Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind

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William Fessenden, 1813 - 509 pages

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Page 123 - O ! who can hold a fire in his hand By thinking on the frosty Caucasus? Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite By bare imagination of a feast?
Page 75 - That gravity should be innate, inherent and essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum, without the mediation of anything else by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity, that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking can ever fall into it.
Page 259 - And, calmly bent, to servitude conform, Dull as their lakes that slumber in the storm. Heavens ! how unlike their Belgic sires of old! Rough, poor, content, ungovernably bold ; War in each breast and freedom on each brow ; How much unlike the sons of Britain now ! Fired at the sound, my genius spreads her wing, And flies where Britain courts the western spring ; Where lawns extend that scorn Arcadian pride, And brighter streams than famed Hydaspes glide.
Page 508 - But going over the theory of virtue in one's thoughts, talking well, and drawing fine pictures of it, — this is so far from necessarily or certainly conducing to form a habit of it, in him who thus employs himself, that it may harden the mind in a contrary course, and render it gradually more insensible, ie, form a habit of insensibility to all moral considerations.
Page 79 - But this universal and primary opinion of all men is soon destroyed by the slightest philosophy, which teaches us, that nothing can ever be present to the mind but an image or perception, and that the senses are only the inlets, through which these images are conveyed, without being able to produce any immediate intercourse between the mind and the object.
Page 441 - Where shaggy forms o'er ice-built mountains roam, The Muse has broke the twilight gloom To cheer the shivering native's dull abode. And oft, beneath the odorous shade Of Chili's boundless forests laid, She deigns to hear the savage youth repeat, In loose numbers wildly sweet, Their feather-cinctured chiefs, and dusky loves. Her track, where'er the goddess roves, Glory pursue, and generous Shame, The...
Page 441 - And oft, beneath the odorous shade Of Chili's boundless forests laid, She deigns to hear the savage youth repeat In loose numbers wildly sweet Their feather-cinctured chiefs and dusky loves. Her track, where'er the Goddess roves, Glory pursue, and generous Shame, Th' unconquerable Mind, and Freedom's holy flame.
Page 509 - Perception of danger is a natural excitement of passive fear and active caution ; and by being inured to danger, habits of the latter are gradually wrought, at the same time that the former gradually lessens.
Page 471 - Cartes and his followers rejected, and refuted by solid arguments ; but the second part, neither he nor his followers have thought of calling in question ; being persuaded, that it is only a representative image, in the mind, of the external object that we perceive, and not the object itself. And this image, which the Peripatetics called a species, he calls an idea, changing the name only, while he admits the thing.
Page 509 - Perception of distress in others is a natural excitement, passively to pity, and actively to relieve it : but let a man set himself to attend to, inquire out, and relieve distressed persons, and he cannot but grow less and less sensibly affected with the various miseries of life, with which he must become acquainted ; when yet, at the same time, benevolence, considered not as a passion, but as a practical principle of action, will strengthen : and whilst he passively compassionates the distressed...

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