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Excerpt from The Worth of Life: An Address Delivered at the Opening of the Fifty-Eighth Session of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, on Tuesday, the 23rd of October, 1877
The course of: human thought is like that of the storm upon the sea: it seems to move in a straight line of progress, and it really sweeps round and round in eddying circles. At present, as at some former periods of histoiy, the wind sets from the quarter of science, and men turn with impatience from speculative philosophy. The material world is the great object of study, and the methods of study are thought sufficient if they are adjusted to that object. The sum of the natural forces being constant, incapable of addition as of loss, there would seem to be no room for a human will; and the laws of these forces can be studied in the phaenomena themselves, and therefore do not require that we should seek the first cause of the chain of causes, nor the absolute ground of what is phaenomenal and relative: The results of this philosophy, presented in the vulgar tongue, are that man cannot know anything about God, and that if he thinks he has any power of free moral action, he is much mistaken. It is worthy of note that this line of speculation, which seems, in depriving men of their freedom of action in this life, and in cutting off all speculations about another life, to abase them to an almost brutal level, has its place in an age when wealth is great, and arts have triumphed over natural obstacles, and luxurious living has been carried further, and is more general, than in any previous time.
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