Universe Sentence Examples

The universe is wider than our views of it.

It was the last place in the universe he wanted to be.

It may further be added that materialism can be shown to be an inadequate philosophy in its attempts to account even for the physical universe, for this is inexplicable without the assumption of mind distinct from, and directive of, matter.

You'll be the one person in the universe who finds an ounce of good in that creature, Darkyn.

You become the only person in the universe that can influence him.

You can't offset the balance of the entire universe for one woman.

After all, we live in a universe that looks like it has plenty of room for us to expand into.

The force of the universe is swept up and gathered in God, who communicates motion to the parts of extension, and sustains that motion from moment to moment; and in the same way the force of mind has really been concentrated in God.

As he spoke, memories streamed through his mind, memories of the universe before the Schism and afterwards, when he and a few others were cast alone onto earth.

The whole of Damian's history, his forefathers', all the way to the Beginning, when spirits milled without purpose before the Original Beings shaped the universe into something much greater.

There are … creatures older than me in the universe, and they were fighting a turf war over who ruled what part of the universe.

There is perhaps a certain religious enthusiasm in the thought of being passively determined by Fate, the Universe, Zeus.

In his Theodicy Leibnitz argues, like not a few predecessors, that this universe must be regarded as the best of all possible universes.

Scepticism, with which P. Bayle had played as a historian - he amused himself, too, with praising the Manichaean solution of the riddle of the universe - became a serious power in the history of philosophy with the advent of David Hume.

Similarly, miracles - absolute new beginnings - are possible on God's side, if they are not mere anomalies but acts promotive of the general meaning or tendency of things, and of the divine plan of the universe.

Our world is but one of an infinite number of others, and all the harmonies and adaptations of the universe are regarded as a special case of the infinite possibilities of mechanical events.

The period of the revival of learning, which was also that of a renewed study of nature, is marked by a considerable amount of speculation respecting the origin of the universe.

The speaker seeks to make intelligible the appearance of art and contrivance in the world as a result of a natural settlement of the universe (which passes through a succession of chaotic conditions) into a stable condition, having a constancy in its forms, yet without its several parts losing their motion and fluctuation.

Each monad is an original independent being, and is determined to take this particular point in the universe, this place in the scale of beings.

The relation of these forces or causes to each other is the order of the universe.

This theological view of the physical universe had a double effect on the ethics of the Stoic. In the first place it gave to his cardinal conviction of the all-sufficiency of wisdom for human well-being a root of cosmical fact, and an atmosphere of religious and social emotion.

He thought of them as means towards the end of ascertaining the true form of the universe.

As different as night and day, they were his adopted brothers—and the only men in the universe he trusted with his life.

A bad deal by a deity or its mate will ruin the universe.

In our histories, I'm king of the universe.

It was a good, perfect little life, so much more than she ever expected, with the exception that her best friend in the universe-- Kiera-- might as well have been dead to her as far as Romas and his clan were concerned.

The God of Descartes is not merely the creator of the material universe; he is also the father of all truth in the intellectual world.

Accordingly the quantity of movement in the universe, like its mover, can neither increase nor diminish.

It is one of the grandest hypotheses which ever have been formed to account by mechanical processes for the movements of the universe.

This is what may conveniently be called the Prajapati theory, by which the "Lord of Creatures," the efficient cause of the universe, is identified with both the sacrifice;(yajna) and the sacrificer (yajamana).

The new method of definition which Socrates applied to problems of human conduct was extended by Plato to the whole universe of the knowable.

And the chief contribution of Aristotle to theism is a theory, found in his Physics as well as his Metaphysics, of God as first mover of the universe, himself unmoved.

To Locke the universe is the result of a direct act of creation, even matter being limited in duration and created.

For in the name of God, the Father and Lord of the universe, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ and of the Holy Spirit, they then receive the washing with water."

Locke here unconsciously approaches the spiritual view of active power in the physical universe afterwards taken by Berkeley, forming the constructive principle of his philosophy.

At the same time the dualism involved in the simultaneous acceptance of an optimistic account of the origin and nature of the universe (such as is implied in Christian theology) and a belief in the reality of moral evil witnessed to by the Christian doctrine of Redemption, intensified the difficulties already felt concerning man's responsibility and God's omnipotence.

That man was " naturally " a social animal Aristotle had already taught; that all rational beings, in the unity of the reason that is common to all, form naturally one community with a common law was (as we saw) an immediate inference from the Stoic conception of the universe as a whole.

According to Hegel, the essence of the universe is a process of thought from the abstract to the concrete; and a right understanding of this process gives the key for interpreting the evolution in time of European philosophy.

But now he felt that the universe had crumbled before his eyes and only meaningless ruins remained, and this not by any fault of his own.

We should in fact have reached those two fundamentals of which man's whole outlook on the universe is constructed--the incomprehensible essence of life, and the laws defining that essence.

The enunciation by Descartes of the conception that the physical universe, whether living or not living, is a mechanism, and that, as such, it is explicable on physical principles.

There can be no doubt that Aurelius believed in a deity, although Schultz is probably right in maintaining that all his theology amounts to this - the soul of man is most intimately united to his body, and together they make one animal which we call man; and so the deity is most intimately united to the world or the material universe, and together they form one whole.

At the end of the world the devil Ur will swallow up the earth and the other intermediate higher worlds, and thereupon will burst and fall into the abyss of darkness where, along with all the worlds and powers of darkness, he will ultimately cease to be, so that thenceforward the universe will consist of but one everlasting world of light.

As early as 1721 he was seeking to lay the foundation of a scientific explanation of the universe, when he published his Prodromus principiorum rerum naturalium, and had already written his Principia in its first form.

The origin of the universe was explained as follows.

He regarded the sun as the abode of God, the intelligent providence, or (in accordance with Stoical materialism) the vivifying fire or aether of the universe.

These difficulties arise quite naturally from the obligation, which metaphysicians, theologians, moral philosophers, men of science, and psychologists alike recognize, to give an account, consistent with their theories, of the relation of man's power of deliberate and purposive activity to the rest of the universe.

In the main, no doubt, the problem is a metaphysical problem, and has its origin in the effort to reconcile that belief in man's freedom which is regarded by the unsophisticated moral consciousness as indisputable, with a belief in a universe governed by rational and necessary laws.

Their doctrines were mainly based upon a belief in the government of the universe by some form of physical necessity, and though different opinions might prevail as to the mode of operation of the various forms of physical necessity the occasional recognition of non-material contributory causes never amounted to a recognition of the independence of human volition or intelligence.

And though the Stoic doctrine of determinism did not, when applied to moral problems, advance much beyond the reiteration of arguments derived from the universal validity of the principles of causality, nor the Epicurean counter-assertion of freedom avoid the error of regarding chance as a real cause and universal contingency as an explanation of the universe, it was nevertheless a real step forward to perceive the existence of the problem.

