatural sanctions, made its conclusions unfitted for a period dominated by rationalism. Locke regarded his Human Understanding as the preliminary to an ethical enquiry; and Hume seems to have considered his Principles of Morals the most vital of his works. It may be true, as the mordant insight of Mark Pattison suggested, ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... strongly attacks Rationalism as a reference of the gospel to the depraved standard of the actual human natures and by no means to its understanding properly so called, as its measure and criterion. He says: "That therefore to rely upon the understanding, misinformed as it is by depraved affections, as our adequate ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... or forward for the satisfaction that the present always fails to give "under the sun," and which he, who was wiser than all who came before him, Solomon, warns his readers against! Oh, poor blind rationalism! missing all the beauties of God's Word in its own exceeding cleverness, or—folly! How would the present application of such reasoning sound! The Victorian era is certainly one of the most "brilliant and prosperous of" English "history"; hence no one can ever speak now of "the good ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... the Berlin school,—sense in external matters and a remarkable degree of uncertainty and embarrassment in the discussion of great problems. At the Borckes', and also at the homes in Morgnitz and Dabergotz, she had been declared "infected with rationalism," but at the Grasenabbs' she was pronounced point-blank an "atheist." To be sure, the elderly Mrs. Grasenabb, nee Stiefel, of Stiefelstein in South Germany, had made a weak attempt to save Effi at least for deism. But Sidonie von Grasenabb, an old maid ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... Pusey, and Keble, has proved to be no transient disturbance: and no figure has in relation to the Church history of the half-century the same portentous importance as that of John Henry Newman, whose powerful magnetism, as it attracted or repelled, drew men towards Romanism or drove them towards Rationalism, his logical art, made more impressive by the noble eloquence with which he sometimes adorned it, seeming to leave those who came under his spell no choice between the two extremes. When he finally decided on withdrawing himself ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... the effective if illogical method of incessant repetition. Among them was the idea which, as he declares, had occurred to him before he was ten years old that there was something radically wrong in all religions. Whether this opinion had come to him from the diffused rationalism of his time, or was congenial to the practical and prosaic temperament which was disquieted by the waste of energy over futile sectarian squabbles, or was suggested by his early study of Seneca—the only author of whom he speaks as having impressed him in early years—it became a fixed conviction. ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... it. Italy had turned its back upon mysticism in religion, and upon chivalry in love; its literature was the negation of what the northern peoples understand by romance. Yet it needed some relief from the very saneness of its rationalism, and it found the antidote to its vicious court life in the crystal springs of Castaly. What the pietism of Perugino's saints is to the feuds of the Baglioni, such is the Arcadian dream to the intellectual cynicism ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... is the most important of all the religious observances of the empire, and constitutes a most interesting remnant of the ancient monotheistic cultus which prevailed in China before the rationalism of Confucius and the polytheistic superstition of Buddhism predominated among the people. While the ceremonies of the sacrifices are very complicated, they are kept with the strictest severity. The chief ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... the necessity of toleration in the interest of religion itself, and nowhere was the monition more needed than in Frankfort, where the antipathy between those of the Reformed and the Lutheran communions was such as even to debar intermarriage. Rationalism and dogmatism are equally reprobated, and the sum of all true religion is found to consist in the love of God and of our neighbour. The strain of mystical piety which runs through the whole production doubtless proceeds from imaginative ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... still believe in God, and presently the witness is there again, but when you begin to read books that curtail the divinity of Jesus Christ and make your Heavenly Father just a natural force in the Universe, when you bud and blossom into rationalism, there is a good deal of mischief to pay. I do not say that Pendleton went this far, but the books he read and loaned to William did, and they unconsciously had a profounder effect upon William ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... designated 'Liberals.' Both vindicated the supreme right of freedom in everything: free criticism, free research, free thought, free speech. The reign of pure intellectualism became supreme; every emotion, every sentiment was dissected, measured by the measure of inexorable logic; and rationalism, later doomed to bankruptcy, ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... that He widened and unintentionally overthrew. The supernatural personality of Jesus did not seem credible to me. The demand made by faith, namely, that reason should be fettered, awakened a latent rebellious opposition, and this opposition was fostered by my mother's steady rationalism, her unconditional rejection of every miracle. When the time came for me to be confirmed, in accordance with the law, I had advanced so far that I looked