Academics From Scotland

"[M]odern politics cannot be a matter of genuine moral consensus. And it is not. Modem politics is civil war carried on by other means. ...The truth on this matter was set out by Adam Ferguson: 'We are not to expect that the laws of any country are to be framed as so many lessons of morality . ...Laws, whether civil or political, are expedients of policy to adjust the pretensions of parties. and to secure the peace of society. The expedient is accommodated to special circumstances ...' (Principles of Moral and Political Science ii. 144). The nature of any society therefore is not to be deciphered from its laws alone, but from those understood as an index of its conflicts. What our laws show is the extent and degree to which conflict has to be suppressed."

"I have confronted theoretical positions whose protagonists claim that what I take to be historically produced characteristics of what is specifically modern are in fact the timelessly necessary characteristics of all and any moral judgment, of all and any selfhood."

"Raymond Aron ascribes to Weber the view that ‘each man’s conscience is irrefutable.’ … while [Weber] holds that an agent may be more or less rational in acting consistently with his values, the choice of any one particular evaluative stance or commitment can be no more rational than any other. All faiths and all evaluations are equally non-rational..."

"Consider what kind of authority [can be ascribed to] any principle which it open to us to choose to regard as authoritative or not. I may choose for example to observe a regimen of asceticism and fasting … for reasons of health … What authority such principles possess derives from the reasons for my choice. Insofar as they are good reasons, the principles have corresponding authority; insofar as they are not, the principles are to that same extent deprived of authority. It would follow that a principle for the choice of which no reasons could be given would be a principle devoid of authority. I might indeed adopt such a principle from whim or caprice or from some arbitrary purpose … but if I then chose to abandon the principle whenever it suited me, I would be entirely free to do so."

"There ought not be two histories, one of political and moral action and one of political and moral theorizing, because there were not two pasts, one populated only by actions, the other only by theories. Every action is the bearer and expression of more or less theory-laden beliefs and concepts; every piece of theorizing and every expression of belief is a politcal and moral action."

"My view that tolerance and rationality are intimately connected is not merely an a priori thesis. The transformation of Marxism from a rationally held into an irrationally held body of theory is a transformation which was the result of Marxists cutting themselves off from possibilities of criticism and refutation. The use of state power to defend Marxism as the one set of true beliefs in the Soviet Union produced the atrophy of Marxism and the irrationality of Soviet Marxism. This use of state power was not only repressive in respect of tolerance; it was the instrument of a minority who took up towards the majority an attitude very similar to that which Marcuse advises his minority elite to take up to the majority. The majority was in the Soviet Union the passive object of re-education in the interests of its own liberation. What Marcuse invites us to repeat is part of the experience of Stalinism."

"A striking feature of moral and political argument in the modern world is the extent to which it is innovators, radicals, and revolutionaries who revive old doctrines, while their conservative and reactionary opponents are the inventors of new ones."

"The manager treats ends as given, as outside his scope; his concern is with technique, with effectiveness … The therapist also treats ends as given, as outside his scope; his concern also is with technique, with effectiveness …Neither manager nor therapist, in their roles as manager and therapist, do or are able to engage in moral debate. They … purport to restrict themselves to the realms in which rational agreement in possible—that is, … to the realm of fact, the realm of means, the realm of measurable effectiveness."

"Imprisoning philosophy within the professionalizations and specializations of an institutionalized curriculum, after the manner of our contemporary European and North American culture, is arguably a good deal more effective in neutralizing its effects than either religious censorship or political terror"

"In The Triumph of the Therapeutic (1966) and also in To My Fellow Teachers (1975) Philip Rieff has documented with devastating insight a number of the ways in which truth has been displaced as a value and replaced by psychological effectiveness. The idioms of therapy have invaded all too successfully such spheres as those of education and of religion."