If the attack is to be finally repulsed it will be imperatively necessary for the libertarian to maintain that no full explanation of the physical universe can ever gain assent which does not take account of the reality and influence within the material world of human power of initiative and freedom.

The doctrine of the Pythagoreans that the essence of justice (conceived as equal retribution) was a square number, indicates a serious attempt to extend to the region of conduct their mathematical view of the universe; and the same may be said of their classification of good with unity, straightness and the like, and of evil with the opposite qualities.

The ethical element in the " dark " philosophizing of Heraclitus (c. 530-470 B.C.), though it anticipates Stoicism in its conceptions of a law of the universe, to which the wise man will carefully conform, and a divine harmony, in the recognition of which he will find his truest satisfaction, is more profound, but even less systematic.

The pre-Socratic thinkers were all primarily devoted to ontological research; but by the middle of the 5th century B.C. the conflict of their dogmatic systems had led some of the keenest minds to doubt the possibility of penetrating the secret of the physical universe.

But this must be no less true of other objects of thought and discourse; the same relation of general notions to particular examples extends through the whole physical universe; we can think and talk of it only by means of such notions.

That is, the essence of the universe is identified with its end, - the " formal " with the " final " cause of things, to use the later Aristotelian phraseology.

The characteristics of this practical goodness in Plato's matured thought correspond to the fundamental conceptions in his view of the universe.

The substantial good of the universe, in Aristotle's view, is the pure activity of universal abstract thought, at once subject and object, which, itself changeless and eternal, is the final cause and first source of the whole process of change in the concrete world.

It was important, no doubt, to express the need of observing due measure and proportion, in order to attain good results in human life no less than in artistic products; but the observation of this need was no new thing in Greek literature; indeed, it had already led the Pythagoreans and Plato to find the ultimate essence of the ordered universe in number.

Its demands were met by the Stoic school which separated the moral from the worldly view of life, with an absoluteness and definiteness that caught the imagination; which regarded practical goodness as the highest manifestation of its ideal of wisdom; and which bound the common notions of duty into an apparently coherent system, by a formula that comprehended the whole of human life, and exhibited its relation to the ordered process of the universe.

When further he teaches that the attainment of happiness depends almost entirely upon insight and right calculation, fortune having very little to do with it; that the pleasures and pains of the mind are far more important than those of the body, owing to the accumulation of feeling caused by memory and anticipation; and that an indispensable condition of mental happiness lies in relieving the mind of all superstitions, which can be effected only by a thorough knowledge of the physical universe - he introduces an ample area for the exercise of the philosophic intellect.

Plotinus, however, urges that, as all thought involves difference or duality of some kind, it cannot be the primary fact in the universe, what we call God.

Not twenty years after Luther's defiance of the pope, the startling thesis " that all that Aristotle taught was false " was prosperously maintained by the youthful Ramus before the university of Paris; and almost contemporaneously the group of remarkable thinkers in Italy who heralded the dawn of modern physical science - Cardanus, Telesio, Patrizzi, Campanella, Bruno - began to propound their Aristotelian theories of the constitution of the physical universe.

Though duty, in his view, excludes regard for private happiness, the summum bonum is not duty alone, but happiness combined with moral worth; the demand for happiness as the reward of duty is so essentially reasonable that we must postulate a universal connexion between the two as the order of the universe; indeed, the practical necessity of this postulate is the only adequate rational ground that we have for believing in the existence of God.

A general idea of the relation of the solar system to the universe may be gained by reflecting that the average distance between any two neighbouring stars is several thousand times the extent of the solar system.

It is known that, while infinite diversity is found among the bodies of the universe, there are also common characteristics throughout its whole extent.

In a certain sense we may say that the universe now presents itself to the thinking astronomer, not as a heterogeneous collection of bodies, but as a unified whole.

In treating so comprehensive a subject we may naturally distinguish between what we know of the universe and the methods and processes by which that knowledge is acquired.

His general conception of the universe was comprehensive beyond that of any of his predecessors.

The choice made by Hipparchus of the geocentric theory of the universe decided the future of Greek astronomy.

I have one friend in the universe.

The more celebrated and central thesis of the book - this finite universe, the best of all such that are possible - also restates positions of Augustine and Aquinas.

Yahweh was not only the lord of the universe and possessed of sovereign power.

This group of ideas culminated in the Logos of Philo, expressing the world of divine ideas which God first of all creates and which becomes the mediating and formative power between the absolute and transcendent deity and passive formless matter, transmuted thereby into a rational, ordered universe.

Though perfectly free from any trace of envy or ill-will, he yet showed on fit occasion his contempt for that pseudo-science which seeks for the applause of the ignorant by professing to reduce the whole system of the universe to a fortuitous sequence of uncaused events.

The universe is merely blind Will, not thought; this Will is irrational, purposeless and therefore unhappy.

It would seem from this that the grouping of the divine powers recognized in the universe into a triad symbolizing the three divisions, heavens, earth and the watery deep, was a process of thought which had taken place before the third millennium.

God, the soul of the universe, must be conceived as having an existence analogous to men.

To us, indeed, his conception of the universe, like that of Philo, seems a strange medley, and one may be at a loss to conceive how he could bring together such heterogeneous elements; but there is no reason to doubt that the harmony of all the essential parts of his system was obvious enough to himself.

Even apart from the impossibility of conceiving a whole of relations which are relations and nothing else (this objection is perhaps largely verbal), no explanation is given of the fact (obvious in experience) that the spiritual entities of which the Universe is composed appear material.

As a natural result of this belief we find the view that the operations of nature are conducted by a multitude of more or less obedient subordinate deities; thus, in Portuguese West Africa the Kimbunda believe in Suku-Vakange, but hold that he has committed the government of the universe to innumerable kilulu good and bad; the latter kind are held to be far more numerous, but Suku-Vakange is said to keep them in order by occasionally smiting them with his thunderbolts; were it not for this, man's lot would be insupportable.

The conception of man, the microcosm, containing in himself all the parts of the universe or macrocosm, is also Babylonian, as again probably is the famous identification of the metals with the planets.

He was the author of over 70 papers on mechanics and physics published in the transactions of learned societies, notably Sub-Mechanics of the Universe, issued by the Royal Society, whose gold medal he won in 1888.

It is to be seen in many of the prominent ideas of the two writings, especially in the developed view of the central position of Christ in the whole universe; in the conception of the Church as Christ's body, of which He is the head; in the thought of the great Mystery, once secret, now revealed.

The motley body of Aryan folk-belief, when subjected to the unifying thought of a speculative brain, was transformed to a selfcontained theory of the universe and a logical dualistic principle.

