
“Nothing fundamental separates the course of human history from the course of physical history.”
Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998)
Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Ch.1 The Historical Roots of Christianity the Hebrew Prophets, p. 1
Context: History is never antiquated, because humanity is always fundamentally the same. It is always hungry for bread, sweaty with labor, struggling to wrest from nature and hostile men enough to feed its children. The welfare of the mass is always at odds with the selfish force of the strong.
“Nothing fundamental separates the course of human history from the course of physical history.”
Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998)
Part I : The Child's Part in World Reconstruction, p. 4
The Absorbent Mind (1949)
Meditations on the Sacraments (1977), Introduction, p. xi.
Context: Grace is everywhere as an active orientation of all created reality toward God, though God does not owe it to any creature to give it this special orientation. Grace does not happen in isolated instances here and there in an otherwise profane and graceless world. It is legitimate, of course, to speak of grace-events which occur at discrete points in space and time. But then what we are really talking about is the existential and historical acceptance of this grace by human freedom. … Grace itself … is everywhere and always, even though a human being's freedom can sinfully say no to it, just as a human being's freedoms can protest against humankind itself. This immanence of grace in the conscious world always and everywhere does not take away the gratuity of grace, because God's immediacy out of self-giving love is not something anyone can claim as his or her due. The immanence of grace always and everywhere does not make salvation history cease to be history, because history is the acceptance of grace by the historical freedom of human beings and the history of spirit coming ever more to itself in grace.
“804. Antiquity is not always a Mark of Verity.”
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
“Ruins—antique ruins at least—are what is left when history has moved on.”
Yoga For People Who Can't Be Bothered To Do It (1993)
Context: Ruins—antique ruins at least—are what is left when history has moved on. They are no longer at the mercy of history, only of time. (p. 207).
From 1980s onwards, Grunch of Giants (1983)
Source: Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals/On a Supposed Right to Lie Because of Philanthropic Concerns
Interview with Divina Infusino in American Way (15 June 1995)