Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects ...

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Bell & Bradfute, and W. Blackwood, 1825 - 4 pàgines
 

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Pàgina 167 - If we take in our hand any volume ; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance ; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number ? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence ? No. Commit it then to the flames ; for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion, • SccNoiK [QI DISSERTATION THE PASSIONS.
Pàgina 77 - Suitably to this experience, therefore, we may define a cause to be an object followed by another, and where all the objects, similar to the first, are followed by objects similar to the second.
Pàgina 115 - That no testimony is sufficient " to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such " a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous " than the fact which it endeavours to establish...
Pàgina 83 - The same motives always produce the same actions ; the same events follow from the same causes. Ambition, avarice, self-love, vanity, friendship, generosity, public spirit ; these passions, mixed in various degrees, and distributed through society, have been, from the beginning of the world, and still are, the source of all the actions and enterprises which have ever been observed among mankind.
Pàgina 116 - When anyone tells me, that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable, that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact, which he relates, should really have happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other; and according to the superiority, which I discover, I pronounce my decision, and always reject the greater miracle If the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous, than the event which he relates; then,...
Pàgina 45 - ... approach. This belief is the necessary result of placing the mind in such circumstances. It is an operation of the soul, when we are so situated, as unavoidable as to feel the passion of love, when we receive benefits; or hatred, when we meet with injuries. All these operations are a species of natural instincts, which no reasoning or process of the thought and understanding is able either to produce or to prevent.
Pàgina 393 - There is an universal tendency among mankind to conceive all beings like themselves, and to transfer to every object those qualities with which they are familiarly acquainted, and of which they are intimately conscious.
Pàgina 44 - Custom, then, is the great guide of human life. It is that principle alone which renders our experience useful to us, and makes us expect, for the future, a similar train of events with those which have appeared in the past.
Pàgina 75 - ... is carried by habit, upon the appearance of one event, to expect its usual attendant, and to believe that it will exist. This connexion, therefore, which we feel in the mind, this customary transition of the imagination from one object to its usual attendant, is the sentiment or impression from which we form the idea of power or necessary connexion.
Pàgina 84 - These records of wars, intrigues, factions, and revolutions, are so many collections of experiments, by which the politician or moral philosopher fixes the principles of his science ; in the same manner as the physician or natural philosopher becomes acquainted with the nature of plants, minerals, and other external objects, by the experiments which he forms concerning them.

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