"Rationalism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... several excursions into the general region of philosophical and political disputation. His main purpose is to relate the history of a creed propagated by a group of remarkable men, who took hold of some prominent theories and doctrines generated by the rationalism of the preceding century, and endeavoured to make them the basis and framework of a system for improving the condition of the English people. Their immediate object was to abolish intolerable abuses of power by the governing classes, and radically ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... Luther as being only the inventions of men, and why could their successors not go 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
... there occur periods of defeat, but in which, after every interval of repose, the strife is renewed. Their great difficulty has been, that the destruction of the reformed church in France took out of the country entirely that element of religious rationalism which is at once conservative ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... "Handworterbuch" (1884)—both works with a conservative leaning—are on the same side; and Diestel, [8] in his full discussion of the subject, remorselessly rejects the universality doctrine. Even that staunch opponent of scientific rationalism—may I say rationality?—Zockler [9] flinches from a distinct defence of the thesis, any opposition to which, well within my recollection, was howled down by the orthodox as mere "infidelity." All that, in ...
— The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science - Essay #6 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... fairy tale, which nevertheless 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 a timid, ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... is equally so. Hence systems rise, as if the world were to begin anew. The pride of liberty and of human action becomes the principle of science; and, like all new principles, it pretends to exclusive and absolute dominion. Rationalism governs; abstract philosophy ignores the traditions and the requirements of the life of nations; and finds now in it, as in geometry, nothing but principles and deductions. The memory of recent oppression causes us to ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... 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 part of the exhortations from the pulpit. It was just ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 9. September, 1880 • Various
... Harvard as 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 races of Africa than Christianity. Dr. John William Draper made a similar mistake in ...
— 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
... the fact that my father was not a communicant of any church, and I tremendously admired his scrupulous morality and sense of honor in all matters of personal and public conduct, and also because the little group to which I have referred was much given to a sort of rationalism, doubtless founded upon an early reading of Emerson. In this connection, when Bronson Alcott came to lecture at the school, we all vied with each other for a chance to do him a personal service because he had been a friend of Emerson, and we were inexpressibly scornful of our younger ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... 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 does not turn away from what is joyless and ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... choose, but to accept whatever was put before them." This attitude of arguing, examining, picking, and choosing in relation to things of which we really know nothing, and can know nothing, in our mortal state (though supposedly God knows and has given a certain amount of light) Newman calls Rationalism; and if God has spoken, surely such Rationalism is irrational. The doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, that one creed is as good as another, and that all is opinion, Newman calls Liberalism; but if God has revealed the truth such ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... that of "Science," to which John 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 ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... the theological and philosophical atmosphere of the Middle Ages was "scholastic," not mystical. No doubt "mysticism," as a mode of life aiming at the realisation of the presence of God, is as distinct from scholasticism as empiricism is from rationalism, or "tough-minded" philosophy (to use JAMES' happy phrase) is from "tender-minded". But no philosophy can be absolutely and purely deductive. It must start from certain empirically determined facts. A man might be an extreme empiricist in religion (i.e. a mystic), and yet might attempt ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... the method which is irrational—regardless of reason, and therefore leading to conclusions erroneous and absurd. Rationalism is opposed to ultraism, to vehement, officious and extreme measures—while it would seek more excellent ways, it holds fast to that ...
— Rational Horse-Shoeing • John E. Russell
... 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 ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... who, 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. If faith in God, ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... orthodoxy, and had, therefore, been regarded as heretics; and now, as though by a sudden miracle, they became the boldest champions in Germany of the orthodox Lutheran faith. Already a powerful enemy had entered the field. The name of the enemy was Rationalism. As we enter the last quarter of the eighteenth century, we hear the sound of tramping armies and the first mutterings of a mighty storm. The spirit of free inquiry spread like wildfire. In America it led ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... Spirit," because you can 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 than they had on Pendleton, because William really had a soul. (I am ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... 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 of large taste for inquiry, and wide ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... 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
... the points of conflict between Established Theology on the one hand and what is known as Rationalism, the Higher Criticism, and Comparative Mythology, on the other hand, is what is known as "the Virgin Birth" of Jesus. Perhaps we may show the points of difference more clearly by simply stating the opposing views and, afterwards, ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... histories of the Old and New Testaments, and changed the gospel records into parables. Some have gone so far as to see in the greatest of the gospel miracles nothing but types.[005] Such a system of exegesis easily leads to a kind of mystic rationalism: the forms of religion tend to gain more consistency than the essence, and public worship to be placed above doctrine. Some of the extreme sects of the Raskol have actually reached this point. A perfect carnival of wild interpretation prevailed among this ignorant rabble, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... hazardeco. Rasp raspi. Rasp (a tool) raspilo. Raspberry frambo. Rat rato. Rate procento. Rate of, at the po. Rate (estimate) taksi. Rather plivole. Ratify aprobi. Ratio proporcio. Ration porcio. Rational racionala. Rationalism racionalismo. Rationalist racionalisto. Rattle (a toy) kraketilo. Rattlesnake sonserpento. Raucous rauxka. Ravage (lay waste) ruinigi. Rave deliri, paroli sensence. Ravel maltordi. Raven korvo. Ravenous ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... of poor man looking backward 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 ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... Burton, 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 been the ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... 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 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... one of those 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, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... determined by that craving; in fact it seemed to Thyrsis that his God had made the universe with relation to it—a heaven to reward him if he abstained, and a hell to punish him if he yielded. It was because of this that he clung to the church, and shrunk from any dallying with "rationalism". He disapproved of the theatre, because it appealed to these cravings; he disapproved of all pictures and statues of the nude human form, because the sight of them overmastered him. For the same reason he shrunk from all impassioned poetry, and from dancing, and even from non-religious music. ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... fit itself with armour of its own providing.' Such expressions sound very like the arguments of the Modernists; but Newman assuredly never contemplated that they would be turned against the policy of his own Church, in the interests of the critical rationalism which he abhorred. His attitude towards dogma is after all not very different from that of the older school. 'Time was needed' (he says) 'for the elucidation of doctrines communicated once for all through inspired persons'; his examples are purgatory and the papal supremacy. He insists that his 'tests' ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... 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 ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... introducing that very element of rationalism to be, before all things, distrusted here. The mere introduction of human precaution and human weapons would sully faith and make of no avail the only sure means of winning light on this solemn problem. Reason, so employed, would be a hindrance—an actual ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... Therefore we are not bound to believe, or to attempt belief in, any thing which is contrary or 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
... not find the strange body of Becker in the garden. You did not find any strange body in the garden. In face of Dr. Simon's rationalism, I still affirm that Becker was only partly present. Look here!" (pointing to the black bulk of the mysterious corpse) "you never saw that man in your lives. Did ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... Faith and rationalism are mutually exclusive in the spiritual realm. Rationalizing and doubting are first cousins when the Word of ...
— The Church, the Schools and Evolution • J. E. (Judson Eber) Conant
... ethics which have shaped and guided right conduct through all these centuries are Christian ethics. Think as we will about dogma, few will feel competent to contest Lecky's verdict, when the historian of Rationalism and of European Morals declares that Christianity "has been the main source of moral development in Europe"; we know what this religion has done, because its actual record is open to inspection. To quote Lecky ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... such matters. They will not see that the book was written for a people with a State Church on its hands, so that a gross exaggeration of the importance of religion was necessary. It will revive interest in theology and retard the progress of rationalism." ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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 not ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 as ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler |
