dakin arthur hazard 1905 2001 (1 résultats)

Hardcover. xiii, 284 p.; 23.5 cm. Dedicated, and with frequent reference, to Clement C. J. Webb From Conclusion: `Almost everything condemned in religion by humanists is, we agree, hypocritical, retrograde, spiritually encumbering. Differences of terminology taken into account, few theists cherish exactly what humanists reject. Their widely prevailing will not merely to renounce for themselves but to deprive others of belief in God marks the peak ofthe humanists' path of negation. Here humanism parts company with ordinary secularism.Those not only in but essentially of "the world" usually have no interest in denying or in affirming theism. On historical, social, scientific, philosophical, moral,and religious grounds,theism appeared better rooted and more fruitful than humanism. The latter's function is chiefly critical: to put what it dislikes through the test of fire. Theism,we believe,emerges from that test purified. We doubt whether humanism in its peculiar one-tenth could survive it at all.Their good,humanists havetaken from others but made it no better. Their bad they have borrowed also and by misuse made it worse. It is not an inexcusable exaggeration, we conclude about that last tenth of humanism, to say of the "new naturalists" what Lord Balfour so conveniently said of naturalists a generation before them: "Their spiritual life is parastic: it is sheltered by convictions which belong, not to them, but to the society of which they form a part; it is nourished by processes in which they take no share. And when these convictions decay, and those processes come to an end, the alien life which they have maintained can scarce be expected to outlast them."' (p. 267-9; quoting from Foundations of belief, p. 88) Good ex-lib. orig. black cloth. Covers stained.