According to this everything, even above being and thinking, is called En Soph (a7retpos); He is the space of the universe containing TO 7rav, but the universe is not his space.

The conjunction of the Sephiroth, or, according to the language of the Kabbalah, the union of the crowned King and Queen, produced the universe in their own image.

Hence nothing in the whole universe can be annihilated.

The universe consists of four different worlds, each of which forms a separate Sephiric system of a decade of emanations.

The whole universe, however, was incomplete, and did not receive its finishing stroke till man was formed, who is the acme of the creation and the microcosm.

Each member of his body corresponds to a part of the visible universe.

It is perfectly possible to imagine a universe in which any act of counting by a being in it annihilated some members of the class counted during the time and only during the time of its continuance.

Whatever be the historical worth of this story, it may safely be said that it cannot be disproved by deductive reasoning from the premisses of abstract logic. The most we can do is to assert that a universe in which such things are liable to happen on a large scale is unfitted for the practical application of the theory of cardinal numbers.

His weakness as a philosopher is his tendency to base the laws of the universe on the experience-born, thought-produced convictions of one man - himself.

He is the Reason that prevades the universe, that brings out all goodness, that guides all good men.

Yet he found time, amid these multifarious occupations, to elaborate an entirely new system of astronomy, by the adoption of which man's outlook on the universe was fundamentally changed.

His theory of the universe is that, from God there emanated Light which extends throughout space and is the explanation of all development.

The universe, renewed, was to enjoy eternal happiness.

Reason in its own strength and with its own instruments evolves a system of the universe which coincides, according to Erigena, with the teaching of Scripture.

Scotus extends the number of theological doctrines which are not, according to him, susceptible of philosophical proof, including in this class the creation of the world out of nothing, the immortality of the human soul, and even the existence of an almighty divine cause of the universe (though he admits the possibility of proving an ultimate cause superior to all else).

And the Buddhist adaptation of it, avoiding some of the difficulties common to it and to the allied European theories of fate and predestination, tries to explain the weight of the universe in its action on the individual, the heavy hand of the immeasurable past we cannot escape, the close connexion between all forms of life, and the mysteries of inherited character.

The mind coming through a thousand phases of mistake and disappointment to a sense and realization of its true position in the universe - such is the drama which is consciously Hegel's own history, but is represented objectively as the process of spiritual history which the philosopher reproduces in himself.

The universe, then, is a process or development, to the eye of philosophy.

And thus the material universe became the real starting-point.

The general terms of language simplify the universe by reducing its variety of individuals to a few forms, none of which exists simply and perfectly.

Although the national God was at once a transcendent ruler of the universe and also near at hand to man, the unconscious religious feeling found an outlet, not only in the splendid worship at Jerusalem, but in the more immediate intercessors, divine agencies, and the like; and when Judaism left its native soil the local supernatural beings revived - as characteristically as when the old placenames threw off their Greek dress - and they still survive, under a veneer of Mahommedanism, as the modern representatives of the Baals of the distant past.'

Every morning he worshipped the sun in public, as being the representative of the divine soul that animates the universe, while he was himself worshipped by the ignorant multitude.

We must, in short, resign ourselves to whatever fate and fortune bring to us, believing, as the first article of our creed, that there is a god, whose thought directs the universe, and that not merely in our acts, but even in our thoughts and plans, we cannot escape his eye.

As the first triad symbolized the three divisions of the universe - the heavens, earth and the watery element - so the second represented the three great forces of nature - the sun, the moon and the life-giving power.

With the development of observational astronomy the sidereal universe was arbitrarily divided into areas characterized by special assemblages of stars; these assemblages were named asterisms by Ptolemy, who termed the brightest stars "of the fi rst magnitude," and the progressively fainter Stars.

But even such an attempt to systematically plumb the universe can only make us acquainted with the merest inside shell.

We now arrive at the greatest of all the problems of sidereal astronomy, the structure and nature of the universe as a whole.

It can by no means be taken for granted that the universe has anything that may properly be called a structure.

There is here evidence that even among stars of the Durchmusterung (9.5 magnitude), a limit of the universe has been reached, at least in the direction normal to the plane of the Milky Way.

But it is necessary to make a careful distinction between the galactic plane and the Galaxy itself; the latter, though it is necessarily one of the most remarkable features of the universe, is not the only peculiarity associated with the galactic plane.

The following table shows the density with which stars brighter than the ninth magnitude are distributed in each of nine zones into which Seeliger divided the heavens and more generally recognized that the stars are not unrelated; they are parts of a greater system, and we have to deal with, not merely the history of a number of independent units, but with a far vaster conception, the evolution and development of an ordered universe.

Our first inquiry is whether the universe extends indefinitely in all directions, or whether there are limits beyond which the stars Limits of are not distributed.

We therefore conclude that beyond a certain distance there is a thinning out in the distribution of the stars; the stars visible in our telescopes form a universe having a more or less defined boundary; and, if there are other systems of stars unknown to us in the space beyond, they are, as it were, isolated from the universe in which we are.

Another line of reasoning indicates that the boundary of the universe is not immeasurably distant, and that the thinning out of the stars is quite perceptible with our telescopes.

And many scientific thinkers, while professing allegiance to a theory which insists upon the independence of each parallel series, in reality tacitly assume the superior importance if not the controlling force of the physical over the psychical terms. But a mere insistence upon the complete independence of the physical series coupled with the belief that its changes are wholly explicable as modes of motion, that the study of molecular physics is competent to explain all the phenomena of life and organic movements, is sufficient to eliminate the possibility of spontaneity and free origination from the universe.

The subject matter of astronomical science, considered in its widest range, comprehends all the matter of the universe which lies outside the limit of the earth's atmosphere.

In recent times it is among the more progressive of the sciences, because the new and improved methods of research now at command have found in its cultivation a field of practically unlimited extent, in which the lines of research may ultimately lead to a comprehension of the universe impossible of attainment before our time.

Considered as a part of the universe, our solar system is insignificant in extent, though, for obvious reasons, great in practical importance to us, and in the facility with which we may gain knowledge relating to it.

Referring to special articles, Solar System, Star, Sun, MooN, &c. for a description of the various parts of the universe, we confine ourselves, at present, to setting forth a few of the most general modern conceptions of the universe.

As to extent, it may be said, in a general way, that while no definite limits can be set to the possible extent of the universe, or the distance of its farthest bodies, it seems probable, for reasons which will be given under Star, that the system to which the stars that we see belong, is of finite extent.

As the incandescent bodies of the universe are visible by their own light, the problem of ascertaining their existence and position is mainly one of seeing, and our facilities for attacking it have constantly increased with the improvement of our optical appliances.

The most comprehensive problem before the investigator is that of the constitution of the universe.

