I The Supreme - pg. 160

We cannot oblige our citizens to sleep in peace with a river on the rampage. You alone, as officers of the General Staff, named by the Governing Junta, paid by it in the country's money, are not the people. By acting in this fashion, you are, rather, the counterpeople. By your very profession as military officers, you ought to be the first to set an example of faithful performance of your duties; of respect for the dignity of the Junta; of decency and honor to citizens, protecting those who are most defenseless, ignorant, and humble, those who have been taught to welcome blows as though they were a blessing from God.

I The Supreme - pg. 147

What deeply pains us and disturbs us in the venom of sedition and atheism that the books and the ideas of those libertine impostors that all of you are reading in secret are insinuating into your minds. The devil, my son, is prompting the pages of those decidal and regicidal books. Spitting on the Holy Books his execrable slaver of exotic doctrines. But, your paternity, the God that all of you have brought to our America, binding to his services the mitayo and yanacona gods of the Indians, is exotic too. Don't be a heretic, my son! No, reverend father. We simply want to know what is new, and not just keep parroting the Paternicas, the Summa, the maxims of Peter Lombard.

I The Supreme - pg. 137

'For the love of God,' I said, 'fourteen years after you should, by every natural law, be in your grave, how can you turn yourself into an object of ridicule for your enemies or an object of pity for your friends?'

I The Supreme - pg. 97

For the moment God does not occupy my mind. The question that preoccupies it is ruling over chance. Putting my daedal digit on the die, the die in the dicebox. Getting the country out of its labyrinth.

God's Little Mountain

God's Little Mountain


Below, the river scrambled like a goat
Dislodging stones. The mountain stamped its foot,
Shaking, as from a trance. And I was shut
With wads of sound into a sudden quiet.

I thought the thunder had unsettled heaven;
All was so still. And yet the sky was cloven
By flame that left the air cold and engraven.
I waited for the word that was not given,

Pent up into a region of pure force,
Made subject to the pressure of the stars;
I saw the angels lifted like pale straws;
I could not stand before those winnowing eyes

And fell, until I found the world again.
Now I lack grace to tell what I have seen;
For though the head frames words the tongue has none.
And who will prove the surgeon to this stone?

حیاتِ جاوید - صفحہ نمبر 49

سر سید کو مسماۃ مان بی بی نے جو ایک قدیم خیر خواہ ان کے گھرانے کی تھی پالا تھا ۔ اس لئے ان کو مان بی بی سے نہایت محبت تھی ۔ وہ پانچ برس کے تھے جب مان بی بی کا انتقال ہوا۔ ان کا بیان ہے کہ " مجھے خوب یاد ہے مان بی بی مرنے سے پانچ گھنٹے پہلے فالسہ کا شربت مجھکو پلا رہی تھی۔ جب وہ مر گئی تو مجھے اس کے مرنے کا نہایت رنج ہئوا ۔ میری والدہ نے مجھے سمجھایا کہ وہ خدا کے پاس گئی ہے۔ بہت اچھے مکان میں رہتی ہے، بہت سے نوکر چاکر اس کی خدمت کرتے ہیں اور اس کی بہت آرام سے گزرتی ہے، تم کچھ رنج مت کرو، مجھ ان کو کہنے سے پورا یقین تھا کہ فی الواقع ایسا ہی ہے۔ مدت ہر جمعرات کو اس کی فاتحہ خوانی ہوا کرتی تھی اور کسی محتاج کو کھانا دیا جاتا تھا۔ مجھے یقین تھا کہ یہ سب کھانا مان بی بی کے پاس پہنچ جاتا ہے۔ اس نے مرتے وقت کہا تھا کہ میرا تمام زیور سید کا ہے ۔ مگر میری والدہ اس کو خیرات میں دینا چاہتی تھیں۔ ایک دن انھوں نے مجھ سے پوچھا کہ اگر تم کہو تو یہ گہنا مان بی بی کے پاس بھیج دوں ۔ میں نے کہا ہاں بھیج دو۔ والدہ نے وہ سب گہنا مختلف طرح سے خیرات میں دے دیا"۔

