Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1895 edition. Excerpt: ... IV. OUR LIFE IN MIND. Certain aspects of the outer world now stand out clearly before us. The universe is an order, a system, an organized whole, in which each being and thing bears some relation to all others. Everything is related, not alone through its dependence on its neighbors, but through the law of cause and effect, the one fundamental force, substance, and life, and the law by which all things come into being. The outer world seems to be composed of independent forms and hard substances. Yet all forms are transient. The dense material dissipates into invisible gases and ultimate particles; and we find nothing permanent until we turn to the realm of the invisible and persistent Power which underlies these shifting forms. Even the constant qualities of matter must have their basis in a more substantial Reality in order to be constant at all. Matter is eternal only so far as it inheres in this self-existent Reality. It is law-governed only because the One is unchangeable. And, finally, it has no satisfactory meaning for us until we view it as the very consciousness, the objectified life of God himself, of the God who is in his world, immanent in evolution and immanent in the soul. The Reality of the outer and inner worlds, then, is one. Everything exists in God; and we, existing in him, contemplate and know his conscious manifestations, in part. We do not simply feel matter as so many distinct objects. We do not simply feel sensations of light, heat, and cold. An object, a blow, a sense of warmth, does not come directly to the soul. The object must be understood, the blow must be perceived and reported, the feeling of warmth must be translated into an idea. We feel, and also know that we feel, force or matter in some of its forms....
