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One of the most engaging and inspiring of these ideas is that the personal self is a projection on the plane of materiality of a metaphysical self, or soul, to which the personal self is related as is the shadow of an object to the object itself.
Fostered by these circumstances, the great faculty for physical and metaphysical inquiry, with which the people of our race are naturally endowed, developed itself vigorously; and at least two of its products have had a profound and a permanent influence upon the subsequent course of thought in the world. The one of these was English Freethinking; the other, the Theory of Gravitation.
That, however, which most severely tested her fortitude and noble sense of what we owe a parent, resulted from no moral or metaphysical distinctions of human duty, but simply and directly from what she must suffer by the contemplated sacrifice. She was born in a position of life sufficiently dignified for ordinary ambition.
Consequently, the new constitutional act withdraws from the nation the right to elect its deputies; it will simply elect candidates to the deputation and through three degrees of election, one above the other; thus, it is to take part in the choice of its candidates only through "an illusory and metaphysical participation."
We are not attempting to perplex a plain matter of science by introducing into its discussion a metaphysical subtilty. The principle here contended for is one of the first dictates of the inductive philosophy, and as such it has been frankly acknowledged and acted upon by all the great improvers of science in modern days.
Religion, as it was the principal topic of their thoughts, became also the chief subject of their conversation, and as they sat together in small separate knots, they discussed doctrinal and metaphysical points of belief, balanced the merits of various preachers, compared the creeds of contending sects, and fortified by scriptural quotations those which they favoured.
After concluding our treatment of them, we shall have to speak of still another view, which presupposes all these attempts at solution to be wholly or nearly successful, and draws an inference from them which no longer belongs to the realm of natural science, but is a purely metaphysical hypothesis; it is the abolition of the idea of design in nature.
For it is well known that the population of Europe consists of Asiatic races who, driven out from their own country, wandered away, and by degrees hit upon Europe: on their long wanderings they lost the original religion of their homes, and with it the correct view of life; and this is why they formed in another climate religions for themselves which were somewhat crude; especially the worship of Odin, the Druidic and the Greek religions, the metaphysical contents of which were small and shallow.
It belongs to philosophy even more than to religion, and to the sphere of ethics not less. I daresay even the man in the street knows, quite as certainly as the man in the schools, that a metaphysical proposition underlies the doing of every moral act, even though it may never be expressed. All thinking starts with an assumption of some kind, and without an assumption thought is impossible.
Talking of books, I want some one to write a novel, which shall be a metaphysical Gil Blas; which shall deal more with the mind than Le Sage's book, and less with the actions; which shall make its hero the creature of the world, but a different creation, though equally true; which shall give a faithful picture in the character of one man of the aspect and the effects of our social system; making that man of a better sort of clay than the amusing lacquey was, and the produce of a more artificial grade of society.
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