A Discourse of the Baconian Philosophy

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Hughes, 1844 - 178 pages
 

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Page 84 - For the wit and mind of man, if it work upon matter, which is the contemplation of the creatures of God, worketh according to the stuff, and is limited thereby; but if it work upon itself, as the spider worketh his web, then it is endless, and brings forth indeed cobwebs of learning, admirable for the fineness of thread and work, but of no substance or profit.
Page 116 - Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas. How comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer in one word: from experience; in that all our knowledge is founded, and from that it ultimately derives itself.
Page 31 - ... a more ample greatness, a more exact goodness, and a more absolute variety, than can be found in the nature of things. Therefore, because the acts or events of true history have not that magnitude which satisfieth the mind of man, poesy feigneth acts and events greater and more heroical...
Page 31 - The use of this feigned history hath been to give some shadow of satisfaction to the mind of man in those points wherein the nature of things doth deny it, the world being in proportion inferior to the soul...
Page 157 - If the Cause be known only by the effect, we never ought to ascribe to it any qualities beyond what are precisely requisite to produce the effect : Nor can we, by any rules of just reasoning, return back from the cause, and infer other effects from it, beyond those by which alone it is known to us.
Page 84 - she never told her love, but let concealment, like a worm in the bud, feed on her damask cheek. She pined in thought, and with a green and yellow melancholy, she sat like Patience on a monument, smiling at Grief.
Page 127 - What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.
Page 169 - We then feel a new sentiment or impression, to wit, a customary connexion in the thought or imagination between one object and its usual attendant; and this sentiment is the original of that idea which we seek for.
Page 173 - The motion of our body follows upon the command of our will. Of this we are every moment conscious. But the means, by which this is effected ; the energy, by which the will performs so extraordinary an operation ; of this we are so far from being immediately conscious, that it must for ever escape our most diligent enquiry.
Page 165 - And it is certain we here advance a very intelligible proposition at least, if not a true one, when we assert that, after the constant conjunction of two objects— heat and flame, for instance, weight and solidity— we are determined by custom alone to expect the one from the appearance of the other.

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