Philosophical and Literary Essays, 1. köide

Front Cover
T. Cadell, London, and W. Creech, Edinburgh., 1792 - 704 pages

From inside the book

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page cciv - Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees : Lives through all life, extends through all extent, Spreads undivided, operates unspent...
Page 66 - ... physical necessity. The same experienced union has the same effect on the mind, whether the united objects be motives, volition, and actions; or figure and motion. We may change the names of things; but their nature and their operation on the understanding never change.
Page 67 - In short, this experimental inference and reasoning concerning the .actions of others enters so much into human life, that no man, while awake, is ever a moment without employing it. Have we not reason, therefore, to affirm that all mankind have always agreed in the doctrine of necessity, according to the foregoing definition and explication of it ? Nor have philosophers ever entertained a different opinion from the people in this particular.
Page 99 - That properly is quantity which is measured by its own kind ; or which of its own nature is capable of being doubled or tripled, without taking in any quantity of a different kind as a measure of it. Improper quantity is that which cannot be...
Page 19 - ... the contrary opinion. The matter, I think, may be accounted for after the following manner. If we examine the operations of body, and the production of effects from their causes, we shall find, that all our. faculties can never carry us farther in our knowledge of this relation, than barely to observe, that particular objects are constantly conjoined together, and that the mind is carried, by a customary transition, from the appearance of one to the belief of the other. But though this...
Page 65 - A prisoner who has neither money nor interest, discovers the impossibility of his escape, as well when he considers the obstinacy of the gaoler, as the walls and bars with which he is surrounded; and, in all attempts for his freedom, chooses rather to work upon the stone and iron of the one, than upon the inflexible nature of the other.
Page 19 - When again they turn their reflections towards the operations of their own minds, and feel no such connexion of the motive and the action ; they are thence apt to suppose, that there is a difference between the effects which result from material force, and those which arise from thought and intelligence.
Page 64 - And with what pretence could we employ our criticism upon any poet or polite author, if we could not pronounce the conduct and sentiments of his actors either natural or unnatural to such characters, and in such circumstances?
Page ccix - It is to this day problematical, whether all the phenomena of the material system be produced by the immediate operation of the First Cause, according to the laws 'which his wisdom determined, or whether subordinate causes are employed by him in the operations of nature ; and, if they be, what their nature, their number, and their different offices...
Page 64 - Where would be the foundation of morals, if particular characters had no certain or determinate power to produce particular sentiments, and if these sentiments had no constant operation on actions...

Bibliographic information