The Works of the Late Right Honourable Henry St. John, Lord Viscount Bolingbroke, Volumen8

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Página 207 - We have the ideas of a square, a circle, and equality ; and yet, perhaps, shall never be able to find a circle equal to a square, and certainly know that it is so. We have the ideas of matter and thinking, but possibly shall never be able to know whether any mere material being thinks or no...
Página 207 - We have the ideas of matter and thinking, but possibly shall never be able to know whether any mere material being thinks or no;* it being impossible for us, by the contemplation of our own ideas, without revelation, to discover whether Omnipotency has not given to some systems of matter fitly disposed, a power to perceive and think, or else joined and fixed to matter so disposed a thinking immaterial substance...
Página 276 - The truth is, that we have not in philosophical speculation, in any history except that of the Bible, nor in our own experience, sufficient grounds to establish the doctrine of particular providences, and to reconcile it to that of a general providence, which continues, and directs the course of things in the material and intellectual systems, as these systems were originally constituted by the author of nature.
Página 308 - As in matters of sense, the reason why a thing is visible is not because it is seen, but it is therefore seen because it is visible : so in matters of natural reason and morality, that which is holy and good...
Página 15 - ... should, I do not believe that there ever was a time, when it could be said with truth that the law of nature was imperfectly known, or that it was an incomplete system of morality before the Christian revelation, both of which propositions are roundly advanced by divines, though manifestly false. Dr. Clarke says, in his Evidences of natural and revealed religion, which are often dim, and often weak, that the heathen philosophers were never able to prove and explain clearly and distinctly enough...
Página 5 - Israel, nor their legislator perhaps, knew anything of another life, wherein the crimes committed in this life are to be punished; although he might have learned this doctrine, which was not so much a secret doctrine as it may be presumed that the unity of the Supreme God was, among the Egyptians.
Página 368 - Governor of the universe, in whom we live, and move, and have our being, has been tried, convicted, and condemned, for his government of the world, on the general principles of human justice ; like the governor of a province, or any other inferior magistrate.
Página 239 - Pleasures are the objects of self-love, happiness that of reason. Reason is so far from depriving us of the first, that happiness consists in a series of them: and as this can be neither attained nor enjoyed securely out of society, a due use of our reason makes social and self-love coincide, or even become in effect the same. The condition wherein we are born and bred, the very condition so much complained of, prepares us for this coincidence; the foundation of all human happiness; and our whole...
Página 343 - Nature, is no doubt, and as that may be which supposes these providences exercised in a manner agreeable to these laws. That the world is fitted in many respects to be the habitation of men, or that men are fitted for this habitation, is true. But will it follow, even from the first, that the world therefore was made for the sake of man, any more, than it will follow...
Página 229 - Bolingbroke was attempting, on the one hand, to show that " man is connected by his nature . . . with the whole tribe of animals, and so closely with some of them, that the distance between his intellectual faculties and theirs, which constitutes as really, though not so sensibly, as figure the difference of species, appears, in many instances, small, and would probably appear still less, if we had the means of knowing their motives, as we have of observing their actions.