It is no "fugitive and cloistered virtue" that Aurelius seeks to encourage; on the contrary, man must lead the "life of the social animal," must "live as on a mountain"; and "he is an abscess on the universe who withdraws and separates himself from the reason of our common nature through being displeased with the things which happen."

In 1861 appeared Ober die Aufgabe der Naturphilosophie and ihr Verhdltnis zur Naturwissenschaft, which was, he declared, directed against the purely mechanical conception of the universe, and affirmed the necessity of a creative Power.

Though put into the form of a commentary on the Pentateuch, it is really an exposition of the kabbalistic view of the universe, and incidentally shows considerable acquaintance with the natural science of the time.

In the fourth book Boetius raises the question, Why, if the governor of the universe is good, do evils exist, and why is virtue often punished and vice rewarded?

Buchner was much less concerned to establish a scientific metaphysic than to protest against the romantic idealism of his predecessors and the theological interpretations of the universe.

As results of Roberval's labours outside the department of pure mathematics may be noted a work on the system of the universe, in which he supports the Copernican system and attributes a mutual attraction to all particles of matter; and also the invention of a special kind of balance which goes by his name.

Amos exhibited Him to his countrymen as lord of the universe, who made the seven stars and Orion and turns the deep midnight darkness into morning.

The summingup of divine powers manifested in the universe in a threefold division represents an outcome of speculation in the schools attached to the temples of Babylonia, but the selection of Anu, Bel and Ea for the three representatives of the three spheres recognized, is due to the importance which, for one reason or the other, the centres in which Anu, Bel and Ea were worshipped had acquired in the popular mind.

Tait collaborated with Balfour Stewart in the Unseen Universe, which was followed by Paradoxical Philosophy.

His world-conception is highly animistic. He feels the thrill of life everywhere, in plants, earth, stars, the total universe.

In Islam fate is an absolute power, known as Kismet, or Nasib, which is conceived as inexorable and transcending all the physical laws of the universe.

It is to be noted that, whilst the zoological system took the form of a genealogical tree, with main stem and numerous diverging branches, the actual form of that tree, its limitation to a certain number of branches corresponding to a limited number of divergences in structure, came to be regarded as the necessary consequence of the operation of the physico-chemical laws of the universe, and it was recognized that the ultimate explanation of that limitation is to be found only in the constitution of matter itself.

The heaven and the earth together, therefore, to the ancient cosmographers, and still in poetical language, make up the universe.

Among the works which he translated into Syriac and of which his versions survive are treatises of Aristotle, Porphyry and Galen, 3 the Ars grammatica of Dionysius Thrax, the works of Dionysius the Areopagite, and possibly two or three treatises of Plutarch.4 His own original works are less important, but include a " treatise on logic, addressed to Theodore (of Merv), which is unfortunately imperfect, a tract on negation and affirmation; a treatise, likewise addressed to Theodore, On the Causes of the Universe, according to the Views of Aristotle, showing how it is a Circle; a tract On Genus, Species and Individuality; and a third tract addressed to Theodore, On the Action and Influence of the Moon, explanatory and illustrative of Galen's IIEpi rcptaiµwv r t µepwv, bk.

The word "god," on the conversion of the Teutonic races to Christianity, was adopted as the name of the one Supreme Being, the Creator of the universe, and of the Persons of the Trinity.

Afterwards he modified his hypothesis, and referred the disturbances produced to the "nervous liquor," which he supposed to be a quantity of the "universal elastic matter" diffused through the universe, by which Newton explained the phenomena of light - i.e.

His medical theories rest upon a complete theory of the universe.

He taught that there was one God; but that God was neither Allah nor Ram, but simply God; neither the special god of the Mahommedan, nor of the Hindu, but the God of the universe, of all mankind and of all religions.

After narrating the pardon obtained by Adam, it is said that the Son ascending from Olivet prays the Father on behalf of His apostles; who consequently receive consecration from the Father, together with the Son and Holy Spirit - Peter being made archbishop of the universe.

Even Ptolemy had a vague conception of a force tending toward the centre of the earth which not only kept bodies upon its surface, but in some way upheld the order of the universe.

The law of gravitation is unique among the laws of nature, not only in its wide generality, taking the whole universe in its scope, but in the fact that, so far as yet known, it is absolutely unmodified by any condition or cause whatever.

The subordination never was, and never will be, effected except by means of a religion, and a religion, to be final, must include a harmonious synthesis of all our conceptions of the external order of the universe.

This theory has been propounded in many forms, but the central idea is that the universe of individuals consists of the involuntary "outpourings" of the ultimate divine essence.

The existence of evil in opposition to the perfect goodness of God, as thus explained, need not be attributed to God's agency, inasmuch as the whole emanation-process is governed by necessary - as it were mechanical - laws, which may be compared to those of the physical universe.

In the second of the above books his idea of religion is somewhat of an anachronism; as he himself confessed, he " used the word in the sense which it invariably bore half a century ago," as denoting " belief in an ever-living God, a divine mind and will ruling the universe and holding moral relations with mankind."

The interpretation of man was therefore the interpretation of his universe.

Spencer tries to express in a sweeping general formula the belief in progress which pervaded his age, and to erect it into the supreme law of the universe as a whole.

Hence both science and religion must come to recognize as the" most certain of all facts that the Power which the Universe manifests to us is utterly inscrutable."Thus to be buried side by side in the Unknowable constitutes their final reconciliation, as it is the refutation of irreligion which consists of" a lurking doubt whether the Incomprehensible is really incomprehensible."Such are the foundations of Spencer's metaphysic of the Unknowable, to which he resorts in all the fundamental difficulties which he subsequently encounters.

Spencer appeals alternately to the" instability of the homogeneous "and the impossibility of complete equilibration to keep up the cosmic see-saw, but he can do so only by confining himself to a part of the universe.

Again, an infinite world cannot be wholly engaged either in evolution or in dissolution, so that it is really unmeaning to discuss the universality of the cosmic process until it is settled that we have a universe at all, capable of being considered as a whole.

Divine love is the self-subsisting life of the universe.

And the attention of modern psychologists is now being drawn to his doctrine of the relation of the elements of the universe to the membranes of the body.

An important element in this culture would be mythic representations of the origin of things, such as the Babylonian Creation and Deluge-stories in various forms. Indeed, not only Canaan but all the neighbouring regions must have been pervaded by Babylonian views of the universe and its origin.

This poem was to treat of man's position in the Universe, first in an isolated state, and then in society.

By the method of empirical psychology, he examined man first as a unit in himself and secondly in his wider relations to the larger units of society and the universe of mankind.

These two alone move men to aim at perfect harmony for its own sake in the man and in the universe.