down on what lay before me as a mere burdensome ceremony. The person of the Rabbi only inspired me with ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... a peculiarly easy one. It was the most natural thing in the world that a young man of Elsmere's temperament should rally to the Church. The place was passing through one of those periodical crises of reaction against an overdriven rationalism, which show themselves with tolerable regularity in any great centre of intellectual activity. It had begun to be recognised with a great burst of enthusiasm and astonishment, that, after all, Mill and Herbert Spencer had not said the last word on all ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... views, or indeed their creeds, to writing, lest they should fall into the hands of spies and be used in evidence against them, much more is this the case with those whose search after truth has led them to forsake the lines of rationalism and enter the land of mysticism and spiritualism. But two of these mystic schisms need we touch upon in this article, in order to show to what lengths the Mujik will go in his efforts to escape from the ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... undoubtedly stimulated greatly at this period by the constant wars. Lay physicians, as a class, had been looked down upon during the Dark Ages; but with the beginning of the return to rationalism, the services of surgeons on the battle-field, to remove missiles from wounds, and to care for wounds and apply dressings, came to be more fully appreciated. In return for his labors the surgeon was thus afforded better opportunities ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... form he hated; he demanded unlimited freedom for the intelligence. The narrow circle of legends, the conventional unified drama, state religion, a pseudo-democracy based on slavery he fearlessly criticised. Rationalism, humanism, free speculation were his watchwords; he was always trying new experiments in his art, introducing politics, philosophy, melodrama and trying to get rid of the chorus wherever he could. He was ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... down after the discovery of the violation, the work had been so loosely done that a few turns of the screwdriver were sufficient to set the lid free. Then I paused; for to raise the loosened lid (knowing as I did that it was only the blood's inherited follies that had conquered my rationalism and induced me to disturb the tomb) seemed to require the strength of a giant. Moreover, the fantastic terror of old Lantoff's story, which at another time would have made me smile, also took bodily shape, and the picture of a dreadful struggle at the edge of the cliff between Winnie's father ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... throwing themselves on a severe rationalism, will recognise nothing as true but what is demonstrated to them like mathematical theorems, will look upon the sentiments above referred to as delusions of the fancy, because they see them founded but upon feeling; but they who think so are manifestly in error. ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... gladly have said nothing further. But Dr. Knott's expression was curiously intent and compelling, as he sat fingering the stem of his wine-glass. All the ideality of Julius's nature rose in protest against the half-sneering rationalism he seemed to read in that expression. Mrs. Ormiston, who had an hereditary racial appreciation of anything approaching a fight, turned her round eyes first on one speaker and then on the other provokingly, inciting ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... heart that there can be such a man as you; that you are not some temptation of the devil or some delusion from the void. Look at these plain, homely, practical words. 'The Dragon's Grandmother,' that is all right; that is rational almost to the verge of rationalism. If there was a dragon, he had a grandmother. But you—you had no grandmother! If you had known one, she would have taught you to love fairy tales. You had no father, you had no mother; no natural ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... architecture date from that period: the wonderful old church of Bremen was built in the ninth century, Saint Marc of Venice was finished in 1071, and the beautiful dome of Pisa in 1063. In fact, the intellectual movement which has been described as the Twelfth Century Renaissance(23) and the Twelfth Century Rationalism—the precursor of the Reform(24) date from that period, when most cities were still simple agglomerations of small ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... superior, and to whom even Confucius paid extraordinary deference. This man was called Lao-tse, a recluse and philosopher, who was already an old man when Confucius began his travels. He was the founder of Tao-tze, a kind of rationalism, which at present has millions of adherents in China. This old philosopher did not receive Confucius very graciously, since the younger man declared nothing new, only wishing to revive the teachings ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... in manifest contradiction with the alleged conclusions from experience, and we are driven to ask, like Cheselden's blind patient, "Which deceives me, sight or touch?" (for empiricism is based on a necessity felt, rationalism on a necessity seen). And thus universal empiricism reveals itself as absolute scepticism. It is erroneous to attribute this in such an unqualified sense to Hume, * since he left at least one certain touchstone (which can only ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... art, through the life, conflicts of religious creeds, strifes between Protestantism and Catholicism, between Platonism, Mysticism, and Rationalism. In dealing with such delicate and serious topics I have avoided all controversy, and have ventured only on the simplest and briefest exposition. My effort has been to state the case fairly all round, to maintain an even balance, and, above all, to place the reader, ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... people who now think that they are fighting in the name of civilization against us barbarians, will shortly discover their mistake, and recognize the German miracle which has come to save the world from the spirit of calculating rationalism.