Philosophy of theism. Gifford lects - Softcover

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1895 edition. Excerpt: ...and indivisible, or not composed of parts. Thus we can imagine water divisible, so far as it is a finite individual thing, separated from the infinite reality by our distorting imagination, and then it is found to be composed of separable parts: but when it is refunded into the divine substance, it cannot be thought of; for as such it is not divisible or determinate, but indeterminate or indifferentiate. Again, the All must be eternally necessary; for otherwise we are involved in the contradiction that Nature (natura naturans) might be different from what really is. What we call contingency and change is the issue of our imperfectly rational apprehension of the infinite reality, in the many delusive forms of sense and imagination. What exists cannot be contingent in reality: it seems contingent only because it is viewed in the imperfect light of deficient knowledge. Things are absolutely perfect in the reality, for whatever is is divine. But even the opinion which refers all to capricious will is nearer the truth, according to this pantheistic conception, than the supposition that things are what they are, for the sake of some supposed good thereby secured to man, and of which man is the final cause. For this is to suppose an end in existence that is independent of God, an end outside the infinite Reality, and to which the Vnica Substantia is subordinate. The alleged prejudice that purpose or final cause, Pantheistic and a humanly related purpose too, is the connecting ticmofthe principle of existence, is what Spinoza throughout his prejudice, demonstrations labours to remove. Man, with his dis-Averse is position to think things in a temporal succession--not finai sub specie ceternitatis--takes his own finite and im-ca«ses. 1 which aginable...