The World and the Individual Volume 2 (Paperback)

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. 1901 edition. Excerpt: ... LECTURE X THE UNION OF GOD AND MAN Fob better or for worse, the investigation to which our two series of lectures have been devoted now draws to its close. Our case has been presented. A theory of Being, itself founded upon an interpretation of human experience, has been applied to special problems, such as human life constantly offers to our notice. The result has been an outline of the basis of a Philosophy of Religion. We began our first series of lectures by stating our general problem as that of the "World and the Individual, --of their nature and their relations. As we close, we are chiefly interested in that aspect of this problem which now, in view of the immediately preceding lectures, lies nearest to us; viz., the question as to the relations between God and Man. I Our account of the human Self has endeavored to be as just as our space permitted to the complexity, the temporal instability, and the natural dependence, of Man the finite being, when he is viewed in the context of the physical world. There is a sense in which man is a product of Nature, and in which his life is but one incident in a vast process of Evolution, --a process whose inner meaning in great part at present escapes us. We have tried to see the extent to which just this is true. There is also a sense in which man's life as a Self appears to be a mere series of relatively accidental experiences, and of shifting social contrast-effects. We have attempted to show how far this also is the case. There is a philosophical truth in saying, as tradition and common sense long ago said, that man is a prey of fortune, -- that his life is a shadow, that all his essence seems insubstantial, transient, and uncertain, and that, so far as you find law governing his life, it...