A remarkable feature of the solar system, which distinguishes it from all other known systems in the universe, is the symmetry of arrangement and motion of its greater bodies.

The religious views of Servetus, marked by strong individuality, are not easily described in terms of current systems. His denial of the tripersonality of the Godhead and the eternity of the Son, along with his anabaptism, made his system abhorrent to Catholics and Protestants alike, in spite of his intense Biblicism, his passionate devotion to the person of Christ, and his Christocentric scheme of the universe.

He had drunk deeply of the spirit of the Renaissance, the determination to see for himself the noble universe, unclouded by the mists of authoritative philosophy and church tradition.

In Oxford he was allowed to hold a disputation with some learned doctors on the rival merits of the Copernican and so-called Aristotelian systems of the universe, and, according to his own report, had an easy victory.

Amid all the varying and contradictory phenomena of the universe there is something which gives coherence and intelligibility to them.

Nor can this unity be something apart from the things; it must contain in itself the universe, which develops from it; it must be at once all and one.

The universe, then, is a living cosmos, an infinitely animated system, whose end is the perfect realization of the variously graduated forms. The unity which sunders itself into the multiplicity of things may be called the monas monadum, each thing being a monas or self-existent, living being, a universe in itself.

The unity expounded at first is simply an anima mundi, a living universe, but not intelligent.

There is a distinct development traceable towards the later and final form of his doctrine, in which the universe appears as the realization of the divine mind.

In 1804 were also delivered the noble lectures entitled Grundziige des gegenwdrtigen Zeitalters (Characteristics of the Present Age, 1804), containing a most admirable analysis of the Aufkltirung, tracing the position of such a movement of thought in the natural evolution of the general human consciousness, pointing out its inherent defects, and indicating as the ultimate goal of progress the life of reason in its highest aspect as a belief in the divine order of the universe.

As early as 1797 Fichte had begun to see that the ultimate basis of his system was the absolute ego, in which is no difference of subject and object; in 1800 the Bestimmung des Menschen defined this absolute ego as the infinite moral will of the universe, God, in whom are all the individual egos, from whom they have sprung.

The atoms, they said, do not fill up the universe; there are void spaces between them.

He dealt with (a) human life as explained by the relative nature of Man and God, (b) the Divine nature and the existence of God, and, (c) the great Logos doctrine as the explanation of the relation between God and the material universe.

At the same time that the Neo-Platonists, like Ficino and Pico de la Mirandola, and the pantheists, whose God was little more than a reverential conception of the universe at large, and the purely worldly humanists, like Celtes and Bebel, were widely diverging each by his own particular path from the ecclesiastical Weltanschauung of the middle ages, Ulrich von Hutten was busy attacking the Curia in his witty Dialogues, in the name of German patriotism.

Deliverance from the pantheistic conception of the universe comes through the recognition of the central place occupied by thought and purpose in the actual world, and, as a consequence of this, of the illegitimacy of the abstraction whereby material energy is taken for the ultimate reality.

Suffice it to say that in spite of its spiritualistic starting-point its general result was to give a stimulus to the prevailing scientific tendency as represented by Galileo, Kepler and Harvey to the principle of mechanical explanations of the phenomena of the universe.

In continental philosophy the reaction against mechanical and pantheistic explanations of the universe found even more definite utterance than in English psychological.

It is this failure that has led to the present revolt against a " block universe."

He is almost Lucretian in his anger against religion which would withdraw the secret of the universe from our direct gaze.

This adequacy of thought to things is due to the fact that the universe contains but one reality, i.e.

Even if there were orderly connexion of parts in the universe, this may have resulted quite naturally.

These antinomies are four - two mathematical, two dynamical - connected with (I) the limitation of the universe in respect of space and time, (2) the theory that the whole consists of indivisible atoms (whereas, in fact, none such exist), (3) the problem of freedom in relation to universal causality, (4) the existence of a universal being - about each of which pure reason contradicts the empirical, as thesis and antithesis.

That it could seem at once a simple way of living for the common man and a profound philosophy of the universe for the speculative thinker meant much for its success.'

But they are no longer used as indirect proofs of a universe of pure and unitary Being.

For, indeed, scepticism with regard to the senses is considered in the Inquiry .to be sufficiently justified by the fact that they lead us to suppose " an external universe which depends not on our perception," whereas " this universal and primary opinion of all men is soon destroyed by the slightest philosophy."

This was followed by a long series of popular treatises in rapid succession, amongst the more important of which are Light Science for Leisure Hours and The Sun (1871); The Orbs around Us and Essays on Astronomy (1872); The Expanse of Heaven, The Moon and The Borderland of Science (1873); The Universe and the Coming Transits and Transits of Venus (1874);(1874); Our Place among Infinities (1875); Myths and Marvels of Astronomy (1877); The Universe of Stars (1878); Flowers of the Sky (1879); The Peotry of Astronomy (1880); Easy Star Lessons and Familiar Science Studies (1882); Mysteries of Time and Space and The Great Pyramid (1883); The Universe of Suns (1884); The Seasons (1885); Other Suns than Ours and Half-Hours with the Stars (1887).

Denying the existence of a deity, and refusing to admit as evidence all a priori arguments, Holbach saw in the universe nothing save matter in spontaneous movement.

Zion at least, the sacred hearth of Yahweh, the visiblecentre of His kingdom, 1 It must not be supposed that this conception necessarily came into force as soon as it was recognized that Yahweh was the creator of the universe.

The claim of positive religion to be something more than the intellectual apprehension of the reason in the universe is thus acknowledged.

But the method observed by these Gnostics in thinking out the plan and the history of the universe is by no means thoroughgoing.

Philosophically considered, therefore, the Gnostic systems are very unlike the rigorous self-consistency of Neoplatonism; although they certainly contain almost all the elements which enter into the Neoplatonic theory of the universe.

Every part of the material universe - man, woman, insect, tree, stone, or whatever it be - is the dwelling of an eternal spirit that is working out its destiny, and while receiving reward and punishment for the past is laying up reward and punishment for the future.

We have shown that the direct observation of the origin of new characters in palaeontology brings them within that domain of natural law and order to which the evolution of the physical universe conforms. The nature of this law, which, upon the whole, appears to be purposive or teleological in its operations, is altogether a mystery which may or may not be illumined by future research.

Another characteristic feature of the Gnostic conception of the universe is the role played in almost all Gnostic systems by the seven world-creating powers.

Clearly then the question which the myth of the Primal Man is intended to answer in relation to the whole universe is answered in relation to the nature of man by this account of the coming into being of the first man, which may, moreover, have been influenced by the account in the Old Testament.

