[精品]GodtheKnownandGodtheUnknown(已知的上帝和未知的上帝).pdf

God the Known and God the Unknown God the Known and God the Unknown BY SAMUEL BUTLER 1 God the Known and God the Unknown Prefatory Note GOD the Known and God the Unknown first appeared in the form ofa series of articles which were published in The Examiner inMay, June, and July, 1879.Samuel Butler subsequently revisedthe text of his work, presumably with the intention ofrepublishing it, though he never carried the intention intoeffect.In the present edition I have followed his revisedversion almost without deviation.I have, however, retained afew passages which Butler proposed to omit, partly because theyappear to me to render the course of his argument clearer, andpartly because they contain characteristic thoughts andexpressions of which none of his admirers would wish to bedeprived.In the list of Butlers works God the Known and Godthe Unknown follows Life and Habit, which appeared in 1877,and Evolution, Old and New, which was published in May, 1879. It is scarcely necessary to point out that the three works areclosely akin in subject and treatment, and that God the Knownand God the Unknown will gain in interest by being considered inrelation to its predecessors. R.A.STREATFEILD 2 God the Known and God the Unknown CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION MANKIND has ever been ready to discuss matters in the inverseratio of their importance, so that the more closely a question isfelt to touch the hearts of all of us, the more incumbent it isconsidered upon prudent people to profess that it does not exist,t