http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/3351262

Rational cosmology; or, The eternal principles and the necessary laws of the universe

"There must somewhere be a position from whence it may clearly be seen, that the universe has laws which are necessarily determined by immutable and eternal principles. Nothing in nature, and equally so not nature itself, can be made intelligible except as it has been subjected to rational principle, and such principle must both have been, and been made controlling, in the very origination of nature, or nature must forever be without meaning or end. That principle, then, to an all perfect insight, must disclose within itself what the facts must be, and no induction of facts can at all be needed by the absolute reason. But the finite reason, with its partial insight, must have too limited a comprehension of the eternal principle, to be able adequately to follow out all its determined results from itself, without a reference to the facts that have been determined by it to guide his intuitive processes. The introduction to the work may seem to some to be too far extended; but as a preparative for the investigations which follow, and as an aid and a guide to the reader in the perhaps unaccustomed path he is called to travel, it is deemed that the whole will be useful, independently of the intrinsic importance it may have in itself. The first chapter may also by some be thought to have too little connection with cosmology to be here properly introduced; and yet a further attention will probably find and appreciate the advantage, before the study of the principles and laws of the cosmos, to have a carefully attained idea of a Creator as wholly independent of the cosmos he is to make and govern, beside the fact that neither Atheism nor Pantheism can ever be finally excluded except in the complete idea of an absolute Creator as distinct from Universal Nature. Still, should any find themselves both uninterested and unprofited by the discussion, they can at once pass over both the introduction and the first chapter, and commence what is properly the topic of rational Cosmology with the beginning of the second chapter. In portions of the intuitive processes here pursued, a help might at the outset have been given to some minds by the interposition of more diagrams, and yet in the end the fastest and the pleasantest progress will be found to have been secured by casting off all dependence on any such helps, and fixing the mind's eye directly upon the subjective ideal, as the pure ground in which the insight is to attain determinations of the developed principle. In two cases only from the extent and complication of the intuition, has it seemed best to resort to the interposition of figures; in other cases care has been taken to use precise language, and to give descriptive illustrations and analogies, so that to a careful and clear inspection the process may be followed without much difficulty or discouragement. Nothing can make the journey easy to a mind that refuses to go alone and waits to be carried. The truths sought are not in the sensible phenomenon, nor at the conclusion of a logical process, but must be clear to the rational insight in their own necessity, if apprehended at all. To the intellect that does not so apprehend them, all forms of expression will be empty; to the mind that does so apprehend them, no interposed figures are needed or would be tolerated"--Preface. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).

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