"Marcuse’s collection of revolutionary forces is a list so familiar in radical circles that we must be careful not to miss its extreme heterogeneity: the student movement in the United States, the black population of the urban slums in the United States, the Chinese cultural revolution, the National Liberation Front in Vietnam, Cuba. There are three elements in this collection: there are first the genuinely aspiring poor of America and peasants in Vietnam and elsewhere, who must not be confused with their self-appointed spokesmen; there are the middle-class whites of the SDS and their counterparts in Britain, Germany, and France, who in their combination of insurrectionism and anarchism exemplify what Lenin diagnosed as leftwing communism, an infantile disease; and there are the representatives of the Communist bureaucracies in China, Cuba, and Vietnam, who represent right-wing communism, an oligarchical disease. These forces have only one thing in common: they are in conflict with the governments of the advanced industrial societies. But, as both Marx and Lenin knew, to be in conflict with the established order is not necessarily to be an agent of liberation."

"On Kant’s view it can never follow from the fact that God commands us to do such-and-such that we ought to do such-and-such. In order for us to reach such a conclusion we would also have to know that we always ought to do what God commands. But this last we could not know unless we ourselves possessed a standard of moral judgment independent of God’s commandments by means of which we could judge God’s deeds and words and so find the latter morally worthy of obedience. But clearly if we possess such a standard, the commandments of God will be redundant."

"The spirit of true religion breathes gentleness and affability; it gives a native, unaffected ease to the behavior; it is social, kind, cheerful; far removed from the cloudy and illiberal disposition which clouds the brow, sharpens the temper, and dejects the spirit."

"Embellish truth only with a view to gain it the more full and free admission into your hearer's minds; and your ornaments will, in that case, be simple, masculine, natural."

"In the eye of that Supreme Being to whom our whole internal frame is uncovered, dispositions hold the place of actions."

"In whatever light we view religion it appears solemn and venerable. It is a temple full of majesty, to which the worshiper may approach with comfort, in the hope of obtaining grace and finding mercy; but where they cannot enter without being inspired with awe. If we may be permitted to compare spiritual with natural things, religion resembles not those scenes of natural beauty where every object smiles. It cannot be likened to the gay landscape or the flowery field. It resembles more the august and sublime appearances of Nature — the lofty mountain, the expanded ocean, and the starry firmament; at the sight of which the mind is at once overawed and delighted; and, from the union of grandeur with beauty, derives a pleasing but a serious devotion."

"Dissimulation in youth is the forerunner of perfidy in old age; its first appearance is the fatal omen of growing depravity and future shame."

"Between levity and cheerfulness there is a wide distinction; and the mind which is most open to levity is frequently a stranger to cheerfulness."

"Look around you, and you will behold the universe full of active powers. Action is, so to speak, the genius of nature. By motion and exertion, the system of being is preserved in vigor. By its different parts always acting in subordination one to another, the perfection of the whole is carried on. The heavenly bodies perpetually revolve. Day and night incessantly repeat their appointed course. Continual operations are going on in the earth and in the waters. Nothing stands still. All is alive and stirring throughout the universe. In the midst of this animated and busy scene, is man alone to remain idle in his place? Belongs it to him to be the sole inactive and slothful being in the creation, when in so many various ways he might improve his own nature; might advance the glory of the God who made him; and contribute his part in the general good?"

"Idleness is the great corrupter of youth, and the bane and dishonor of middle age. He who, in the prime of life, finds time to hang heavy on his hands, may with much reason suspect that he has not consulted the duties which the consideration of his age imposed upon him; assuredly he has not consulted his happiness."

"It frequently happens that where the second line is sublime, the third, in which he meant to rise still higher, is perfectly bombast."

"What we call human reason, is not the effort or ability of one, so much as it is the result of the reason of many, arising from lights mutually communicated, in consequence of discourse and writing."

"Homer is the most simple in his style of all the great poets, and resembles most the style of the poetical parts of the Old Testament. They can have no conception of his manner, who are acquainted with him in Mr. Pope's translation only. An excellent poetical performance that translation is, and faithful in the main to the original. In some places, it may be thought to have even improved Homer. It has certainly softened some of his rudenesses, and added delicacy and grace to some of his sentiments. But withal, it is no other than Homer modernised. In the midst of the elegance and luxuriancy of Mr. Pope's language, we lose sight of the old bard's simplicity. I know indeed no author, to whom it is more difficult to do justice in a translation, than Homer."