But the Fichtean teaching appeared on the one hand to identify too closely the ultimate ground of the universe of rational conception with the finite, individual spirit, and on the other hand to endanger the reality of the world of nature by regarding it too much after the fashion of subjective idealism, as mere moment, though necessitated, in the existence of the finite thinking mind.

Indeed, the doctrine of "aspects" and "influences" fitted excellently with his mystical conception of the universe, and enabled him to discharge with a semblance of sincerity the most lucrative part of his professional duties.

His idea of the universe was essentially Pythagorean and Platonic. He started with the conviction that the arrangement of its parts must correspond with certain abstract conceptions of the beautiful and harmonious.

Like Plato, he believed in real Universals, real essences, real causes; he believed in the unity of the universal, and in the immateriality of essences; he believed in the good, and that there is a good of the universe; he believed that God is a living being, eternal and best, who is a supernatural cause of the motions and changes of the natural world, and that essences and matter are also necessary causes; he believed in the divine intelligence and in the immortality of our intelligent souls; he believed in knowledge going from sense to reason, that science requires ascent to principles and is descent from principles, and that dialectic is useful to science; he believed in happiness involving virtue, and in moral virtue being a control of passions by reason, while the highest happiness is speculative wisdom.

It is an exhortation, whose point is that the chief good is philosophy, the contemplation of the universe by divine and immortal intellect.

As the Platonic philosophy was primarily moral, and its metaphysics a theory of the moral order of the universe, Aristotle from the first must have mastered the Platonic ethics.

Thus even God is a substance, a separate individual, whose differentiating essence is to be a living being, eternal and very good; He is however the only substance whose essence is entirely without matter and unconjoined with matter; and therefore He is a substance, not because He has or is a substratum beneath attributes, but wholly because He is a separate individual, different both from nature and men, yet the final good of the whole universe.

The essence of the answer is that the universe is inconceivable apart from mind - that existence, as such, denotes conscious spirits and the objects of consciousness.

Our belief in the permanence of something which corresponds to the association in our minds of actual and possible sensations means belief in the orderliness of nature; and that is merely assurance that the universe is pervaded and regulated by mind.

Instead, therefore, of fate or necessity, or matter, or the unknown, a living, active mind is looked upon as the centre and spring of the universe, and this is the essence of the Berkeleian metaphysics.

At nine he began "Eudosia, a poem of the Universe."

God, intuitively known by Conscience, is not a personality (which implies limitations), but an all-inclusive essence (Wesen), which contains the Universe within itself.

His theory of the world and of humanity is universal and idealistic. The world itself and mankind, its highest component, constitute an organism (Gliedbau), and the universe is therefore a divine organism (Wesengliedbau).

Metaphysical realism is the intermediate view that everything known is either body or soul, neither of which alone exhausts the universe of being.

So far true metaphysics is a monism of substance, in the sense that all things are substances and that all substances, however different, are members of one substance, the whole universe of body and spirit.

At the same time he admits, firstly, that to mark the barrier between unconscious and conscious is difficult; secondly, that it is impossible to trace the first beginning of consciousness in the lower animals; and, thirdly, that " however certain we are of the fact of this natural evolution of consciousness, we are, unfortunately, not yet in a position to enter more deeply into the question " (Riddle of the Universe, 191).

He finds that throughout the universe there is an unceasing redistribution of matter and motion, and that this redistribution constitutes evolution when there is a predominant integration of matter and dissipation of motion, and constitutes dissolution where there is a predominant absorption of motion and disintegration of matter.

However, with all the author's disclaimers, the general effect left on the reader's mind is that throughout the universe there is an unceasing change of matter and motion, that evolution is always such a change, that it begins with phenomena in the sense of physical facts, gradually issues in life and consciousness, and ends with phenomena in the sense of subjective affections of consciousness.

By the rough magic of this modern Prospero the universe of being is not, and yet is, thought, idea, spirit, reason, God.

Schelling's adherent Oken by his Lehrbuch der Naturphilosophie conveyed to his mind the life-long impression that God is the universe and Nature God's appearance.

Fechner's second point was that, throughout the animated universe, physical processes accompany psychical processes without interaction.

He considered that the whole hypothesis that an outer physical thing causes a change in one's central nervous system, which again causes another change in one's inner psychical system or soul, is a departure from the natural view of the universe, and is due to what he called " introjection," or the hypothesis which encloses soul and its faculties in the body, and then, having created a false antithesis between outer and inner, gets into the difficulty of explaining how an outer physical stimulus can impart something into an inner psychical soul.

It is not necessary for him to follow Schopenhauer, Hartmann and Fechner in endowing the material universe with will or any other mental operation, because his phenomenalism already reduces inorganic nature to mere objects of experiencing subjects.

He admitted, however, that Kant also asserted, beyond this single universe of a single principle, a world of unknowable things in themselves, which is a Kantian not a Hegelian world.

He agrees with du Bois-Reymond in refusing to regard the universe as a vast brain animated by conscious mind.

He concludes that the integrating principle of the whole - the Spirit, as it were, of the Universe - must be something akin to, but immeasurably superior to, the " psychism " of man.

The Spirit of the Universe contemplated by Romanes is identical with the World-soul contemplated by Fechner.

What makes his vindication of conscious personality all the more interesting is that he has so much in common with the Hegelians; agreeing as he does with Hegel that self-consciousness is the highest fact, the ultimate category of thought through which alone the universe is intelligible, and an adequate account of the great fact of existence.

But assuredly they do not include a tenable theory of the universe."

In this work the laws or uniformities of the physical universe are dealt with in the articles on the various sciences.

The plant's true home is heaven, and soma is drunk by gods as well as men, and it is under its influence that Indra is related to have created the universe and fixed the earth and sky in their place.

At the same time pantheism almost necessarily presupposes a more concrete and less sophisticated conception of God and the universe.

Thus Xenophanes for the first time postulates a supreme God whose 2 Strictly, pantheism is to identify the universe with God, while the term "pancosmism" (rap, Kovµos, the universe) has frequently been used for the identification of God with the universe.

A similar metaphysic from a different starting-point is found in Heraclitus, who postulates behind the perpetually changing universe of phenomena a One which remains.

The Stoics, with the supreme object of giving to human life a definite unity and purpose, made the individual a part of the universe and sought to obliterate all differences.

To him God is the immanent principle of the universe - "Deus sive Natura."

To explain the universe Spinoza proceeds to argue that God, though undetermined ab extra, is capable of infinite self-determination.

No doubt the Phoenicians had their legends and myths to account for the origin of man and the universe; to some extent these would Myth R e!,, o logy have resembled the ideas embodied in the book of and Genesis.

He supposed the sun to be a disk of glass which reflects the light of the universe.

The conscious experience of the individual is the result of interaction between the individual mind and the universe of things.

This is the universe of the imagination, nor have we any idea but what is there produced."

