Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, Volumes 1-2

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Wells and Lilly, 1821
 

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Page 49 - 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 162 - I behold like a Spanish great galleon and an English man-of-war. Master Coleridge, like the former, was built far higher in learning, solid, but slow in his performances. CVL, with the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and invention.
Page 263 - I beheld his body half wasted away with long expectation and confinement, and felt what kind of sickness of the heart it was which arises from hope deferred. Upon looking nearer, I saw him pale and feverish; in thirty years the western breeze had not once fanned his blood ; he had seen no sun, no moon, in all that time; nor had the voice of friend or kinsman breathed through his lattice. His children But here my heart began to bleed, and I was forced to go on with another part of the portrait.
Page 229 - It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion...
Page 43 - I can discover, are the windows by which light is let into this dark room : for methinks the understanding is not much unlike a closet wholly shut from light, with only some little opening left, to let in external visible resemblances, or ideas of things without : would the pictures coming into such a dark room but stay there, and lie so orderly as to be found upon occasion, it would very much resemble the understanding of a man, in reference to all objects of sight, and the ideas of them.
Page 18 - Here then I find myself absolutely and necessarily determined to live and talk and act like other people in the common affairs of life.
Page 166 - All that we feel of it begins and ends In the small circle of our foes or friends; To all beside as much an empty shade...
Page 71 - One of these is the proposition that any two sides of a triangle are greater than the third side.
Page 285 - 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 ; «. e. form a habit of insensibility to all moral considerations.
Page 182 - There is not a more painful action of the mind than invention; yet in dreams it works with that ease and activity, that we are not sensible when the faculty is employed. For instance, I believe every one, some time or other, dreams that he is reading papers, books, or letters ; in which case the invention prompts so readily, that the mind is imposed upon, and mistakes its own suggestions for the compositions of another.

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