—O.A.H. ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... various articles in 'Fraser' attacking Manning, and criticising among other writings Mr. Lecky's 'Rationalism' (very favourably), and Professor Seeley's then anonymous 'Ecce Homo.' He thinks that the author is a 'sheep in wolf's clothing,' and that his views dissolve into mist when closely examined. I need not give any ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... full of simple reverent delight in Nature, quite free from platonic and mystical speculation as to God's relation to His universe; and Protestant divines kept this tone up to the following century, until the days of rationalism and pietism. ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... reformed, or it would sink under the weight of its wickedness. People were getting rich, and with great riches there always came pride and wickedness. He continued in this strain for nearly an hour, mixing up transcendentalism, rationalism, unitarianism, and a number of other isms, so unartistically as to astonish and confound his audience, and give his hearers something to talk about ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... principles involved in what we call the Reformation were momentous. Connected on the one side with scholarship and the study of texts, it opened the path for modern biblical criticism. Connected on the other side with intolerance of mere authority, it led to what has since been named rationalism—the attempt to reconcile the religious tradition with the reason, and to define the logical ideas that underlie the conceptions of the popular religious conscience. Again, by promulgating the doctrine of personal freedom, and by connecting itself with national ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... we perceive material things; intuition, or faith, the organ by which we perceive spiritual things. He who denies the existence of such a power in man, falls necessarily into dogmatism on the one hand, or rationalism on the other. But as these words also take a very different sense on different lips, we explain ourselves by saying that he puts either a theory or an inference in the place of God. If orthodox, he puts a theory; if sceptical, an inference. ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... less constrained. Solemnity, even in dissipation, is the order of the day; and they go to the devil with a perverse seriousness, a systematic rationalism of wickedness that would have surprised the simpler sinners of old. Some of these men whom we see gravely conversing on the steps have but a slender acquaintance with each other. Their intercourse consists principally of mutual bulletins of depravity; and, week after week, as they ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... every earlier age. Whatever else may be thought of the Protestant movement of the sixteenth century, of the rise of deism and skepticism in the seventeenth and eighteenth, and of the existence of scientific rationalism in the nineteenth and twentieth, there can be little doubt that each of them has contributed its share to the prevalence of the idea that religion is essentially a private, not a public, affair and that friendly rivalry in good works is preferable ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... letter from the parish priest of Jenne. This priest, a good man, but timid, had written that Benedetto was, to his mind, a most pious Christian, but that he talked too much of religion to the people, and that his discourses sometimes had a flavour of quietism and of rationalism, that there were those who accused him of employing a demoniacal power for the furtherance of his not over-orthodox views, that this accusation was certainly false, but that, nevertheless, prudence forbade the writer to keep Benedetto with him any longer. Perhaps the wisest course for him would ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... immersion, the importance claimed for which by this sect is, perhaps, from a Christian point of view, made the less disproportionate by another condition attaching to it,—the condition that not till years of individual judgment have been reached is one eligible for the sacred rite. With that rationalism which religious sects are so skilful in applying to some unimportant point of ritual, and so careful not to apply to vital questions of dogma, the Baptists reasonably argue that to baptise an unthinking infant, and, by an external ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... the quiddity of kingship is, indeed, alike in manner and matter, a startling contribution to sixteenth century speculation. In manner it is worthy of Shakespeare's genius at its highest. In matter it is for its day revolutionary rationalism. It defies a popular doctrine, held almost universally by Shakespeare's contemporary fellow-countrymen, that royalty is divine and under God's special protection, that the gorgeous ceremony of the throne reflects a heavenly attribute, and that ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... the sake of argument Y; they are content that a thousand awful and mysterious disappearances from the visible universe should be summed up as the mortality of a district, or that ten thousand intoxications of the soul should bear the general name of the instinct of sex. Rationalism can live upon air and signs and numbers. But sentiment must have reality; emotion