The fourth part is virtually a consideration of the ultimate significance of this conscious experience, of the place it is supposed to occupy in the universe of existence, in other words, of the relations between the conscious experience of an individual mind as disclosed to observation and the supposed realities of self and external things.

He bases it on the general relationship which man bears to nature as a whole; he cannot divorce the life of man from that of the universe; he cannot think of disease otherwise than as a phase of life.

His eagerness to understand the relationship of man to the universe led him to the Kabbala, where these mysteries seemed to be explained, and from these unsubstantial materials he constructed, so far as it can be understood, his visionary philosophy.

More commonly the term is applied to the doctrine that the universe as a whole has been planned on a definite design, or at least that it tends towards some end.

Such a view is essential to any theistic view of the universe which postulates God as the Creator, omniscient and all-good.

This universe of ours is only one section out of the innumerable worlds in infinite space; other worlds may present systems very different from that of our own.

All these logical and philosophic developments were popularly expounded by James in his Pragmatism (1907), followed by A Pluralistic Universe (1908) and The Meaning of Truth (1909).

Goethe, by singularly different methods, had emerged from a merely negative position into a lofty and coherent conception of the universe.

While Anu, with whom there was associated as a pale reflection a consort Antum, assigned to him under the influence of the widely prevalent view among the early Semites which conceived of gods always in pairs, remained more or less of an abstraction during the various periods of the Babylonian-Assyrian religion and taking little part in the active cult of the temples, his unique position as the chief god of the highest heavens was always recognized in the theological system developed by the priests, which found an expression in making him the first figure of a triad, consisting of Anu, Bel and Ea, among whom the priests divided the three divisions of the universe, the heavens, the earth with the atmosphere above it, and the watery expanse respectively.

The shape of the universe may thus be compared to that of a grindA stone or lens, the sun being situated about midway between the two surfaces.

Imagine this stratum to be uniformly filled with stars (of course in the actual universe instead of sharply defined boundaries AB and CD, we shall have a gradual thinning out of the stars) it follows that in the two directions SP and SP' the fewest stars will be seen; these then are the directions of the galactic poles.

As we consider a direction such as SQ farther and farther from the pole the boundary of the universe in that direction becomes more and more remote so that more stars are seen, and finally in the directions SR and SR' in the galactic plane, the boundary is perhaps beyond the limits of our telescopes.

That the universe must have a boundary in the directions SR and SR', we can hardly doubt, but nothing is known of its shape or distance except that in all directions it must be far greater than SP or SP'; in particular it is not known whether the sun is near the centre or otherwise.

The result is precisely what should be expected from the theory of the shape of the universe which has been set forth.

Spiral nebulae have the remarkable characteristic of avoiding the galactic plane, and it has been suggested that the space outside the limits of the stellar universe is filled with them.

A glance at the Milky Way, with its sharply defined irregular boundaries, its clefts and diverging spur, is almost sufficient to assure us that it is a real cluster of stars, and does not merely indicate the directions in which the universe extends farthest.

To complete our N, representation of the universe, it is therefore necessary ay.

He held that in relation to the will things possess an objective fitness similar to the mutual consistency of things in the physical universe.

A witty man, being asked his opinion about Abu Ja`far (Mansur) and Abu Moslim, said, alluding to the Koran 21, verse 22, "if there were two Gods, the universe would be ruined."

The freedom of his speculation, and the boldness with which he works out his logical or dialectical system of the universe, altogether prevent us from classing him along with the scholastics properly so called.

He does not start with the datum of theology as the completed body of truth, requiring only elucidation and interpretation; his fundamental thought is that of the universe, nature, TO 7rav, or God, as the ultimate unity which works itself out into the rational system of the world.

The second and third together compose the created universe, which is the manifestation of God, God in processu, Theophania.

These three are realized in the universe - the Father as the system of things, the Son as the word, i.e.

In the universe of things, as a universe, there can be no sin; there must be perfect harmony.

Finally, inference is an extension, not of ideas, but of beliefs, at first about existing things, afterwards about ideas, and even about words; about anything in short about which we think, in what is too fancifully called " the universe of discourse."

The ideal is progressively to determine a universe of discourse till true infimae species are reached, when no further distinction in the determinate many is possible, though there is still the numerical difference of the indefinite plurality of particulars.

But in any case it is characteristic of theosophy that it starts with an explication of the Divine essence, and endeavours to deduce the phenomenal universe from the play of forces within the Divine nature itself.

Both thinkers claim to exhibit the universe as the evolution of the Divine nature.

But it is' to be noted that, though there is much talk of God in such systems, the known universe - the world that now is - is nowhere transcended; God is really no more than the principle of unity immanent in the whole.

He sought to make anger predominate over love; and he had his will, becoming prince of hell, the kingdom of God's anger, which still remains, however, an integral part of the Divine universe.

He also discussed many other problems, such as stellar distribution, the extent of the universe, &c., whilst at Brera.

In later philosophy Hestia became the hearth of the universe - the personification of the earth as the centre of the universe, identified with Cybele and Demeter.

It is not God as abstract, infinite and eternal, as the far-away creator of the universe, or even as the ruler of the world, which Paul worships, but it is God revealed in Jesus Christ, the Father of Jesus Christ, the grace and mercy in Jesus Christ which deliver from evil.

Because the Old Testament contained references to the origin and the objects of the universe, a certain amount of natural science was necessary, but it was only in this connexion that it had any value.

The universe falls into these orders, the second for the sake of the first, as The completed nature is of and for God.

Men must rationalize the universe.

Christianity is dependent upon the understanding of the universe; hence it is the duty of believers to put it into the new setting, so that it adopts and adapts astronomy, geology, biology and psychology.

They all sought to explain the material universe as given in sensible perception; their explanation was in terms of matter, movement, force.

Perceiving that air is necessary to life, that the universe is surrounded by air, he was con v inced that out of air all things have resulted.

This elemental fire is in itself a divine rational process, the harmony of which constitutes the law of the universe.

In fact, Brahma, having performed his legitimate part in the mundane evolution by his original creation of the universe, has retired into the background, being, as it were, looked upon as functus officio, like a venerable figure of a former generation, whence in epic poetry he is commonly styled pitamaha, " the grandsire."

One of them, Kubera, the god of wealth, is a new figure; whilst another, Varuna, the most spiritual and ethical of Vedic deities - the king of the gods and the universe; the nightly, star-spangled firmament - has become the Indian Neptune, the god of waters.

The connubial relations of the deities may thus be considered" to typify the mystical union of the two eternal principles, spirit and matter, for the production and reproduction of the universe."But whilst this privilege of divine worship was claimed for the consorts of all the gods, it is principally to Siva's consort, in one or other of her numerous forms, that adoration on an extensive scale came to be offered by a special sect of votaries, the Saktas.

