The Roman Catholic is the religion of the country, but all beliefs are tolerated, and education, now free and compulsory, is making steady progress.
It has been said that the most complete record of the beliefs or opinions of Plato are found in this work.
The natural result of such beliefs was to breed an utter contempt for a violent death, nay even a desire to seek it.
In such beliefs and practices we have, as I have already observed, the essential elements of a regular worship of the dead.
Indeed, we are told that, of all beliefs in the minds of the natives, the belief in ghosts was the most deeply rooted.
The Beliefsof the Maoris concerning the Souls of the Dead 19-37 Sec.
The Beliefs of the Maoris concerning the Souls of the Living 10-19 Sec.
I cannot enter into them now, but must confine myself to my immediate subject, the beliefs of the Polynesians concerning the human soul and the life after death.
As to omens derived from dreams see Elsdon Best, "Omens and Superstitious Beliefsof the Maori," Journal of the Polynesian Society, vol.
These men acted as interpreters to the Russians and supplied them with most of the information which they give in their books concerning the customs and beliefs of the Marquesans.
The belief of a God, so far from having any thing of mystery in it, is of all beliefs the most easy, because it arises to us, as is before observed, out of necessity.
A multiplication of beliefs acts as a division of belief; and in proportion as anything is divided, it is weakened.
The two beliefs can not be held together in the same mind; and he who thinks that he believes both, has thought but little of either.
This is an interesting and correct testimony as to the beliefs of the earlier Quakers, one of whom was Paine's father.
Cromwellian settlers and the Scotch colonists in Ulster; indeed the beliefs of the latter made the Northern Province a miniature Scotland in this respect.
The generation which was born at the same time and under the same planet as the first French Republic was precocious in its criticism of all traditional beliefs and conventions.
This poem Shelley could not have written unless one after another of his own fond beliefs had evaporated, unless his passions for Harriet, for Mary, for Emilia Viviani, had ended in a sorrowful awakening.
Without this destruction, it is safe to say, those beliefs could not have assumed their purest form.
With such beliefs in God and man and sacrifice, with such hopes and opportunities for their world-mission, but also with such a bias back to the material Jerusalem, did Israel pass into exile.
That the Spider should be connected with the origin of the world and man in the several beliefs of the Hindoos, Chululahs, and negroes, races so widely different and separated from one another, is a coincidence most remarkable.
For though the consequences of denial are disastrous if the beliefs are true, yet if they are false, the ill-consequences of belief are almost insignificant.
And similarly with regard to other dependent religious beliefs which usually radiate from the central notion.
It was an argument from the utility of beliefsto their truth; from the fact that certain subjective convictions produced good results, to the correspondence of such convictions with objective reality.
If what is usually understood by "theism" be once granted as a foundation, it is easy to raise thereon a superstructure of further religious beliefs by means of the argument drawn from their adaptability to the higher needs of mankind.
And by a religion in the objective sense, so far as true or false can be predicated of it, we mean a body of beliefs intended to regulate and correct man's subjective religion.
We do not deny that in the case of free assent to beliefs fraught with grave practical consequences, the moral condition of the subject has much to do with the judgments of the intellect.
In other words, conditions that seem to support religious beliefs do not automatically lead to practical experiences of human self-constitution as religious.
These are questions that resonate loudly in today's political discourse and in the beliefs of very many people.
One can further this thought by noticing the so-called bias against the left-hand that is deeply rooted in many languages and the beliefs they express.
If they were, they would certainly "ignore or prune away" manners and beliefs which were not their own.
But I assume that our epics were made for them, while they retained their Northern ideas; on many points very like the ideas, usages, and beliefs of the heathen Scandinavian settlers in Iceland.
The practices and beliefs expurgated from Homer were not "done in a corner" in historic Greece.
The poet could not speak of beliefs and rites which were not in the manners of his people.
But my view is that Achaean society, courtly society at least, had not adopted the beliefs and usages of the conquered races at the time when our epics, which ignore them, were composed.
Homer does not represent the ethical and religious beliefs and usages of a moment in the past.
This is true even of new beliefs in recent events directly made known by present objective consequences or signs, as the snowstorm.
It is allowed by all that there is a multitude of beliefs which we hold tenaciously and on which we are ready to act, which, to the mature mind, wear the appearance of intuitive truths, owing their cogency to nothing beyond themselves.
Some of our beliefs may be found to grow out of and be compounded of a number of introspections.
The reader is doubtless aware that philosophers have still further extended the idea of illusion by seeking to bring under it beliefs which the common sense of mankind has always adopted and never begun to suspect.
Growing individual experience and the enlargement of this by the addition of social experience enable us to frame a number of other beliefs more or less similar to the simple expectations just dealt with.
As we have seen, these beliefs all include much more than the results of the individual's own experience.
It is evident that all the permanent beliefs touched on in this chapter must constitute powerful predispositions with respect to any particular act of perception, insight, introspection, or recollection.
More than this, a little attention to the process by which these compound beliefs arise will disclose the fact that this apparently adequate representation of another has arisen in part by other than logical processes.
