Law of continuity

“ But just as these live in the fruitful results that have accrued from them, just as the glowing sunshine of the departed ardent summer is in the yellow, bending wheat-ear or glows in the cluster, so, in a very solemn sense, 'that which hath been is now' in regard to every life. The great law of continuity makes the present the inheritor of the past. ”

“ The law of continuity means there are no breaks or leaps in the life of a people. Development may hasten or slacken and may cease for a time, but it is always continuous; the law of differentiation means that thoughts and feelings of a people take on new forms in the process of growth."—Mace.
2. History is an evolution—a continuous movement, and causes always precede effects.
3. The historical attitude is this: Ascertainment of facts, interpretation of actions, investigation of motives, but regarding all events as "portions of human life." ”

“ For the Law of Continuity, when rightly interpreted, is never violated in actual fact. There are not really any such bodies as have been termed perfectly hard: and if we approach towards such cases, we must learn the laws of motion which rule them by attending to the Law of Continuity, not by rejecting it. ”

“ All these facts, probabilities, and suggestions, lead to the conviction that continuity is a universal law; that it prevails everywhere, and has prevailed throughout all time; that its present innumerable and intricate threads have been spun forth from the simplest conceivable state of matter and motion, which from the beginning have been subject to a uniform code of law—a code of law growing more complicated with time by the interaction and mutual influence of primitive principles. ”

“ So long as we restrict ourselves to the mere recollection of observed facts, we shall make no progress; but by carefully considering why any force acted in the way it did, under the particular conditions observed, we arrive at a generalization of principle, showing that the force in question is capable of hitherto unexpected applications if we provide the necessary conditions. This is the way in which all advances have been made on the material side, and on the principle of Continuity we may reasonably infer that the same applies to the spiritual side also. ”

“ I agree with this demand for continuity; and I agree also that the claims usually advanced for a spiritual world have not only made no attempt at continuity with known fact, but have even ostentatiously thrown such continuity to the winds. The popular mind has expressly desired something startling, something outside Law and above Nature. ”

“ Nay, we will go farther, and say that to our way of thinking it appears immensely more probable, that things should always have gone on as they go on now, by the operation of the same natural laws, and that specific forms should have been naturally produced, as individuals of a species are produced now, by generation,—rather than that not only repeated acts of specific creation, but any operations totally different from those we witness, should have occurred to interrupt, and as we should judge, to mar, the Law of Continuity. ”

“ Or again, with the authors of "The Unseen Universe," the apologist has constructed elaborate, and certainly impressive, arguments upon the Law of Continuity. But now we may draw nearer. For the first time Science touches Christianity positively on the doctrine of Immortality. ”

“ The accurate statement, therefore, would be that the biological Laws would be continuous in the lower sphere were there anything there for them, not to act upon, but to keep in order. If there is no acting going on, if there is nothing being kept in order, the responsibility does not lie with Continuity. The Law will always be at its post, not only when its services are required, but wherever they are possible. ”

“ I wanted first to convince the reader from well ascertained facts, that the Law contains infinite possibilities, but that this can only be brought out through the operation of the mind of man.
It is here that we find the value of the maxim "Nature unaided fails." The more we consider this maxim and the principle of Unity and Continuity, the clearer it will become, that Limitation is no part of the Law itself, but results only from our own limited comprehension of it ”

“ “Chaos,” said he, “is the first condition. Order is the first law. Continuity is the first reflection. Quietude is the first happiness. ”

“ All the analogies that modern knowledge can bring to bear upon the theory of a future life point to the opinion that the breach of physical continuity is not accompanied by any breach of ethical continuity. ”

“ If, then, facts compel us to admit that this law of restriction is in full operation now, while we are on earth, surely we must admit the possibility of its continuance in a future state of existence, without impugning the wisdom or justice of the Deity? ”

“ No one would be more interested than myself in such discussions under circumstances of guaranteed continuity. But..." Mr. Pelly paused, and the voice laughed. The picture itself remained unmoved.
"Circumstances of guaranteed continuity," it repeated mockingly. "When have you ever had a guarantee of continuity, and from whom? If you were suddenly to find yourself extinct, at any moment, could you logically—could you reasonably—express surprise?—you who had actually passed through an infinity of nonentity before you, at any rate, became a member of Society! ”

“ Suppose a man who has always imagined that death is utter annihilation should in some way suddenly acquire knowledge that an endless existence immediately succeeds the termination of this: what would be the legitimate instructions of his new information? Before we can fairly answer this inquiry, we need to know what relations connect the two states of existence. A knowledge of the law and method and means of man's destiny is more important for his guidance than the mere ascertainment of its duration. ”

“ When we seek to interpret these critical points in the history of the world, such as the origin of life and of man, two roads are open before us. We may emphasize, with the advocates of preformation, the principle of continuity alone ”

“ And to it, as well as to life in the bare physiological sense, the principle of continuity through renewal applies. With the renewal of physical existence goes, in the case of human beings, the re-creation of beliefs, ideals, hopes, happiness, misery, and practices. ”

“ If reason and justice and beneficence have had and do have place in human life and history, does not the principle of continuity require that they do not cease before their fulfilment is achieved? May we not then suppose that personal consciousness, new-born every morning and relinquished every night, may be resumed so long as its great purpose is unfulfilled? The whole process of psychic evolution is a continuous transfer of function from less to more refined, complicated, and specialized vehicles. Our most recent science has opened to us the reality of an invisible world. ”

