The Edinburgh Review: Or Critical Journal, Volume 3

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A. Constable, 1804

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Page 281 - Its most prominent features were, — intrepid and inflexible rectitude ; — a pure and devoted attachment to truth ; — and an entire command (acquired by the unwearied exertions of a long life) over all his passions.
Page 281 - ... perseverance of thought ; and by habits of the most fixed and concentrated attention to his own mental operations; — endowments which, although not the most splendid in the estimation of the multitude, would seem entitled, from the history of science, to rank among the rarest gifts of the mind.
Page 269 - It would be want of candour not to own, that I think there is some merit in what you are pleased to call my philosophy ; but I think it lies chiefly in having called in question the common theory of ideas or images of things in the mind being the only objects of thought; a theory founded on natural prejudices, and so universally received as to be interwoven with the structure of language.
Page 269 - I to give you a detail of what led me to call in question this theory, after I had long held it as self-evident and unquestionable, you would think, as I do, that there was much of chance in the matter. The discovery was the birth of time, not of genius; and Berkeley and Hume did more to bring it to light than the man that hit upon it. I think there is hardly any thing that can be called mine in the philosophy of the mind, which does not follow with ease from the detection of this prejudice.
Page 419 - Life of GEOFFREY CHAUCER, the early English Poet ; including Memoirs of his near Friend and Kinsman, JOHN OF GAUNT, Duke of Lancaster ; with Sketches of the Manners, Opinions, Arts, and Literature of England in the 14th century.
Page 269 - ... uneasiness than the want of a material world, it came into my mind more than forty years ago. to put the question, What evidence have I for this doctrine, that all the objects of my knowledge are ideas in my own mind '! From that time to the present, I have been candidly and impartially, as I think, seeking for the evidence of this principle ; but can find none, excepting the authority of philosophers.
Page 155 - ... there was nothing produced by arbitrary or accidental causes; that no great change, institution, custom, or occurrence, could be ascribed to the character or exertions of an individual, to the temperament or disposition of a nation, to occasional policy, or peculiar wisdom or folly ; every thing, on the contrary, he held, arose spontaneously from the situation of the society...
Page 126 - Ah, knight, thou hast asked a great thing ;' and all who were present were greatly grieved. But the King, who was the most loyal man in the world, bade them not trouble themselves. * It is better...
Page 481 - Hiftory of Man ; with a comparative View of the Structure and Functions of Animated Beings in general.
Page 281 - The studies in which he delighted, were little calculated to draw on him the patronage of the great ; and he was unskilled in the art of courting advancement, by ' fashioning his doctrines to the varying hour.

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