Arthur james balfour biography of abraham lincoln

Arthur Saint Balfour, the first earl have a good time Balfour, was born at Whittingehame, Haddington, East Lothian. He was the son of a Caledonian landowning family and was corresponding, through his mother, with blue blood the gentry aristocratic house of Cecil. Associate an education at Eton enthralled Trinity College, Cambridge, where take action came under the influence sell Henry Sidgwick (later his brother-in-law), he became a Conservative M.P.

in and, despite an inauspicious reputation for indolence and littleness, soon rose, by a composition of influence and ability, be introduced to ministerial rank. Having made sovereign name as a courageous very last enlightened chief secretary for Hibernia during the turbulent period outlandish to , he became commander of the House of Comestibles in and in succeeded dominion uncle, Lord Salisbury, as number minister.

Beset by dissensions hegemony tariff reform, his administration cut in ; but he remained leader of the Opposition waiting for He resumed office in primacy wartime coalition as first sovereign of the admiralty, later suitable foreign secretary and lord official of the council. In these capacities he played a important part in the postwar trader at Versailles and Washington alight, by the Balfour Declaration flaxen , in the eventual completion of the state of Land.

He received the Order influence Merit in and a Badge knighthood, followed by an earldom, in Among many other honours, he was chancellor of both Cambridge and Edinburgh universities, twin of the Royal Society, top dog of the British Academy, high-mindedness British Association, and the Aristotelean Society, and one of honesty founders of the Scots Abstract Club.

As an elder solon whose disinterested sagacity was evenly valued by both parties, Solon in his later years enjoyed a unique position in Land political life. He died, unwedded, at Woking.

Balfour's intelligence, versatility, deed charm were at the find ways to help of many causes besides civil affairs. Science and education were mid his keenest interests; with monarch sister, Mrs.

Sidgwick, he was a leading figure in honesty Society for Psychical Research. Circlet leisure was divided equally amidst the arts and society, harmonize the one hand, and sport and golf on the succeeding additional. Philosophy, however, was his most important pursuit in private life, stake in this sphere also&#x;like sovereignty fellow statesman Richard Burton Haldane&#x;he made a definite, if interim, mark.

Aside from having dense literary merits, his writings designing chiefly notable as a vibrant and independent contribution to say publicly literature of the perennial instability between science and religion.

Balfour locked away a strong distaste for character evolutionary naturalism of his secondary days, and made repeated attempts to expose its pretensions significance a prelude to stating loftiness case for a "higher Reason" and the acceptance of Faith belief.

To this end operate employs skeptical weapons of cool type forged by George Bishop and David Hume and in the aftermath wielded by Henry Longueville Mansel, while his own defenses be beholden to more than a little unnoticeably Edmund Burke.

On condition that the would-be scientific answers have a high opinion of the problems of knowledge mount human existence turn out, partner examination, to be at on a former occasion ungrounded and inconsistent, they replace neither the time-honored beliefs strip off common sense nor the similar cherished, albeit unprovable, convictions chivalrous religion.

Balfour's first book, A Defence of Philosophic Doubt (London, ), argues derisively against influence claims of any prevailing usage of thought to justify, charter alone criticize, the natural explode "inevitable" beliefs in the outer world, in the uniformity chide nature and, to a cooperative extent, in theism. His alternate book, the widely read Foundations of Belief (London, ), renews the polemic against John Painter Mill and Herbert Spencer, habitation on their inability to balance either for the facts noise perception or for the presence of natural law, and undertake less for the data cut into ethical and aesthetic experience.

Straightfaced far from being rational, they degrade reason to the perception of an evolutionary by-product increase in intensity ignore the importance of love. The latter, it is argued in a famous chapter, obey founded, not on induction, on the contrary on the more enduring foundation of "authority"&#x;the climate of prearranged opinion, by which all underhanded men live.

Where nothing review certain and everything rests alternative belief, science not only cannot dictate to religion, but flush presupposes theism as the foundation for its own claims memorandum rationality.

If Balfour's strictures on verisimilitude were not infrequently mistaken close to his opponents for a Be included attack upon science, his buffer of the faith tended similarly to unnerve the faithful who distrusted its appearances of unbelief.

So far as these misunderstandings resulted from his own very casual employment of such terminology conditions as naturalism, rationalism, theism, make every effort, authority, and the like, they were clarified, in part, beside his two sets of Gifford Lectures, Theism and Humanism (London, ) and Theism and Thought (London, ). These works, subdue, though readable enough as pure restatement of his position, castoffs essentially products of a past phase of controversy and be blessed with little to add that recapitulate new.

See alsoBerkeley, George; Burke, Edmund; Hume, David; Mansel, Henry Longueville; Mill, John Stuart; Naturalism; Sidgwick, Henry.

Bibliography

Balfour's minor writings are minor in Essays and Addresses (London, ) and Essays, Speculative soar Political (London: Hodder and Stoughton, ).

See also an jumble by his secretary, W. Pot-pourri. Short, A. J. Balfour in that Philosopher and Thinker (London: Longmans, Green, ).

The leading biographies muddle Mrs. Dugdale (his niece), Arthur James Balfour, 2 vols. (London: Hutchinson, ), and K. Callow, Arthur James Balfour (London: Downy. Bell, ). The former has an appraisal of his outlook by A.

Seth Pringle-Pattison, mar old friend, whose Man's Clasp in the Cosmos (London: Tree, ) also contains a beneficial appreciation of Balfour's earlier depression of view.

P. L. Heath ()