“ I think it evident that this is the state of affairs which we ought to put before ourselves as the goal of our endeavor. It would seem the only condition which secures a sense of continuity in death, or which does not carry with it some threat of failure or extinction. ”

“ As a law of causation, as well as of consecutive thought, there must be in the order of life (all life) a continuous chain of ideas linking the past to the present, the present to the future, and the future to eternity. ”

“ But the question is, Does this continuity terminate now in the living series, and is there then a break—a sharp, clear discontinuity, and beyond, another realm immeasurably less endowed, known as the realm of not-life? or Does what has been taken for the clear-cut boundary of the vital area, when more deeply searched, reveal the presence of a force at present unknown, which changes not-living into the living, and thus makes all nature an unbroken sequence and a continuous whole? ”

“ It is forever adopting new principles from life at one end, and it always retains old ones from history at the other, which have not yet been absorbed or sloughed off. It will become entirely consistent only when it ceases to grow. ”

“ But the attitude to life, which is even more important, is something that has hardly yet been formulated. And I shall endeavour to give some first rough expression to it.
"The first constituent, then, of the new view is that of continuity. We of the new generation realize that the present is a mere transition from the past into the future; that no event and no moment is isolated; that all things, successive as well as coincident, are bound in a single system. ”

“ It will be necessary, they insist, to take one step at a time, to preserve as closely as possible the principle of continuity, and not to attempt to move further and faster than circumstances and the necessities of the time compel. ”

“ The only evident compulsion which representations exert upon one another is compulsion to submit to the conditions of entrance into the same universe with them—the conditions of continuity, of selfhood, space, and time—under penalty of being excluded. But what this universe shall be is a matter of fact which we cannot decide till we know what representations have submitted to these its sole conditions. The conditions themselves impose no further requirements. In short, the notion that real contingency and ambiguity may be features of the real world is a perfectly unimpeachable hypothesis. ”

“ Not in cold motionlessness consists eternal life, but in eternal movement, in eternal alteration, in incessant change. These are warranties that no state endures forever, not even the unconscious, death. ”

“ Creations, then, there must be, but they must be so small that practically they are no creations. We must have a continuity in discontinuity, and a discontinuity in continuity; that is to say, we can only conceive the help of change at all by the help of flat contradiction in terms. ”

“ CLAUSE XVI Continuity of existence, without break or interruption, is the fundamental idea that needs inculcation, not only among children but among ignorant people generally. And the survival, from savage times, of an inclination to associate a full measure of departed personality with the discarded and decomposing bodily remnant,—under the impression that it will awake and live again at some future day,—should be steadily discouraged. ”

“ More generally expressed the continuity of history is the continuity of matter. It comprises in sum the structure to which every movement in time is subject. It makes up what we call the laws of nature conformably to which whatever is done must be done. But in itself it is inert and impotent. Activity of some sort must penetrate it, if there is to be anything effected. And what is effected reveals, when experimentally understood, the laws as limitations within which the control of any movement is possible. ”

“ But the process by which a man has been led to lay hold of such principles is one thing; their logical position in relation to experience quite another. Our definite recognition of the laws may very well be the result of experience, at the same time that the principle of Continuity is presupposed in our having experience at all. As long as we kept to the ground from which we started, and did not attempt to get beyond the categories of causality and reciprocity, our progress might seem to be easy enough. ”

“ Every history is equally continuous, undisturbed by its beginnings and endings. Each action of time is preceded and followed by everything which precedes and follows it, and yet each action of time begins and ends with its own peculiar and individual precision. In affirming this we are affirming, by means of a particular instance, the metaphysical nature of continuity itself. For by continuity we mean the possibility of precise and definite distinctions. The continuity of a line may be divided at its middle point. ”

“ The becoming of evolution will then appear to us in its true light, as phases of gradual maturation, rounded at intervals by crises of creative discovery. Continuity and discontinuity will thus admit possibility of reconciliation, the one as an aspect of ascent towards the future, the other as an aspect of retrospection after the event. ”

“ No arbitrary condition can, even for one moment, exist, for such a condition would be a denial and an annihilation of law.
Every condition of life is, therefore, bound up in an orderly and harmonious sequence, and the secret and cause of every condition is contained within itself, The law, “Whatsoever a man sows that shall he also reap,” is inscribed in flaming letters upon the portal of Eternity, and none can deny it, none can cheat it, none can escape it. ”

“ The answer is, that we have still proof of the most wonderful provisions for permanence, but permanence for only one phase of a mighty evolution. The only difference is, that in former views of the stability of the system, we considered the mechanism as a fixed, rigid, isolated thing, whereas we are now forced to regard every part of the universe as in a state of change or progress. ”

“ Whatever state was first must have been from eternity, and what had been from eternity could not be changed, but by a cause beginning to act, as it had never acted before, that is, by the voluntary act of some external power. ”

“ Whatever there is that is in harmony with facts now happening here, is to us an unimpeachable evidence that the laws which were governing in those old ages have undergone no depreciation, but are active as ever until now. Then shall I exaggerate if I say that those laws are eternal in duration?
Infinite in influence, eternal in duration, what a magnificent spectacle! In the resistless energy of the motions of the universe is there not omnipotence? ”