demands the real fields, the real widows' homes, the real corpse, and the real woman. And therefore Browning's love poetry is the finest love poetry in the world, because it does not talk about raptures ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... with the interior assent of mind and will. But there are other results of the council on which we may speculate; and which, I believe, it will certainly accomplish: first, it will show in a manner that cannot be mistaken that there is only one alternative for the human intellect: Rationalism or Faith; and, secondly, it will exhibit to the Christian powers the inevitable future they are ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... style knows not liberty. He is a slave; his dress betrayeth him and proclaims him base. There may be degrees of baseness. I am abject myself; but whensoever I revisit the haunts of men clad in the few light incommoding clothes that rationalism ordains, I rejoice and gloat over the slavery of those who have failed to catch even glimpses of the loveliness of liberty, who are yet afeared of opinion—"that sour-breathed hag." How can a man with hoop-like collar, starched ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... done the good that extreme theories usually do, in bringing out either positively or negatively one side or another of the truth; but in themselves they have been rejected as at once inadequate and unreal solutions of the facts. First we had the Rationalism (properly so called) of Paulus, then the Mythical hypothesis of Strauss, and after that the 'Tendenz-kritik' of Baur. But what candid person does not feel that each and all of these contained exaggerations more incredible than the difficulties which they sought to remove? ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... making right conduct the essence of religion is typical of the limits of humanistic interests and perceptions. In making his division of reason into the theoretical and the practical, it is to the latter realm that he assigns morality and religion. Clearly this is genuine rationalism. I am not forgetting Kant's great religious contribution. He was the son of devout German pietists and saturated in the literature of the Old Testament. It is to Amos, who may justly be called his spiritual father, ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... of the result rather than of his design. (2) Much beeides in the Bible—parable, metaphor, &c.—has been called an "accommodation,'' or divine condescension to human weakness. (3) German 18th-century rationalism (see APOLOGETICS) held that the Biblical writers made great use of conscious accommodation—intending moral commonplaces when they seemed to be enunciating Christian dogmas. Another expression for this, used, e.g., by J. S. Semler, is "economy,'' which also occurs in the kindred sense of "reserve'' ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... contradictory to Reason. Here he is diametrically opposed to Rome, who says, Do not appeal to History; that is private judgment. Do not appeal to Holy Writ; that is heresy. Do not appeal to Reason; that is Rationalism. ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... age of rationalism and unbelief, men's thoughts were turned toward God, and human helplessness ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... listened to him with such eagerness that the jealousy of some and the honest apprehension of others were excited by the boldness with which he handled religious subjects. He has been called the originator of modern rationalism, and though he was apparently worsted in his contest with his great rival, St. Bernard, he remains the most real and living personality among the great pulpit orators of the Middle Ages. This is due in large part, ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... ever questioned the unquestioned ideas and institutions of her age, of any age, with such vehemence and certainty of intuition. She judges questions which are barely asked and judged of now-a-days, applying to consecrated sentimentality the long-lost instinctive human rationalism of the ancient philosophers. How could St. Luke recommend us to desist from getting back our stolen property? She feels, however obscurely, that this is foolish, antisocial, unnatural. Nay, why should God prefer the penitence of one sinner to the constant ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... themselves indifferent to religion and spoke freely against the Church; but not one of them ever professed, or dared to profess, a formal, philosophical atheism. If they sought for any leading principle, it must have been a kind of superficial rationalism—a careless inference from the many and contradictory opinions of antiquity with which they busied themselves, and from the discredit into which the Church and her doctrines had fallen This was the sort of reasoning which was near bringing Galeotto Martio to the stake, had ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... "fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf." Poetry drooped under the icy breath of rationalism, and vanished into the abyss of the Kabbala. At most we occasionally hear of a polemic poem, a keen-edged epigram. For the rest, there was only a monotonous succession of religious poems, repeating the old formulas, dry bones of habit and tradition, no longer informed with true poetic, religious ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... problem is not, as we have said, that a people should beget out of itself its own idea and mission. From the Jewish theocracy to the French rationalism, from the Chinese ancestor-worship to the pioneer-freedom of America, all the cultured peoples have brought this creative act to pass, although in formative epochs leading classes and leading men have born the responsibility and made it easy for their countrymen