"The great standard of literature as to purity and exactness of style is the Bible."

"That discipline which corrects the baseness of worldly passion, fortifies the heart with virtuous principles, enlightens the mind with useful knowledge, and furnishes it with enjoyment from within itself, is of more consequence to real felicity, than all the provision we can make of the goods of fortune."

"How shocking must thy summons be, O Death! To him that is at ease in his possessions! Who, counting on long years of pleasure here, Is quite unfurnished for the world to come. In that dread moment, how the frantic soul Raves round the walls of her clay tenement; Runs to each avenue, and shrieks for help; But shrieks in vain."

"Anxiety is the poison of human life ; the parent of many sins and of more miseries. – In a world where everything is doubtful, and where we may be disappointed, and be blessed in disappointment, why this restless stir and commotion of mind? – Can it alter the cause, or unravel the mystery of human events?"

"The slave who digs in the mine or labors at the oar can rejoice at the prospect of laying down his burden together with his life; but to the slave of guilt there arises no hope from death. On the contrary, he is obliged to look forward with constant terror to this most certain of all events, as the conclusion of all his hopes, and the commencement of his greatest miseries."

"It is God alone that can pronounce upon the real condition of the heart and soul, out of which are the issues of life. A true phrenological fact, therefore, which we can force a sound mind to believe must involve, in one of its aspects, a species of knowledge which ist is not in the power of man, and still less within his province, to attain; and in the other, a physical fact, which can be seen only in the brain itself, and which cannot be interfered from any external sign."

"If it has been revealed to man that the Almighty made him out of the dust of the earth, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, it is in vain to tell a Christian that man was originally a speck of albumen, and passed through the stages of monads and monkeys, before he attained his present intellectual preeminence. If it be a received truth that the Creator has repeatedly interposed in the government of the universe and displayed his immediate agency in miraculous interpositions, it is an insult to any reader to tell him that the being slumbers on his throne and rules under a "primal arrangement in his counsels," and "by a code of laws of unbending operation.""

"The only sure mode of acquiring sound ideas of our relation to the Creator is to begin with the study of ourselves, and to view God as a Father and Friend, dealing with us in precisely the same way as we would deal with others over whom we exercise authority. Conscience, that infallible Mentor "that sticketh closer than a brother," tells us that we are responsible beings; and in the domestic, as well as the social circle, we speedily feel the discipline and learn the lesson of rewards and punishments. The law written in man's heart points to the past as pregnant with events which may affect the future; and in the earnestness of his aspirations, and the activity of his search, he is gradually led to the mysterious history of his race. He learns that on tables of stone have been engraven the same law to which his heart responded; -that when all were dead, one died for all; and in the contemplation of the great sacrifice, he obtains a solution of the interesting problem of his individual destiny. The Sacred record which is now his guide, speaks to him of fore-knowledge and predestination, while, in perfect consistency, it records the ministration of descending spirits, and the holier communings of God with man. The Divine decrees no longer perplex him. They transcend, indeed, his Reason - but that Reason, the faithful interpreter of Conscience, does not falter in proclaiming the Freedom of his Will, and the Responsibility of his Actions."

"Although every part of the human frame has been fashioned by the same Divine hand and exhibits the most marvellous and beneficent adaptions for the use of men, the human eye stands pre-eminent above them all as the light of the body and the organ by which we become acquainted with the minutest and the nearest, the largest and most remote of the Creator’s work"

"The history of the human species is the history of a variety of races in every stage of civilization and barbarism, and the great majority of which have neither an intellectual, nor a moral, nor a religious progressive history. Progression has not been the character of the history of man. Without alluding to his primeval fall from his high estate, we have only to cast our eyes over the globe, and look at the intellectual, moral, and religious catastrophes which it presents to us, — at ages of light and darkness, — at alternations of progress and decline, — at the highest civilization sinking into the lowest barbarism. Mark those eastern lands, now involved in darkness, from which the beams of knowledge first radiated on mankind. Study the extinction of morality in many regions of the earth where its great lessons were first taught by our Saviour and His apostles; and above all, mark the total suppression of the Christian faith in European communities, where it has been displaced by a religion whose doctrines were preached by conquest, and whose decalogue was dictated by the sword."

