Cosmo

“ The sisters all made instinctively the reverential genuflexion. "The Cosmos is infinite," they said together, in the fixed formula of their cherished religion. "The Cosmos is infinite, and man is but a parasite upon the face of the least among its satellite members. ”

“ In the Cosmos that the vision spies, and which escapes our organs of flesh, the spheres enter into the spheres without deforming each other, the density of creations being different; so that, according to every appearance, with our world is amalgamated, in some inexplicable way, another world invisible to us, as we are invisible to it. ”

“ Everything that is created is subject to destruction. And further, since the Cosmos exists by the goodness of God it follows that God must always be good and the world exist. Just as light coexists with the Sun and with fire, and shadow coexists with a body.
Of the bodies in the Cosmos, some imitate Mind and move in orbits; some imitate Soul and move in a straight line, fire and air upward, earth and water downward. Of those that move in orbits the fixed sphere goes from the east, the Seven from the west. ”

“ All things obey and serve the Cosmos, [1] both earth, and sea, and sun, and the other stars, and the plants and animals of earth; obedient to it also is our body, both in sickness and in health, when the Cosmos wishes, both in youth and in old age, and when passing through all the other changes. ”

“ In interrogating the history of the past, we trace the mysterious course of ideas yielding the first glimmering perception of the same image of p 24 a Cosmos, or harmoniously ordered whole, which, dimly shadowed forth to the human mind in the primitive ages of the world, is now fully revealed to the maturer intellect of mankind as the result of long and laborious observation. ”

“ Imagination is wholly taken captive by the stupendous revelation of the God-force which modern conceptions of the Cosmos furnish. Through the whole universe beats the one life-force, that is God, controlling every molecule in the petal of a daisy, in the meteoric ring of Saturn, in the remotest nebula that outskirts space, as though that molecule were the universe. In each molecule and atom God lives and moves and has His being, thereby sustaining theirs .... ”

“ The Cosmos, in a word, for him was psychical, and Nature's moods were transcendental cosmic activities that induced in him these singular states of exaltation and expansion. She pushed wide the gateways of his deeper life. She entered, took possession, dipped his smaller self into her own enormous and enveloping personality.
He possessed a full experience, and at times a keen judgment, of modern life; while underneath, all the time, lay the moving sea of curiously wild primitive instincts. ”

“ When we contemplate these various evidences in their totality—when we observe that, by the Nebular Hypothesis, the leading phenomena of the Solar System, and the heavens in general, are explicable; and when, on the other hand, we consider that the current cosmogony is not only without a single fact to stand on, but is at variance with all our positive knowledge of Nature; we see that the proof becomes overwhelming. ”

“ In the work on the Cosmos on which I am now engaged, I have endeavored to show, as in that entitled 'Ansichten der Natur', that a certain degree of scientific completeness in the treatment of individual facts is not wholly incompatible with a picturesque animation of style. ”

“ In the vast extent of the Cosmos, as a whole, the small bulk of actual matter, compared with the volume of empty space, is striking—as we shall show directly; and now on the small scale, among the atoms of matter, we find the conditions to be similar. ”

“ In the middle of the sixth century Cosmos, who had been a merchant, an extensive traveler, and who afterward became a monk, was the writer of several geographical works, one of which has survived, in which he maintained that the idea of the earth being a globe was contrary alike to the Scriptures and to common sense ”

“ We know the present theories of the Cosmos according to the modern astronomers and physicists, and at the same time we know how wofully they hurt the old school of theologians, and how every new scientific discovery that is made is as a bomb thrown into their house, and how they have attempted in every age to put down all these researches. ”

“ The uncommon, but definite expression of the 'science of the Cosmos' recalls to the mind of the inhabitant of the earth that we are treating of a more widely-extended horizon — of the assemblage of all things with which space is filled, from the remotest nebulae to the climatic distribution of those delicate tissues of vegetable matter which spread a variegated covering over the surface of our rocks. ”

“ Fig. 39.—The Cosmography of Cosmas.
"God," he says, "in creating the earth, rested it on nothing. The earth is therefore sustained by the power of God, the Creator of all things, supporting all things by the word of His power. If below the earth, or outside of it, anything existed, it would fall of its own accord. So God made the earth the base of the universe, and ordained that it should sustain itself by its own proper gravity." ”

“ If we extend the course which we have proposed, following in the exposition of the physical description of the earth to the sidereal part of the science of the Cosmos, the delineation of the regions of space and the bodies by which they are occupied, we shall find our task simplified in no common degree. ”

“ For the astrologers, having declared the cosmos to be one, divided it [195] into the twelve fixed parts of the Zodiacal signs, and call the cosmos of the fixed Zodiacal signs one unwandering world. But the other, they say, is the world of the planets alike in power and in position and in number which exists as far as the Moon. [196] And that one world receives from the other a certain power and communion, and that things below partake of things above. ”

“ The belief in the uncommon and the wonderful lends a definite outline to every manifestation of ideal creation; and the realm of fancy — a fairy-land of cosmological, geognostical, and magnetic visions — becomes thus involuntarily blended with the domain of reality. ”

“ The first portion of my work contains introductory considerations regarding the diversity in the degrees of enjoyment to be derived from nature, and the knowledge of the laws by which the universe is governed; it also considers the limitation and scientific mode of treating a physical description of the universe, and gives a general picture of nature which contains a view of all the phenomena comprised in the Cosmos. ”

“ Physical cosmography is founded on the contemplation of all created things — all that exists in space, whether as substances or forces — that is, all the material beings that constitute the universe. The science which I would attempt to define presents itself, therefore, to man, as the inhabitant of the earth, under a two-fold form — as the earth itself and the regions of space. ”