to become aware ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... force of its dissolving power the primary elements of a supernatural religion have fast disappeared from the various creeds. One by one the different Churches have drifted away from their Christian moorings and taken to the high seas of Rationalism. Assailed by the storms of unbelief they are breaking on the rocks of religious indifference. Empty churches are the natural outcome of empty creeds. "The dominant tendencies are indeed increasingly identified with those currents of thought which ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... the writer's own opinions. This is absolutely incredible, for various reasons. Burke felt now, as he did thirty years later, that civil institutions cannot wisely or safely be measured by the tests of pure reason. His sagacity discerned that the rationalism by which Bolingbroke and the deistic school believed themselves to have overthrown revealed religion, was equally calculated to undermine the structure of political government. This was precisely the actual course on ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... This he announces immediately after the invocation to Venus, "Mother of the Aeneadae," with which the poem opens. He then addresses himself to Memmius, whom he intreats not to be deterred from reading him by the reproach of "rationalism." [67] He next states his first principle, which is the ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... the double role of an indispensable forerunner and a docile handmaid of faith. Far from antagonizing reason, as charged by her enemies, the Church has on the contrary always valiantly championed its rights against Scepticism, Positivism, Criticism, Traditionalism, Rationalism, ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... of Dr. Jenkyns caused the Mastership at Balliol to become vacant. Jowett's fame as a tutor was great, but with it there had spread a suspicion of "rationalism." Persons whispered that the great tutor was tainted with German views. This reacted unduly upon his colleagues; and, when the election came, he was rejected by a single vote. His disappointment ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... to the reproach of enthusiasm. So he concluded that each sort of Christians would be better off without the other. Time proved his diagnosis to be better than his treatment. In the course of a generation the Lutheran body, carefully weeded of pietistic admixtures, sank perilously deep in cold rationalism, and the Moravian church was quite carried away for a time on a flood of sentimentalism. What might have been the course of this part of church history if Muehlenberg and Schlatter had shared more deeply with Zinzendorf in the spirit of apostolic and catholic Christianity, and if all three had ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... spiritual is most rational." And again, "Reason is the Divine governor of man's life: it is the very voice of God.[31]" What we can and must transcend, if we would make any progress in Divine knowledge, is not reason, but that shallow rationalism which regards the data on which we can reason as a fixed quantity, known to all, and which bases itself on a formal logic, utterly unsuited to a spiritual view of things. Language can only furnish us with poor, ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... fought their way down through all the rationalism and scepticism of the nineteenth century, of course the theories of the schools, supported by great names, adopted into the popular belief and incorporated with the general mass of misapprehension with reference ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... what can be done with it to rid the earth of its ancient evils. And do not be troubled if at the outset this book seems to be entirely "destructive". I assure you that I am no crude materialist, I am not so shallow as to imagine that our race will be satisfied with a barren rationalism. I know that the old symbols came out of the heart of man because they corresponded to certain needs of the heart of man. I know that new symbols will be found, corresponding more exactly to the needs of our time. If here I set to work to tear down an old and ramshackle building, ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... him. Burns, therefore, naturally threw himself into the arms of the opposite, or New Light party, who were more easy in their life and in their doctrine. This large and growing section of ministers were deeply imbued with rationalism, or, as they then called it, "common-sense," in the light of which they pared away from religion all that was mysterious and supernatural. Some of them were said to be Socinians or even pure Deists, most of them shone less ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... has been a subject of discussion for a century in Germany, Holland, and France; while even in the desolate villages in the heart of Spain the priests find it necessary to placard the church walls with cautions against rationalism, England hitherto has escaped the trial; and it is only within a very few years that the note of speculation has compelled our deaf ears to listen. That it has come at last is less a matter of surprise than that it should have been so long delayed; and though slow to move, it is likely that so ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... prepared for the dogma of Christ's pre-existence. The attempt to rationalize the conception of deity as embodied in the Jehovah of the Old Testament gave rise to the class of opinions described as Gnosis, or Gnosticism. The signification of Gnosis is simply "rationalism,"—the endeavour to harmonize the materialistic statements of an old mythology with the more advanced spiritualistic philosophy of the time. The Gnostics rejected the conception of an anthropomorphic