Excerpt from Studies in the History of Natural Theology No one can be more conscious than myself of the super ficiality of the treatment Which is here accorded to a subject requiring and deserving a far more thorough investigation. I can only plead in my own excuse that an Oxford college tutor can only undertake Work such as belongs to the Lectureship Which I was privileged to hold from to 1914, if he is prepared to accomplish less than might reasonably be demanded from a lecturer able to devote the Whole or even the major ...
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Excerpt from Studies in the History of Natural Theology No one can be more conscious than myself of the super ficiality of the treatment Which is here accorded to a subject requiring and deserving a far more thorough investigation. I can only plead in my own excuse that an Oxford college tutor can only undertake Work such as belongs to the Lectureship Which I was privileged to hold from to 1914, if he is prepared to accomplish less than might reasonably be demanded from a lecturer able to devote the Whole or even the major part of his time to the duties of the lectureship. The present work was written before Professor Burnet's Greek Philosophy from Thales to Plato had appeared, and was already in print before I had an opportunity of reading that very important contribution to the study of the philosopher with whom my second course of lectures is con cerned. It seemed out of the question at so late a stage to attempt the task of remodelling what I had said, in View of the new light there thrown upon the subject. But I am on the whole disposed to think that, had such a revision been practicable, no very substantial changes would have resulted. In speaking, as I have often had occasion to speak, of the legacy of Veneration for the heavenly bodies bequeathed by Plato and Aristotle to the Natural Theology of the Middle Ages, I should no doubt have taken more pains to dissociate Plato from the Aristotelian contrast of the quintessential heavens and the sublunary world of grosser matter. But I had nowhere attributed to Plato this contrast as an express doctrine; and, on the other hand, the important fact, to which Professor Burnet has called attention, that Plato reckoned the earth as itself a planet - a fact from which it follows that his recognition of a divinity in the starry heavens did not imply a disparagement of the earth as being of a quite different and inferior nature - had so little in uence upon the tradition with which I am here concerned that his authority went after all, though not by his own fault, to reinforce the authority of Aristotle in encouraging a notion equally injurious to the progress of religion and to that of natural science. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at ... This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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