James Orr

In his own words

The idea of the "Weltanschauung" may be said to have entered prominently into modern thought through the influence of Kant, who derives what he calls the "Weltbegriff" from the second of his Ideas of Pure Reason to which is assigned the function of the systematic connection of all our experiences into a unity of a world-whole (Weltganz). [2] But the thing itself is as old as the dawn of reflection, and is found in a cruder or more advanced form in every religion and philosophy with any pretensions to a historical character. The simplest form in which we meet with it is in the rude, tentative efforts at a general explanation of things in the cosmogonies and theogonies of most ancient religions, the mythological character of which need not blind us to the rational motive which operates in them. [3] With the growth of philosophy, a new type of world-view is developed--that which attempts to explain the universe as a system by the help of some general principle or principles (water, air, number, etc. ), accompanied by the use of terms which imply the conception of an All or Whole of things (ta panta, kosmos--attributed to the Pythagoreans--mundus, universum, etc. ) [4] An example from ancient thought may be given from Lucretius, who, in his famous poem, "De Rerum Natura," proposes "to discourse of the most high system of heaven and the gods, and to open up the first-beginnings of things, out of which nature gives birth to all things and increase and nourishment, and into which nature likewise resolves them back after their destruction.

Quoted verbatim from the library, as an answer would quote it.

What we hold of him

• The Christian View of God and the World

  Classic

Others in the library

• Charles Haddon Spurgeon
• John Calvin
• John Gill
• Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch
• Albert Barnes
• Jonathan Edwards