Identifier: ArenaMagazine-Volume04 (find matches)
Title: Arena magazine - Volume 04
Year: 1891 (1890s)
Authors: B.O. Flower (ed.)
Subjects: Progressivism -- United States liberalism reformism social reform Christian Socialism Gay 90s political commentary Benjamin Orange Flower Progressive Era social gospel
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attitude of many minds which places Religion upon thedefensive, unreasonable, or the outgrowth of a perversespirit, but, on the contrary, it results from the questioningsof those eager to find the truth and anxious to prove allthings and cast error aside. Let us see if Religion canwithstand the fierce onslaught, threatening its very life,which Mr. Spencer makes in his First Principles (pp. 8-123). Our authors first attempt is to form something like ageneral theory of current opinions, so as neither to over-estimate nor under-estimate their worth. As a special casefrom the examination of which he hopes to derive a generalmethod, he traces the evolution of government from the be-ginning until now. It is held that no belief concerning gov-ernment is wholly true or false; each of them insists upona certain subordination of individual actions to social re-quirements. . . . From the oldest and rudest idea of alle-giance, down to the most advanced political theory of our Digitized by VjOOQIC
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Portrait of Rev. T. Ernest Allen Digitized by VjOOQIC Digitized by VjOOQIC spencers doctrine op inconceivability. 95 own day, there is on this point complete unanimity. Hespeaks of this subordination as a postulate which is, indeed,of self-evident validity, as ranking next in certainty tothe postulates of exact science. As the result of his searchfor a generalization which may habitually guide us whenseeking for the soul of truth in things erroneous, he con-cludes : This method is to compare all opinions of the samegenus; to set aside as more or less discrediting one anotherthose various special and concrete elements in which suchopinions disagree; to observe what remains after the discord-ant constituents have been eliminated, and to find for theremaining constituent that abstract expression which holdstrue throughout its divergent modifications. What did Mr. Spencer discover by the application of hismethod to government? A postulate which he announces tobe of self-evident validity, an unquestionable fact —that is

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