Lacon; Or, Many Things in Few Words: Addressed to Those Who Think

Voorkant
General Books, 2013 - 128 pagina's
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1836 edition. Excerpt: ..., with all its lame conclusions and libertine consequences, falls a baseless fabric to the ground. Ignorance lies at the bottom of all human knowledge, and the deeper we penetrate, the nearer we arrive unto it. For what do we truly know, or what can we clearly affirm, of any one of hose important things upon which all our reasonings must of necessity be built--time and space, life and death, matter and mind? Of matter' and. of mind, one philosopher has no less absurdly than irrefutably, proved the non-existence of the first, and thousands have attempted to prove the annihilation of the last. Common sense however punishes all depaftures from her, by forcing those who rebel against her, into a desperate war with all facts and experience, and into a civil war still m6re terrible, with each other and with themselves; for we retain both our bodies and our souls, in spite of the skeptics, and find, 'That parts destroyed diminish not the whole, Though Berkley take the body, Hume the soul.' But it is not to be wondered at, that those workmen should blunder who know so little of their tools, and that untenable theories, should be the consequence of building by rules whos principles are erroneous, and with materials, whose properties are not understand; for the tower of Babel is not the only monument of human pride, - that has failed from haman ignorance. Alas! what is man? i Whether he be deprived of that light whicn is from on high, or whether he discard it, a frail and trembling creature; standing on time, that bleak and narrow isthmus between two eternities, he sees nothing but impenetrable darkness on the one hund, and doubt, distrust, and conjecture still more perplexing, on the other. Most gladly would he take an observation, as to...

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