Walter Terence Stace - Ends Quotes

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It is not likely that science, which is basically the cause of our spiritual troubles, is likely also to produce the cure for them. Also it lies in the nature of science that, though it can teach us the best means for achieving our ends, it can never tell us what ends to pursue.

Walter Terence Stace
Religion can get on with any sort of astronomy, geology, biology, physics. But it cannot get on with a purposeless and meaningless universe. If the scheme of things is purposeless and meaningless, then the life of man is purposeless and meaningless too. Everything is futile, all effort is in the end worthless. A man may, of course, still pursue disconnected ends, money, fame, art, science, and may gain pleasure from them. But his life is hollow at the center. Hence the dissatisfied, disillusioned, restless, spirit of modern man.

Walter Terence Stace
To suppose that the world aims, as some human beings do, at noble ends, is plainly anthropomorphic. And perhaps the chief ground for refusing to admit purpose in nature is just that there is no evidence of it.

Walter Terence Stace
If God does not lie at the end of any telescope, neither does he lie at the end of any syllogism. I can never starting from the natural order prove the divine order. The proof of the divine order must lie, somehow, within itself. It must be its own witness. For it, like the natural order, is complete within itself, self-contained.

Walter Terence Stace
And in the end it is because of mysticism that it is possible to say that no man is an island and that on the contrary every man is a part of the main.

Walter Terence Stace