Let D/EMEA\'s principles be improved and
cultivated: Let us become thoroughly sensible of the weakness,
blindness, and narrow limits of human reason: Let us duly
consider its uncertainty and endless contrarieties, even in
subjects of common life and practice: Let the errors and deceits
of our very senses be set before us; the insuperable difficulties
which attend first principles in all systems; the contradictions
which adhere to the very ideas of matter, cause and effect,
extension, space, time, motion; and in a word, quantity of all
kinds, the object of the only science that can fairly pretend to
any certainty or evidence. When these topics are displayed in
their full light, as they are by some philosophers and almost all
divines; who can retain such confidence in this frail faculty of
reason as to pay any regard to its determinations in points so
sublime, so abstruse, so remote from common life and experience?
When the coherence of the parts of a stone, or even that
composition of parts which renders it extended; when these
familiar objects, I say, are so inexplicable, and contain
circumstances so repugnant and contradictory; with what assurance
can we decide concerning the origin of worlds, or trace their
history from eternity to eternity?
While P/HILO\ pronounced these words, I could observe a
smile in the countenance both of D/EMEA\ and C/LEANTHES\. That of
D/EMEA\ seemed to imply an unreserved satisfaction in the
doctrines delivered: But, in C/LEANTHES\'s features, I could
distinguish an air of finesse; as if he perceived some raillery
or artificial malice in the reasonings of P/HILO\.
Pages:
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44