An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, in Opposition to Sophistry and Scepticism

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A. Kincaid & J. Bell, 1771 - 568 pages

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Page 74 - fair light, And thou enlighten'd earth, so fresh and gay, Ye hills, and dales, ye rivers, woods, and plains, And ye that live and move, fair creatures, tell, Tell, if ye saw, how came I thus, how here?
Page 74 - Tell, if ye saw, how came I thus, how here? Not of myself, by some great Maker then, In goodness and in power pre-eminent : Tell me, how may I know him, how adore, From whom I have that thus I move and live, And feel that I am happier than I know.
Page 505 - I am apt to suspect the negroes and in general all the other species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) to be naturally inferior to the whites.
Page 296 - Where is the harm of my believing, that if I were to fall down yonder precipice, and break my neck, I should be no more a man of this world? My neck, Sir, may be an idea to you, but to me it is a reality, and an important one too. Where is the harm of my believing, that if, in this severe weather...
Page 273 - For philosophy informs us, that every thing, which appears to the mind, is nothing but a perception, and is interrupted, and dependent on the mind ; whereas the vulgar confound perceptions and objects, and attribute a distinct continu'd existence to the very things they feel or see.
Page 330 - A cause is an object precedent and contiguous to another, and so united with it that the idea of the one determines the mind to form the idea of the other, and the impression of the one to form a more lively idea of the other.
Page 364 - That though man in truth is a necessary agent, having all his actions determined by fixed and immutable laws ; yet, this being concealed from him, he acts with the conviction of being a free agent...
Page 262 - We have, it is true, a livelier perception of a friend when we see him, than when we think of him in his absence. But this is not all: every person of a sound mind knows, that in the one case we believe, and are certain, that the object exists, and is present with us; in the other we believe, and are certain, that the object is not present.
Page 75 - What am I? or from whence? For that I am I know, because I think; but whence I came, Or how this frame of mine began to be, What other Being can disclose to me?
Page 365 - I'm sped, If foes, they write, if friends, they read me dead. Seized and tied down to judge, how wretched I! Who can't be silent, and who will not lie: To laugh, were want of goodness and of grace, And to be grave, exceeds all power of face. I sit with sad civility, I read With honest anguish, and an aching head; And drop at last, but in unwilling ears, This saving counsel, — 'Keep your piece nine years.

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