000 02754cam a22003613u 4500
001 78230
003 UtSlPG
005 20260610134819.0
006 m
007 cr n
008 260607r20261920utu|||||o|||||||||||||| d
010 _a20018062
040 _aUtSlPG
041 7 _aen
_2iso639-1
050 4 _aBD
_aQH
100 1 _aBurroughs, John,
_d1837-1921
245 1 0 _aAccepting the universe
264 1 _aSalt Lake City, UT :
_bProject Gutenberg,
_c2026
300 _a1 online resource :
_bmultiple file formats
336 _atext
_btxt
_2rdacontent
337 _acomputer
_bc
_2rdamedia
338 _aonline resource
_bcr
_2rdacarrier
500 _aRelease date is 2026-03-17
508 _aTim Lindell, John Campbell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
520 _aAccepting the Universe by John Burroughs is a collection of essays in naturalism written in the early 20th century. It advances a radical, non-theological optimism that urges trust in an impersonal, law-governed cosmos, treating struggle, waste, and pain as the price and engine of evolution. The work probes Nature’s beauty and terror, rejects anthropomorphic providence and human-centered teleology, and seeks a durable faith grounded in the constitution of things rather than in creeds. The opening of the book sets out this thesis in a preface and the first essays: the universe is, in sum, good and worth accepting, even though its fixed laws and instability produce hardships. The author contrasts Nature’s impartial “Providence” with the comforting but misleading idea of a parental God, arguing that conflict and apparent evil are relative, often disciplinary, and overwhelmingly outweighed by beneficence. He critiques poetic and theological idealizations, proposes Nature as a vast artwork where light and shadow belong to one whole, and insists that each organism and process exists for its own sake, not for man’s use. Through examples—from storms, parasites, and potato blight to seeds, birds, and human history—he shows evolution proceeding by trial and adaptation, with moral and religious ideals arising within Nature, and concludes that clear-eyed acceptance of an impersonal universe offers the soundest basis for faith. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
534 _pOriginally published:
_cNew York: Houghton Mifflin, 1920
653 _aScience
653 _aPhilosophy
653 _aNatural history
653 _aNatural history -- Philosophy
856 4 _uhttps://archive.org/details/acceptingunivers00burr/page/n9/mode/2up
856 4 0 _uhttps://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78230
999 _c118950
_d118950