The Moral Gulph Betwixt Man and the Brute: an Essay

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Macmillan & Company, 1866 - 54 pages
 

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Page 13 - 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. Our observation employed either, about external sensible objects, or about the internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected on by ourselves, is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking. These two are the fountains of knowledge, from whence all the ideas we have, or can...
Page 28 - If it may be doubted, whether beasts compound and enlarge their ideas that way, to any degree: this, I think, I may be positive in, that the power of abstracting is not at all in them; and that the having of general ideas, is that which puts a perfect distinction betwixt man and brutes; and is an excellency which the faculties of brutes do by no means attain to.
Page 47 - ... is owing to our neglect of the wise and prudent means which man ought to find in the just exercise of his faculties for the avoidance of calamity; but with respect to wars, they are the direct and universal consequence of the unrestricted, too commonly of the unbridled, passions and lusts of men. If we go back to a very early period of society, we find a state of things in which, as between one individual and another, no law obtained — a state of things in which the first idea almost of those...

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