“ Since I presented Worlds in the Making and Life of the Universe as Conceived by Man from Earliest Ages to the Present Time to the public—which received them with far greater interest and appreciation than I could foresee—I have had repeated occasions to treat new questions of a cosmological nature, questions largely arisen from new discoveries and observations within the scope of astronomy. ”

“ A view of the general laws governing the Cosmos. The sevenfold division in the system. Real Matter not visible and this always known to the Lodge. Mind the intelligent portion of the Cosmos. In the universal Mind the sevenfold plan of the Cosmos is contained. Evolution proceeds upon the plan in the universal Mind. Periods of Evolution come to an end ”

“ Cosmology and Psychology divide between them the whole domain of man's immediate experience. Cosmology, utilizing not only the data of direct experience, but also the conclusions established by the analytic study of these data in the physical sciences, explores the origin, nature, and destiny of the material universe. Some philosophers include among the data of Cosmology all the phenomena of vegetative life, reserving sentient and rational life for Psychology ”

“ The immeasurable extent of the regions of space being subjected to laws of motion alone, the sidereal portion of the science of the Cosmos is based on the pure and abundant source of mathematical astronomy, as is the terrestrial portion on physics, chemistry, and organic morphology ”

“ The denominations of physical descriptions of the universe, or physical cosmography, which I use indiscriminantely, have been modeled upon those of 'physical descriptions of the earth', that is to say, 'physical geography', terms that have long been in common use. ”

“ In the cosmological, we have taken it for granted that the world of phenomena as it appears to our intuition proceeds from these unknown reciprocal actions of ‘Things.’ Finally, at the conclusion of the Cosmology, demands of the mind were stirred that are to be prospectively satisfied only by means of an insight into that actual nature of things which constitutes what corresponds to the formal conditions of Ontology and Cosmology. ”

“ And these three partial approaches to the reality of the cosmos must eventually become harmonized by the revelatory presentation of religion, philosophy, and cosmology which portrays the triune existence of spirit, mind, and energy proceeding from the Trinity of Paradise and attaining time-space unification within the Deity of the Supreme. ”

“ The exposition of mutually connected facts does not exclude the classification of phenomena according to their rational connection, the generalization of many specialities in the great mass of observations, or the attempt to discover laws. Conceptions of the universe solely based upon reason, and the principles of speculative philosophy, would no doubt assign a still more exalted aim to the science of the Cosmos. I am far from blaming the efforts of others solely because their success has hitherto remained very doubtful. ”

“ The movement being different, the nature of the bodies must also be different; hence the celestial [209] body does not burn or freeze what it touches, or do anything else that pertains to the four elements. [209:1]
And since the Cosmos is a sphere—the zodiac proves that—and in every sphere 'down' means 'towards the centre', for the centre is farthest distant from every point, and heavy things fall 'down' and fall to the earth Cosmos>.
All these things are made by the Gods, ordered by Mind, moved by Soul. About the Gods we have spoken already. ”

“ From the Italian school of philosophy, the expression passed, in this signification, into the language of those early poets p 71 of nature, Parmenides and Empedocles, and from thence into the works of prose writers. We will not here enter into a discussion of the manner in which, according to the Pythagorean views, Philolaus distinguishes between Olympus, Uranus, or the heavens, and Cosmos, or how the same word, used in a plural sense, could be applied to certain heavenly bodies (the planets) revolving round one central focus of the world, or to groups of stars. ”

“ The whole cosmos is a materialized thought of the Creator. This heavy, earthly clod, floating in space, is a dream of God. He made all things out of His consciousness, even as man in his dream consciousness reproduces and vivifies a creation with its creatures.
“‘God first created the earth as an idea. Then He quickened it; energy atoms came into being. He coordinated the atoms into this solid sphere. All its molecules are held together by the will of God. When He withdraws His will, the earth again will disintegrate into energy. Energy will dissolve into consciousness; ”

“ I CAN not more appropriately introduce the Cosmos than by presenting a brief sketch of the life of its illustrious author.* While the name of Alexander von Humboldt is familiar to every one, few, perhaps, are aware of the peculiar circumstances of his scientific career and of the extent of his labors in almost every department of physical knowledge. ”

“ and as our mother-earth is a mere speck in the sunbeam in the illimitable universe, so man himself is but a tiny grain of protoplasm in the perishable framework of organic nature.
Nothing seems to me better adapted than this magnificent cosmological perspective to give us the proper standard and the broad outlook which we need in the solution of the vast enigmas that surround us. It not only clearly indicates the true place of man in nature, but it dissipates the prevalent illusion of man’s supreme ”

“ It has also to deduce the laws of the material world from its first appearances, and, armed with these, it must transport itself from the earth to the true centre of the system, from which its wonderful order and beauty may be contemplated, and revealed to the world. Then these innumerable twinkling points of light, which sparkle in the heavens like so many atoms, become to the eye of reason the stupendous suns and centres of other worlds and systems. ”

“ It is a swift and continuous band, an endless chain, a mighty ligament of light and life and power constantly passing between heaven and earth, and earth and heaven, between sun and planet and planet and sun. These are the countless pathways between suns and stars, the mighty and everlasting highways of eternity which God hath built to span the silent ether of space between suns and worlds, and bind the universe in one harmonious whole. ”

“ If by this superhuman concentration one succeeded in converting or resolving the two cosmoses with all their complexities into sheer ideas, he would then reach the causal world and stand on the borderline of fusion between mind and matter. There one perceives all created things- solids, liquids, gases, electricity, energy, all beings, gods, men, animals, plants, bacteria-as forms of consciousness, just as a man can close his eyes and realize that he exists, even though his body is invisible to his physical eyes and is present only as an idea. ”