ابن الو قت - صفحہ نمبر 177

مسلمان سوائے ایک خدا کے جس کو کوئی انسان دیکھ نہیں سکتا ، موجوداتِ عالم میں اس سے ارضی ہوں یا سماوی، کسی چیز کی عبادت یعنی اعلیٰ درجے کی تعظیم نہیں کرتا۔ حجۃالاسلام صاحب کے بیان کے مطابق اسلام خودداری اور بے تکلّفی اور سادگی اور توکّل اور صبر کا مجموعہ ہے۔ لیکن ہندو بندر اور سانپ اور گائے اور پیپل اور تلسی اور آگ اور پانی اور پتّھر اور چاند اور سورج ہر چیز کے آگے ماتھا ٹیکنے کو موجود ہے ، جس کے معنی دوسرے لفظوں میں یہ ہیں کہ آدمی سب میں ادنیٰ درجے کا مخلوق ہے اور اس کو دنیا میں ادنیٰ بن کر رہنا چاہیئے۔ حجۃالاسلام صاحب اس سے یہ نتیجہ نکالتے ہیں کہ مسلمان کار فرمائ اور حکومت کے لیئے بنایا گیا ہے ، جس طرح ہندو کارکنی اور اطاعت کے لیئے۔

Voss - pg. 437

Judd was feeling his way with his hands.

"Well, you see, if you live and suffer long enough in a place, you do not leave it altogether. Your spirit is still there."

"Like a god, in fact," said Colonel Hebden, but laughed to show his skepticism.

Voss - pg. 336

Over the dry earth he went, with his springy, exaggerated strides, and in this strange progress, was at peace and in love with his fellows. Both sides were watching him. The aboriginals could have been trees, but the members of the expedition were so contorted by apprehension, longing, love, or disgust, they had become human again. All remembered the face of Christ that they had seen at some point in their lives, either in churches or in visions, before retreating from what they had not understood, the paradox of man in Christ, and Christ in man. All were obsessed by what could be the last scene for some of them. They could not advance farther.

Meditations - pg. 90

But before examining this more carefully, and at the same time seeking or other truths inferable from this, I wish to stay a little in the contemplation of God; to meditate within myself on his attributes; to behold, wonder at adore the beauty of this immeasurable Light, so far as the eyes of my darkened understanding can bear it. For just as we believe that the supreme happiness of another life consists merely in this contemplation of the Divine Majesty; so even now the same contemplation, though much less perfect, makes us aware that we can get from it the greatest joy of which we are capable in this life.

Meditations - pg. 86

Nor can it be said that this idea of God may be false in relation to its subject-matter, and thus come from nothingness -- as I observed just now about the idea of heat and cold and so on. On the contrary, it is supremely clear and distinct and representatively more real than any other; none is in itself truer, or less open to the suspicion of falsehood. This idea, I say, of being supremely perfect and infinite is true in a special degree; for even if it maybe imagined that, as I said about the idea of cold, the idea does not manifest to me any [positive] reality. Moreover, it is supremely clear and distinct; for all my clear and distinct conceptions (quidquid ... percipio) of any genuine reality that involves some perfection are wholly comprised in it. It is nothing against this that I do not comprehend the infinite, or that there are in God countless things that I not only cannot comprehend, but perhaps cannot in any way reach with my mind (cogitatione); for it belongs to the definition of the infinite that I who am finite cannot comprehend it. It is enough for me to understand and believe just this: whatever I clearly conceive (percipio), and know to involve some perfection, and perhaps countless other things as well that I do not know, must exist in God either as such or in a higher form; so that my idea of God has the highest degree of truth, and is the most clear and distinct, of all my ideas.

Meditations - pg. 65

I will suppose, then, not that there is a supremely good God, the source of truth; but that there is an evil spirit, who is supremely powerful and intelligent, and does his utmost to deceive me. I will suppose that sky, air, earth, colours, shapes, sounds and all external objects are mere delusive dreams, by means of which he lays snares for my credulity. I will consider myself as having no hands, no eyes, no flesh, no blood, no senses, but just having a false belief that I have all these things. I will remain firmly fixed in this meditation, and resolutely take care that, so far as in me lies, even if it is not my power to know some truth, I may not assent to falsehood nor let myself be imposed upon by that deceiver, however powerful and intelligent he may be. But this plan is irksome, and sloth brings me back to ordinary life. I am like a prisoner who happens to enjoy an imaginary freedom during sleep, and then begins to suspect he is asleep; he is afraid to wake up, and connives at the agreeable illusion.

Meditations - Private Thoughts

It might seem strange that opinions of weight are found in the works of poets rather than philosophers. The reason is that poets wrote through enthusiasm and imagination; there are in us seeds of knowledge, as <> in a flint; philosophers extract them by way of reason, but poets strike them out by imagination, and then they shine more bright.

The sayings of the sages can be reduced to a very few general rules.