Though himself, like most Brahmans, apparently by predilection a follower of Siva, his aim was the revival of the doctrine of the Brahma as the one self-existent Being and the sole cause of the universe; coupled with the recognition of the practical worship of the orthodox pantheon, especially the gods of the Trimurti, as manifestations of the supreme deity.

The Saktas, as we have seen, are worshippers of the sakti, or the female principle as a primary factor in the creation and reproduction of the universe.

Thus from spontaneous aggregations of casual aggregates, which suited each other as if this had been intended, did the organic universe originally spring.

It is the business of a philosopher, while he lays bare the fundamental difference of elements, to display the identity that subsists between what seem unconnected parts of the universe.

Man and the actual universe kept on reasserting their rights and claims, announcing their goodliness and delightfulness, in one way or another; but they were always being thrust back again into Cimmerian regions of abstractions, fictions, visions, spectral hopes and fears, in the midst of which the intellect somnambulistically moved upon an unknown way.

The earliest European thinkers (see Ionian School Of Philosophy) endeavoured to reduce all the facts of the universe to a single material origin, such as Fire, Water, Air.

In Plato for the first time we find a truly dualistic conception of the universe.

Spinoza realized the flaw in the division and preferred to postulate behind mind and matter a single substance (unica substantia) while Leibnitz explained the universe as a harmony of spiritual or semispiritual principles.

Peirce for the theories which make chance an objective factor in the process of the Universe.

These three together make up the intellectual (as opposed to the physical) system of the universe; and they are opposed respectively by three false principles, atheism, religious fatalism which refers all moral distinctions to the will of God, and thirdly the fatalism of the ancient Stoics, who recognized God and yet identified Him with nature.

Not so, but by following the new aim we shall also arrive at a true knowledge of the universe in which we are, for without knowledge there is no power; truth and utility are in ultimate aspect the same; " works themselves are of greater value as pledges of truth than as contributing to the comforts of life."

The first were the speculative or logical philosophers, who construe the universe ex analogia hominis, and not ex analogia mundi, who fashion nature according to preconceived ideas, and who employ in their investigations syllogism and abstract reasoning.

Manifold errors also result from the weakness of the senses, which affords scope for mere conjecture; from the influence exercised over the understanding by the will and passions; from the restless desire of the mind to penetrate to the ultimate principles of things; and from the belief that " man is the measure of the universe," whereas, in truth, the world is received by us in a distorted and erroneous manner.

Yet there is no opposition between the physical and final causes; in ultimate resort the mind is compelled to think the universe as the work of reason, to refer facts to God and Providence.

His general conception of the universe may therefore be called mechanical or statical; the cause of each phenomenon is supposed to be actually contained in the phenomenon itself, and by a sufficiently accurate process could be sifted out and brought to light.

But even supposing that this method were accurate and completely unfolded, it is evident that it could only be made applicable and produce fruit when the phenomena of the universe have been very completely tabulated and arranged.

Again, the savage universe is no preserve of man, but is an open field wherein human and non-human activities of all sorts compete on more or less equal terms, yet so that a certain measure of predominance may be secured by a judicious combination of forces.

The Earth-Mother and Sky-Father are to be found again and again in religions, at various stages of development, as co-ordinating conceptions which comprehend the universe.'

Just as the emperor is kami, and provincial officers of rank, so also mountains, rivers, the sea, thunder, winds, and even animals like the tiger, wolf or fox, are all kami.7 The spirits of the dead also become kami, of varying character and position; some reside in the temples built in their honour; some hover near their tombs; but they are constantly active, mingling in the vast multitude of agencies which makes every event in the universe, in the language of Motowori (1730-1801), the act of the Kami.

Sometimes the number three is reached by the distribution of the universe into sky, earth and underworld, and the gods of death claim their place as the rulers of the world to come.

Tait he wrote The Unseen Universe, at first published anonymously, which was intended to combat the common notion of the incompatibility of science and religion.

But, besides removing the psychological slag which clung to Kant's ideas from their matrix and presenting reason as the active principle in the formation of a universe, his successors carried out with far more detail, and far more enthusiasm and historical scope, his principle that in reason lay the a priori or the anticipation of the world, moral and physical.

He knows that both animals and men have come into existence within assignable limits of time, and that there was an anterior age when no eye or ear gathered the life of the universe into perceptions.

God is thus the immanent cause of the universe; but of creation or will there can be no question in Spinoza's system.

Man's conduct in life, not his theory of the universe, was what interested him.

To him the universe is no realization of intelligence, which is to be deciphered by human thought; it is a constitution or system, made up of individual facts, through which we thread our way slowly and inductively.

It has been said that it is no flaw in Butler's argument that he has left atheism as a possible mode of viewing the universe, because his work was not directed against the atheists.

Reading the Ephesian doctrine with the eyes of a Cynic, and the Cynic ethics in the light of Heracliteanism, he came to formulate his distinctive theory of the universe far in advance of either.

In taking this immense stride and identifying the Cynic " reason," which is a law for man, with the " reason " which is the law of the universe, Zeno has been compared with Plato, who similarly extended the Socratic " general notion " from the region of morals - of justice, temperance, virtue - to embrace all objects of all thought, the verity of all things that are.

Of the three divisions logic is the least important; ethics is the outcome of the whole, and historically the all-important vital element; but the foundations of the whole system are best discerned in the science of nature, which deals pre-eminently with the macrocosm and the microcosm, the universe and man, including natural theology and an anthropology or psychology, the latter forming the direct introduction to ethics.

This is the totality of all existence; out of it the whole visible universe proceeds, hereafter to be again resolved into it.

The cycle of its transformations and successive condensations constitutes the life of the universe, the mode of existence proper to finite and particular being.

From the elements the one substance is transformed into the multitude of individual things in the orderly universe, which again is itself a living thing or being, and the Pneuma pervading it, and conditioning life and growth everywhere, is its soul.

From the astronomers the Stoics borrowed their picture of the universe - a plenum in the form of a series of layers or concentric rings, first the elements, then the planetary and stellar spheres, massed round the earth as centre - a picture which dominated the imagination of men from the days of Eudoxus down to those of Dante or even Copernicus.

Finally, the same cause, a relaxation of tension, accounts for sleep, decay and death of man and for the dissolution of the world; after death the disembodied soul can only maintain its separate existence, even for a limited time, by mounting to that region of the universe which is akin to its nature.

It was a moot point whether all souls so survive, as Cleanthes thought, or the souls of the wise and good alone, which was the opinion of Chrysippus; in any case, sooner or later individual souls are merged in the soul of the universe, from which they proceeded.

There is nothing more in the order of the universe than extended mobile bodies and forces in tension in these bodies.