Finally, it is agreed on by all that the beliefs we are wont to regard as self-evident are sometimes erroneous.
I need not here discuss what the exact nature of such beliefs is.
But in the case of these fundamental beliefs we have no such criterion, except we adopt some particular philosophic theory, say that of the associationist himself.
And some attempt will be made to determine roughly how far the process of dissolving these substantial beliefs of mankind into airy phantasms may venture to go.
It includes simple modes of expectation, as well as beliefsin single past facts not guaranteed by memory.
She can do this the more successfully, the better she discriminates the common and essential from the individual and local elements of the religious beliefs which she compares.
Who knows whether the faithfulness of individuals here below to their own poor over-beliefs may not actually help God in turn to be more effectively faithful to his own greater tasks?
If it commends itself, then any theological beliefs that may inspire it, in so far forth will stand accredited.
Again, ascetic mortifications and torments may be due to pessimistic feelings about the self, combined with theological beliefs concerning expiation.
Our own more "rational" beliefs are based on evidence exactly similar in nature to that which mystics quote for theirs.
He gives other cases of drunkards' conversions which are purely ethical, containing, as recorded, no theological beliefs whatever.
If disbeliefs can be said to constitute a theology, then the prejudices, instincts, and common sense which I chose as our guides make theological partisans of us whenever they make certain beliefs abhorrent.
Rationalism insists that all our beliefs ought ultimately to find for themselves articulate grounds.
Other critics of a more sober temper in speculation would find in him a Catholic who held the Catholic beliefs with the same slack grasp as the teaching of Luther was held by Lessing or Goethe.
I am sure that if Mr. Chance ever speaks to me about his new beliefs I shall have my feathers well oiled.
We can easily imagine that in this highly developed community there had arisen a spirit of inquiry into prevailing conditions and beliefs in the Church.
And as one after another cherishedbeliefs disappeared, it grew still more daring.
Vasari asserts that Niccola and his pupils worked upon this series of bas-reliefs, setting forth the whole Biblical history and the cycle of Christian beliefs from the creation of the world to the last judgment.
However, there is no lack of similar beliefs among our own people.
Continually we caught glimpses of other fish; and always they were fleeing from death or ravenously seeking to inflict death on the weak.
All the public domain that is used should be used under strictly supervised governmental lease; that is, the lease system should be applied everywhere substantially as it is now applied in the forest.
Each school of mullets or sardines could be told by the queer effect on the water, as of a cloud shadow.
The knowledge of these concrete and detailed beliefs enables us to affirm without hesitation that the general idea of the reincarnation of human beings exists among the Central Australian tribes.
The widespread belief that white men are dead people returned to life is a proof of the existence of beliefs in reincarnation.
If we examine the different items of the folk-lore, traditions, beliefsand customs of the Arunta, we can at first sight hardly discover any ideas that bear upon our subject.
The intimate relation which must exist between socialbeliefs and social functions was quite a sufficient justification for the introduction of this assumption.
The question whether these beliefs may be assumed in the Arunta has been discussed at length, and an affirmative conclusion has been arrived at.
There is yet another series of beliefs leading more directly to the same conclusion.
From the point of view of collective ideas it must always be remembered that it is in the social institutions of a given people and in the whole of their beliefs that we must look for the foundation and confirmation of a given creed.
It is stated that the Urabunna have quite analogous beliefs in reincarnation of ancestors, in their dwelling-places, and other totemic matters.
Survey of the beliefs of the South-Eastern tribes possessing the idea of paternal consanguinity (in the social sense) (pp.
The influence upon kinship of the beliefs and ideas as to procreation appears quite plainly upon an analysis of the concept of consanguinity, and to this we may devote a few words.
Now Spencer and Gillen adduce in several places concrete instances of beliefs which prove beyond doubt that the idea of the reincarnation of human beings actually exists in the Central tribes.
One of these beliefs is the idea of rebirth or reincarnation that we have established above in another way.
Such concrete and detailed accounts of beliefsas those quoted below[598] are very cogent.
This made it easier for Cicero to cast his transcriptions in the form of dialogues, revealing the beliefs of the various schools through the lips of the several interlocutors.
The first Christian sculptors would be masons brought up in pagan gilds, and the gild instincts and traditions had undoubtedly as strong an effect upon their work, on the whole, as any religious beliefs they might possess.
It has now to be observed how far the symbolic fancies of ancient beliefs have left their impress on the grotesque art of our churches.
Doctrinal beliefs were strong and theological differences were frequently bitter.
Among the ancient races of Asia, where the Jewish faith arose, there were strange and sinister beliefs about insects--old Assyrian superstitions, old Babylonian beliefs.
Broad tolerance in the matter of beliefs is necessarily a part of the new ethics.
He will recognize even the value of many superstitions as being very great; and he will understand that any attempt to suddenly change the beliefs of man in any ethical direction must be mischievous.
His special beliefs interested few, his life gave life, his goodness was radiant.
And he is conscious of uttering no original doctrine in this, but only of voicing the beliefs of a few of his literary brethren happily living, and one gloriously dead, [Footnote: Evidently Dickens.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "beliefs" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