There is in things one active power, love, charity, harmony.The Lord has made three marvels: things out of nothingness; freewill; and the Man who is God.

Meditations - xlii

It is only now, having demonstrated the existence of God, that we finally liberated from uncertainty and doubt. Knowing that God exists and that we are created by Him, we can both explain the presence in our souls of clear and distinct innate ideas, and justify our assurance of their validity: it is God, indeed, who endowed us with them; it is God, therefore, who guarantees their truth, that is, their conformity with the real world created by Him. God's veracity is thus the ultimate foundation of our reasoning, of the right that we have to conclude from the idea to the thing which it represents, to assert, for instance, the real existence of extension and motion, the validity of the mathematical sciences and of the physics based upon them. The reasoned-out confidence that we have in our reason is thus, for Descartes, justified only and alone by the reasoned-out confidence that we have in God. An atheist, denying the existence of God, must, therefore, necessarily be the prey of an absolute scepticism: he cannot have an assurance of anything whatever -- not even of mathematics -- and, for him, to believe his reason would be utterly unreasonable.

Meditations - pg. xxxvi

It is enough for St. Augustine to know this God and his soul. But Descartes is not satisfied; he needs a Physics, a knowledge of the real world in order to be able to act and to direct himself in life, a knowledge that will make man master and possessor of nature and will give him the power to order and freely determine his very existence. And it is in order to put this science, whose 'foundations' he has discovered, on a firm and secure basis that he develops his metaphysics and turns his steps towards God. Here as elsewhere the Cartesian search is the search for the assurance of truth. Here as elsewhere the Cartesian way is the way of insight and freedom.

Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 127

Hence it is evident, that those things which under the notion of a cause co-operating or concurring to the production of effects, are altogether inexplicable, and run us into great absurdities, may be very naturally explained, and have a proper and obvious use assigned them, when they are considered only as marks or signs for our information. And it is the searching after, and endeavouring to understand those signs instituted by the Author of Nature, that ought to be employment of the natural philosopher, and not the pretending to explaing things by corporeal causes ; which doctrine seems to have too much estranged the minds of men from that active principle, that supreme and wise spirit, in whom we live, move, and have our being.

Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 209

Berkeley's favourite quotation, from ACTS 17:28. Strangely, it is also the last senstence in Malebranche's Recherche 3. 2. 6 -- the section expounding Malebranche;s view that 'we see all things in God'.

Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 66

The clearest trace of the scholastic tradition in Berkeley's work is his view that in perception we share ideas with God. This is a later version of St Augustine's doctrine of divine illumination, according to which God is the interior light of the human soul. A vision of things as they really are is present in us by virtue of the light that is in us, namely God; it cannot be extracted from sense-experience alone. This view is also clearly related to Malebranche's conception of seeing all things in God. Similarly, in my view Berkeley wants to retain a sense that there is natural necessity in the world. He cannot do it in Locke's mechanistic way, as we say, and he is worried (as Dun Scotus was) by the thought that nothing can be necessary if God could have ordained things otherwise -- or, to put it the other way round, that if there were natural necessities, they would consitute a constraint on the power of God.

Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 60

Malebranche. There were various problems for Descartes, but among those that attracted most attention was the problem of interaction -- the question how mind and matter can influence each other if they are so different. We know (or think we know) that our bodies more because we will that they should, and that pain will occur if we cut ourselves with a knife. How is this possible? Malebranche saw this difficulty as related to a more general problem how physical things could be said to be causes. He argued that they could now. It was not just that they are inert -- the point that Berkeley makes much of. It was also that there was no coceivable necessary connection between one physical event and another; and for Malebranche there can be no causation without a necessary connection. There is, of course, a necessary connection between the will of God and changes in the world. So the only possible cause is God. As such a cause, God can act so as to move our bodies when we will to move, and to affect our minds when the world collides with us. He also acts to cause a physical event when suitable physical conditions occur. Within this picture the interaction problem fails to arise, since there is no difficulty at all in supposing God capable of affecting either minds or matter on suitable occasions.

Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 52

The physical world is a genuinely linguistic system, whose elements are variously combined and concetenated in much the sort of way that letters and words are, so that they should be capable of carrying detailed messages. Just as a limited number of letters can be used to create an infinite variety of messages, so a limited number of physical elements can be combined for the same purpose. The whole is thus an informational system, in which God, of his goodness, speaks to us about what we can expect in the future. And scientists can be conceived as the grammarians of this system,. who understand how the individual elements combine to generate this or that meaning in the particular case, and are thus able to know better what is being said (see the first-edition version Principles $108).