deity who had appeared visibly and audibly to the patriarchs; ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... abrogated.... However, it is a practical fact that the partisans of one of the two sections which to-day divide the Reformed Church of France, not only do not consider themselves bound by the Confession of La Rochelle, but, tending more and more towards Rationalism, and seeing in Protestantism only the religion of free thought, have come to reject the great miracles of the gospel, and to demand for their pastors, in the bosom of the Church, unlimited freedom in teaching. While on the one hand the sovereignty of the ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... gradual approach of rationalism that is the subject of this lecture. For years after the death of Flaminius we have no trace of it: that was no time for speculating, and it would have been dangerous. The religious history of the time, as recorded by Livy, shows on the contrary that religio in the old sense of the word is ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... the specialist, only a name if even so much as that for the generality of us and valuable chiefly in showing what speculation may do when permitted at will to range earth and sky, with a spurious rationalism for ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... philosopher, this Yorkshire doctor of souls and bodies, nor was he more than a country scientist, and his reasoning against witchcraft fell short—as Professor Kittredge has clearly pointed out[37]—of scientific rationalism. That was a high mark and few there were in the seventeenth century who attained unto it. But it is not too much to say that John Webster was the heir and successor to Scot. He carried weight by the force of his attack, if not by its brilliancy.[38] He was by no means always consistent, ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... Rouge party, led by the member for Montreal, which is principally composed of very versatile and enthusiastic Frenchmen of rather indefinite opinions and aims, professing a creed which appears a curious compound of Republicanism and Rationalism. The word Latitudinarianism defines it best. There are 130 members, divided into numerous "ists" and "ites." Most of the members for Lower Canada are French, and, consequently, the Romish party is a very powerful one in the House. Taken as a whole, the members are loyal, and have proved their ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... all other kinds of knowledge, out of the action and interaction of man's mind, with that which is not man's mind, it has taken the intellectual coverings of Fetishism or Polytheism; of Theism or Atheism; of Superstition or Rationalism. With these, and their relative merits and demerits, I have nothing to do; but this it is needful for my purpose to say, that if the religion of the present differs from that of the past, it is because the theology ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Shelley, "From what I see of your temperament, you are running great risks in forming a connection with the daughter of a fanatic and eccentric like Godwin." Shelley would be employing the strict rationalism of the older and stronger free thinkers, if he answered, "From what I observe of your mind, you are rushing on destruction in marrying the great-niece of an old corpse of a courtier and dilettante like ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... images—tends to become concepts: such are vivified abstractions, allegorical beings, hereditary entities of spirits and of gods. In short, metaphysical mysticism is a transition-form towards metaphysical rationalism, although these two tendencies have always been inimical in the history of philosophy, just as in ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... rabbinic lore, Abba Mari devoted himself to the study of theology and philosophy, and made himself acquainted with the writing of Moses Maimonides and Nachmanides as well as with the Talmud. In Montpellier, where he lived from 1303 to 1306, he was much distressed by the prevalence of Aristotelian rationalism, which, through the medium of the works of Maimonides, threatened the authority of the Old Testament, obedience to the law, and the belief in miracles and revelation. He, therefore, in a series of letters ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... belief that the hidden order of nature is mechanical exclusively, and that non-mechanical categories are irrational ways of conceiving and explaining even such things as human life. Now, this mechanical rationalism, as one may call it, makes, if it becomes one's only way of thinking, a violent breach with the ways of thinking that have played the greatest part in human history. Religious thinking, ethical thinking, poetical thinking, ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... one dismiss M. Sorel then as an empty paradoxer. The myth is not one of the outgrown crudities of our pagan ancestors. We, in the midst of our science and our rationalism, are still making myths, and their force is felt in the actual affairs of life. They convey an impulse, not a program, nor a plan of reconstruction. Their practical value cannot be ignored, for they embody the motor currents in ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... with the Universal Church, and so on the presence with her of her Lord, and on the gifts of His Spirit—but upon the critical reason of individuals, and the support of Acts of Parliament—ever stand in the coming struggle? How could it meet Rationalism on the one hand? How could it withstand Popery on the other? After such a fatal change its career might be easily foreshadowed. Under the assaults of Rationalism, it would year by year lose some parts of the great deposit of the Catholic faith. Under the ...
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