Divine Library is a free online public library that includes free eBook downloads and free audio books.
We work with New Thought Seekers and Sharers around the world
insuring that all New Thought Texts in the Public Domain
are available for you to read on the web for free, forever!
Navigate through this book by clicking Next Page or Previous
Page below the text of the page & jump directly to chapters using the chapter numbers above the text.
10. As the proofs of liberty are of the utmost moment, and as they arise from a variety of scattered considerations as well as from central facts, we will for their better apprehension, epitomize and group them.
Lesson 107 - 10. Proofs summarized - p.421
(1) Pure mental facts, more particularly those of thought, must lose their quality without spontaneity. The mind, in its search for truth, must be free to follow it. If secret causal forces control the movement, the distinction between the true and the false is lost; since every effect is equally necessary and real, the one termed false as the one termed true. If this argument is well taken, it is final; for an overthrow of this distinction abolishes all denials and affirmations, and among them those of the necessitarian.
(2) The moral facts of the world can not maintain their ground as simply causal facts. The distinction as a primary one disappears; all facts are of one grand order, all are necessary facts. Any division that may remain is one of form simply. The discussion has swept away the phenomena that provoked it.
(3) Physical facts, as united by forces and understood through forces, have no basis of knowledge firmer than that which has just given away in morals. The notion of force is one supplied by the mind, and applied for the same reasons and in the same way as that of liberty, to wit, to explain certain facts. If the one notion is without proof, so is the other; if the one has proof, so has the other. If we substitute succession for causation, succession is more allied to liberty than to necessity. And if we strip away dependencies, thought must go with them, as thought is one of them, and each instant involves them. If there are no connections there are no thoughts, and nothing for thought to pursue. Either the links of thoughts or the links of things must be allowed; and if one is allowed both must be.
(4) The two dependencies involved in necessity and
