Christianity and Greek Philosophy: or, the relation between spontaneous and reflective thought in Greece and the positive teaching of Christ and His ApostlesCocker, B. F. (Benjamin Franklin)
Religion
Christianity and Greek Philosophy: or, the relation between spontaneous and reflective thought in Greece and the positive teaching of Christ and His Apostles
Cocker, B. F. (Benjamin Franklin)
Christianity; Church history -- Primitive and early church, ca. 30-600; Philosophy, Ancient
they address themselves at once to the intelligence of man, and they
place him in immediate relation to and in deepest sympathy with the
Intelligence which gave them birth. He that formed the eye of man to
see, and the heart of man to admire beauty, shall He not delight in it?
He that gave the hand of man its cunning to create beauty, shall He not
himself work for it? And if man can and does combine both "ornament" and
"use" in one and the same implement or machine, why should not the
Creator of the world do the same? "When the savage carves the handle of
his war-club, the immediate purpose of his carving is to give his own
hand a firmer hold. But any shapeless scratches would be enough for
this. When he carves it in an elaborate pattern, he does so for the love
of ornament, and to satisfy the sense of beauty." And so "the harmonies,
on which all beauty depends, are so connected in nature that _use_ and
_ornament_ may often both arise out of the same conditions."[269]
[Footnote 269: Duke of Argyll, "Reign of Law," p. 203.]
The "true naturalist," therefore, recognizes two great principles
pervading the universe--_a principle of order_--a unity of plan, and _a
principle of special adaptation_, by which each object, though
constructed upon a general plan, is at the same time accommodated to the
place it has to occupy and the purpose it has to serve. In other words,
there is _homology of structure_ and _analogy of function_, conformity
to _archetypal forms_ and _Teleology of organs_, in wonderful
combination. Now, in the Materialistic school, it has been the prevalent
practice to set up the unity of plan in animal structures, in opposition
to the principle of Final Causes: Morphology has been opposed to
Teleology. But in nature there is no such opposition; on the contrary,
there is a beautiful co-ordination. The same bones, in different
animals, are made subservient to the widest possible diversity of
functions. The same limbs are converted into fins, paddles, wings, legs,
and arms. "No comparative anatomist has the slightest hesitation in
admitting that the pectoral fin of a fish, the wing of a bird, the
paddle of the dolphin, the fore-leg of a deer, the wing of a bat, and
the arm of a man, are the same organs, notwithstanding that their forms
are so varied, and the uses to which they are applied so unlike each
other."[270] All these are homologous in structure--they are formed
after an ideal archetype or model, but that model or type is variously
modified to adapt the animal to the sphere of life in which it is
destined to move, and the organ itself to the functions it has to
perform, whether swimming, flying, walking, or burrowing, or that varied
manipulation of which the human hand is capable. These varied
modifications of the vertebrated type, for special purposes, are
unmistakable examples of final causation. Whilst the silent members, the
rudimental limbs instanced by Oken, Martins, and others--as fulfilling
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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