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Untitled Article
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Untitled Article
but almost empty and motionless ; and which , by the working of too restless an imagination and too excitable feelings , may become a sort of haunted chamber , full of unreal motions and empty forms ; may , by the application of a sounder discipline , become an intellectual world , stored with true and clear ideas , answering
to the external world with all its fair variety of things . Who can doubt , when he contemplates that fair variety on every side of him , and is conscious of an intellectual world within capable of receiving accurate images of all this fair variety of material forms—who can doubt that it is intended by the Great Spirit which formed the physical and the intellectual world , that the
system of creation should be impressed on the human mind ? Who can doubt that a knowledge of truth , a conviction of duty , and an enjoyment of happiness are indissoluble links in the chain , not of a material necessity , but of intelligent wisdom ? I have warned you against neglecting that wonderful facultyimagination , which
Bodies forth The forms of things unknown , and raises us to some apprehension of a power of which reason demonstrates the existence . The appeals to this faculty which have been made by the master spirits of the world are well suited
to rouse apathetic minds to interest and to energy ; but , if we would prevent this interest and energy from running wild , if we would give it a steadier spirit to control it , we must have recourse to that philosophy of realities , which , so far from being identified with materialism ,
Finds tongues in trees , books in the running brooks , Sermons in stones , and good in every thing . The last passage I have quoted from the national writer , who was in imagination a p oet , and in judg ment a philosopher , reminds me that I am come to the point in Natural Philosophy to which all our discipline has been directed ; the point , namely ,
at which we may turn back with advantage from physical to moral science . And whatever advantage may arise from a knowledge of physics to the man of science , the man of art , and the nian of liberal curiosity , its most important effect will be seen in its freeing moral and religious principles from fanaticism on the
one hand , and scepticism on the other hand ; and in founding these principles , not only in sincerity , but in truth . Physical science , by directing our attention to the constant agency throu ghout the whole material world of general laws , —cause and effect , cause and effect , cause and effect , —will lead us to a conviction that these laws are never violated in the material world in our times . This conviction will open our minds to inquiries
Untitled Article
The Diffusion of Knowledge amongst the People . 277
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1834, page 277, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2632/page/45/
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