"Jesus will take me safe trough... I shall see Jesus, who created all things, Jesus, who made the worlds; I shall see Him as He is;... Yes; I have had the Light for many years, and Oh! how bright it is! I feel SO SAFE, SO SATISFIED."

"It is not within our province to inquire by what process, and in what condition the Almighty brought matter into existence-what the space was which it occupied, or what the forms were which it assumed. Of such things we know nothing. In the depths of primeval time, the globe we inhabit may have a planetary existence, wheeling along its ethereal railway without a breathing passenger to count its periods, and without a living plant to measure the day by its opening and closing blossoms, or to mark the rolling seasons by the yearly increments of its stem. Or it may have been the theatre on which vast cycles of animal and vegetable life have been run- now its birthplace, and now its grave: But we have no data to guide us in our conjectures, and even imagination fails us if we call it to our aid. Whatever may have been, had ceased to be at the commencement of our history, when the primary rocks, forming the moten nucleus of the globe, were first exposed to the action of the elements."

"Truths physical have an- origin as divine as truths religious, In the time of Galileo they triumphed over the casuistry and secular power of the Church ; and in our own day the incontrovertible truths of primeval life have won as noble a victory over the errors of a speculative theology, and a false interpretation of the word of God. Science ever has been, and ever must be the safeguard of religion. The grandeur of her truths may transcend our failing reason, but those who cherish and lean upon truths equally grand, but certainly more incomprehensible, ought to see in the marvels of the material world the best defence and illustration of the mysteries of their faith."

"The human voice may be denominated the music of the mind; language, a figurative mode of expressing our ideas and sentiments. The effects of flowing from this beneficent endowment are overwhelming in contemplation and almost infinite in extent. It is principally instrumental to all the moral and physical improvements of man, and enables him to pour forth his otherwise invisible, inaudible, unfathomable thoughts, to his fellow-man and to his God."

"Man, made after God's image, was a nobler creation than twinkling sparks in the sky, or than the larger and more useful lamp of the moon."

"Truth has no greater enemy than its unwise defenders, and no warmer friends than those who, receiving it in a meek and tolerant spirit, respect the conscientious convictions of others, and seek, in study and in prayer, for the best solution of mysterious and incomprehensible revelations."

"The cultivation of science is a luxury of no common kind amid the bustle and vexation of life, and is quite compatible with the most active professional duties. Your education and the example you have had to copy will, I am sure, guard you against those presumptuous and skeptical opinions which scientific knowledge too often engenders. In the ardour of pursuit and under the intoxication of success scientific men are apt to forget that they are the instrument by which Providence is gradually revealing the wonders of creation, and that they ought to exercise their functions with the same humility as those who are engaged in unfolding the mysteries of His revealed will."

"It is not easy to devise a cure for such a state of things (the declining taste for science). The most obvious remedy is to provide the educated classes with a series of works on popular and practical science, freed from mathematical symbols and technical terms, written in simple and perspicuous language, and illustrated by facts and experiments which are level to the capacity of ordinary minds."

