There is no scientific discoverer, no poet, no painter, no musician, who will not tell you that he found ready made his discovery or poem or picture — that it came to him from outside, and that he did not consciously create it from within.

Our lives our guided by that general conception of the course of things which has been created by society for social purposes.

He who truly believes that which prompts him to an action has looked upon the action to lust after it, he has committed it already in his heart.

The aim of scientific thought, then, is to apply past experience to new circumstances; the instrument is an observed uniformity in the course of events. By the use of this instrument it gives us information transcending our experience, it enables us to infer things that we have not seen from things that we have seen; and the evidence for the truth of that information depends on our supposing that the uniformity holds good beyond our experience.

When an action is once done, it is right or wrong for ever; no accidental failure of its good or evil fruits can possibly alter that.

If a belief is not realized immediately in open deeds, it is stored up for the guidance of the future.

It cannot be doubted that theistic belief is a comfort and a solace to those who hold it, and that the loss of it is a very painful loss. It cannot be doubted, at least, by many of us in this generation, who either profess it now, or received it in our childhood and have parted from it since with such searching trouble as only cradle-faiths can cause. We have seen the spring sun shine out of an empty heaven, to light up a soulless earth; we have felt with utter loneliness that the Great Companion is dead.