The Philosophy of Natural Theology: An Essay in confutation of the scepticism of the present dayJackson, William
Religion
The Philosophy of Natural Theology: An Essay in confutation of the scepticism of the present day
Jackson, William
Natural theology; Religion -- Philosophy; Religion and science
[ah] "Thousands of years it may be before Homer and the Veda ... Dyaus
did not mean the blue sky, nor was it simply the sky personified; it
was meant for something else.... We shall have to learn the same lesson
again and again in the Science of Religion, viz. that the place whereon
we stand is holy ground. Thousands of years have passed since the Aryan
nations separated to travel to the North and the South, the West and
the East: they have each formed their languages, they have each founded
empires and philosophies, they have each built temples and razed them
to the ground; they have all grown older, and it may be wiser and
better; but when they search for a name for what is most exalted and
yet most dear to every one of us, when they wish to express both awe
and love, the infinite and the finite, they can but do what their old
fathers did when gazing up to the eternal sky, and feeling the presence
of a Being as far as far and as near as near can be: they can but
combine the self-same words, and utter once more the primeval Aryan
prayer, Heaven-Father, in that form which will endure for ever, 'Our
Father which art in Heaven.'"--Max Müller, _Lectures on the Science of
Religion_, pp. 171-2, 3.
[167] Compare the Indian phrase "the magical illusions of reality, the
so-called Mâyâ of creation." Max Müller's _Sanskrit Literature_, p. 19.
Also Ritter's _Gesch. der Philosophie_, I. 101 seq., and the account in
both of the philosophy of Quietism. The attractive side of it is given
by Max Müller, pp. 18, 19, and 29. The National results are elegantly
painted, pp. 30, 31. He concludes: "It might therefore be justly said
that India has no place in the political history of the world.... India
has moved in such a small and degraded circle of political existence
that it remained almost invisible to the eyes of other nations."
Few feelings are more deeply rooted, as in our individual, so in our
collective human nature, than this same conclusion. Quietism culminates
when Action appears useless because of a conceived Necessity or
Unreality of Nature:--"Life is but a Dream--Let all sit still and fold
their hands to slumber."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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