"Amid the destructive convulsions of the physical world, even pious minds may have for an instant questioned the superintending providence of God. In the midst of famine, or pestilence, or war, they may have stood horror- struck at the scene. In the triumphs of fraud, oppression, and injustice, over honesty, and liberty, and law. Faith may have wavered, and Hope despaired; but in no condition, either of the physical or the moral world, does the mind question the POWER of its Maker. The omnipotence of the Creator, and the exertion of it in every corner of space, — His care over the falling sparrow, and His guidance of the gigantic planet, are the earliest of our acquired truths, and the very first that observation and experience confirm. When Reason gives wisdom to our perceptions, omnipotence is the grand truth which they inculcate. Whatever the eye sees, or the ear hears, or the fingers touch, — every motion of our body, every function it performs, every structure in its fabric, impresses on the mind, and fixes in the heart the conviction, that the Creator is all-powerful as well as all-wise. Omnipotence, in short, is the only attribute of God which is universally appreciated, which skepticism never unsettles, and which we believe as firmly when under the influence of our corrupt passions, as when we are looking devoutly to heaven. All the other attributes of God are inferences. His omnipresence, His omniscience, His justice, mercy, and truth, are the deductions of reason, and, however true and demonstrable, they exercise little influence over the mind; but the attribute of omnipotence predominates over them all, and no mind responsive to its power will ever be disturbed by the ideas which it suggests of infinity of time, infinity of space, and infinity of life."

"It is a more rational belief that man may become a brute than that a brute may become a man; and it is an easier faith that plants and animals may dwindle down into an elemental atom, than that this atom should embrace in its organization, and evolve, all the noble forms of vegetable, animal, and intellectual life."

"Trained in a less severe school than that of geometry and physics, his reasonings are almost always loose and inconclusive. His generalizations seem to have been reached before he had obtained the materials upon which he rests them: His facts, though frequently new and interesting, are often little more than conjectures; and the grand phenomena of the world of life, and instinct, and reason, which other minds have woven into noble and elevating truths, have thus become in Mr. Darwin's hands the basis of a dangerous and degrading speculation."

"I would advise you not to expect too much happiness, even from the fulfillment of all your wishes. The moment you have distinguished yourself you become an object of envy and malice ; men whom you believed to be lovers of knowledge you will then find to be lovers only of fame, and haters of all knowledge that has not come from themselves. You will find that a life of science has in it no superiority to any other, unless it is pursued from a higher principle than the mere ambition of notoriety, and that demagogue or a philosopher differ only in the objects of their selfishness. As you will now have experienced how unsatisfying even the pursuit of knowledge is when insulated from higher objects, I hope, if you have not been fortunate enough to begin the study earlier, that you will devote yourself to the most extraordinary of all subjects, one which infinitely surpasses the mechanism of the heavens or the chemistry of the material world, the revelation of your duty and the destiny of man as contained in The Bible — a book which occupied the best hours of the manhood of Newton, of Locke, and of Euler."

"Though the large runt pigeon, with its massive beak and its huge feet, differs from its blue and barred progenitor the rock, it is a pigeon still. Though the slender Italian greyhound has a strange contrast with the short-legged bull-dog, they are both dogs in their teeth and in their skull. The mouse, even, has not been transmuted into the cat, nor the hen into the turkey, nor the duck into the goose, nor the hawk into the eagle, and still less the monkey into the man."

"Had Mr. Darwin written a work on the change of species, as determined by observation and experiment, without any other object but that of advancing natural science, he would have obtained a high place among philosophical naturalists. But after reading his work in which the name of the Creator is never distinctly mentioned, we can hardly believe that scientific truth was the only object the author had in view. Researches, conducted under the influence of other motives, are not likely to stand the test of a rigorous scrutiny; and some of Mr. Darwin's not unfriendly critics have produced ample evidence that the idol of speculation has been occasionally worshipped at the expense of truth."

"The immense number and variety of the beautiful optical discoveries which we owe to Sir David Brewster makes the comparison in his case a very imperfect representation of his triumphs over nature; and that, besides his place in the history of the Theory of Optics, he must hold a most eminent position in the history of Optical Crystallography, whenever the discovery of a True Optical Theory of Crystals supplies us with the Epoch to which his labors in this field form so rich."

"ye and I might meet with joy up in the rainbow"

"I hang by a thread, but it is (if I may so speak) of Christ's spinning"