Natural laws; or, The infallible criterionJ.A. Brook & Company, 1876 - 155 pages |
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according acquired acquisition of intelligence agree with J. S. believe beneficent blind born capacities and liberty Christian courage creatures of circumstances credulity criminal death desires and actions Devil divine government doctrine earth eternal evil existence exterminate folly foolish fools future God of Nature government of nature greatest Heathens heaven hell human body human race human soul Humanitarian philosophers ignorance and wickedness infallible criterion infinitely wise instinct invariable natural laws invented J. S. Mill Jesus justice and benevolence knowledge maleficent mankind merciful miracles misery moral murder natural religion ness omnipotent pain parents past perfect present prove qualities reason recollection Religion of God resurrection rewards and corrections Roman Catholic Sceptics and Atheists Sceptics like J. S. sentient human species spontaneous order stupid and selfish superstition tarian philosophers teach teachers term Natural terrestrial human true truth tyrannicide unwise Sceptics vice vicious virtue virtuous wicked wisdom and benevolence wisest and best
Popular passages
Page 20 - In sober truth, nearly all the things which men are hanged or imprisoned for doing to one another, are nature's every day performances. Killing, the most criminal act recognized by human laws, Nature does once to every being that lives; and in a large proportion of cases, after protracted tortures such as only the greatest monsters whom we read of ever purposely inflicted on their living fellow-creatures.
Page 41 - This would be an adaptation to actual business of the spiritual truth that " to him that hath shall be given ; but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he seemeth to have.
Page 131 - One only form of belief in the supernatural — one only theory respecting the origin and government of the universe — stands wholly clear both of intellectual contradiction and of moral obliquity. It is that which, resigning irrevocably the idea of an omnipotent creator, regards Nature and Life not as the expression throughout of the moral character and purpose of the Deity, but as the product of a struggle between contriving goodness and an intractable material, as was believed by Plato, or a...
Page 28 - Nature impales men, breaks them as if on the wheel, casts them to be devoured by wild beasts, burns them to death, crushes them with stones like the first Christian martyr, starves them with hunger, freezes them with cold, poisons them by the quick or slow venom of her exhalations, and has hundreds of other hideous deaths in reserve such as the ingenious cruelty of a Nabis or a Domitian never surpassed.
Page 99 - If there are any marks at all of special design in creation, one of the things most evidently designed is that a large proportion of all animals should pass their existence in tormenting and devouring other animals.
Page 41 - It is one of Nature's general rules, and part of her habitual injustice, that "to him that hath shall be given, but from him that hath not, shall be taken even that which he hath." The ordinary and predominant tendency of good is towards more good. Health, strength, wealth, knowledge, virtue, are not only good in themselves but facilitate and promote the acquisition of good, both of the same and of other kinds. The person who can learn easily, is he who already knows much: it is the strong and not...
Page 123 - Any other of the outrages to the most ordinary justice and humanity involved in the common christian conception of the moral character of God, sinks into insignificance beside this dreadful idealization of wickedness. Most of them too, are happily not so unequivocally deducible from the very words of Christ as to be indisputably a part of christian doctrine. It may be doubted, for instance, whether Christianity is really responsible for atonement and redemption, original sin and vicarious punishment:...
Page 115 - For it is impossible that any one who habitually thinks, and who is unable to blunt his inquiring intellect by sophistry, should be able without misgiving to go on ascribing absolute perfection to the author and ruler of so clumsily made and capriciously governed a creation as this planet and the life of its inhabitants.
Page 152 - Surely this is a proof that the idea is not really or naturally terrible; that not philosophers only but the common order of mankind can easily reconcile themselves to it and even consider it as a good; and that it is no unnatural part of the idea of a happy life that life itself be laid down, after the best that it can give has been fully enjoyed through a long lapse of time, when all its pleasures, even those of benevolence, are familiar and nothing untasted and unknown is left to stimulate curiosity...
Page 116 - ... character of Christ. The recognition, for example, of the object of highest worship, in a being who could make a Hell; and who could create countless generations of human beings with the certain foreknowledge that he was creating them for this fate. Is there any moral enormity which might not be justified by imitation of such a Deity ? And is it possible to adore such a one without a frightful distortion of the standard of right and wrong ? Any other of the outrages to the most ordinary justice...