Astronomy and general physics considered with reference to natural theology / By William Whewell.

  • William Whewell
Date:
1834
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Astronomy and general physics considered with reference to natural theology / By William Whewell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    403/412 page 379
    able with holiness;—this tendency to believe him to be the union of all perfection, the highest point of all intellectual and moral excellence;—is in reality such a guardian and judge, such a good, and wise, and perfect Being, as we thus irresis¬ tibly conceive him. It would indeed be extra¬ vagant to assert that the imagination of the crea¬ ture, itself the work of God, can invent a higher point of goodness, of justice, of holiness, than the Creator himself possesses: that the Eternal Mind, from whom our notions of good and right are derived, is not himself directed by the rules which these notions imply. It is difficult to dwell steadily on such thoughts: but they will at least serve to confirm the reflexion which it was our object to illustrate ; namely, how incomparably the nature of God must be elevated above any conceptions which our natural reason enables us to form : and we have been led to these views, it will be recollected, by following the clue of which science gave us the beginning. The Divine Mind must be conceived by us as the seat of those laws of nature which we have dis¬ covered. It must be no less the seat of those laws which we have not yet discovered, though thfese may and must be of a character far different from anything we can guess. The Supreme Intelligence must therefore contain the laws, each according to their true dependance, of organic life, of sense, of animal impulse, and must contain also the
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