Book 3 : of words. Book 4 : of knowledge and probability

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Clarendon Press, 1894

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Página 393 - Reason is natural revelation, whereby the eternal father of light, and fountain of all knowledge, communicates to mankind that portion of truth which he has laid within the reach of their natural faculties: Revelation is natural reason enlarged by a new set of discoveries communicated by God immediately, which reason vouches the truth of, by the testimony and proofs it gives, that they come from God. So that he that takes away reason, to make way for revelation, puts out the light of both...
Página 390 - ... the inquiry of truth, which is the love-making, or wooing of it ; the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it ; and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it ; is the sovereign good of human nature.
Página 226 - It is evident the mind knows not things immediately, but only by the intervention of the ideas it has of them. Our knowledge therefore is real only so far as there is a conformity between our ideas and the reality of things.
Página 8 - ... might be made known to others. For this purpose nothing was so fit, either for plenty or quickness, as those articulate sounds, which with so much ease and variety he found himself able to make. Thus we may conceive how words, which were by nature so well adapted to that purpose, came to be made use of by men as the signs of their ideas...
Página 191 - 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...
Página 68 - ... we see no chasms, or gaps. All quite down from us the descent is by easy steps, and a continued series of things, that in each remove differ very little one from the other.
Página 391 - I think there is one unerring mark of it, viz. the not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance, than the proofs it is built upon will warrant. Whoever goes beyond this measure of assent, it is plain, receives not truth in the love of it; loves not truth for truth's sake, but for some other by-end.
Página 383 - Because this would be to subvert the principles and foundations of all knowledge, evidence, and assent whatsoever: and there would be left no difference between truth and falsehood, no measures of credible and incredible in the world, if doubtful propositions shall take place before self-evident, and what we certainly know give way to what we may possibly be mistaken in.
Página 22 - When therefore we quit particulars, the generals that rest are only creatures of our own making, their general nature being nothing but the capacity they are put into by the understanding of signifying or representing many particulars. For the signification they have is nothing but a relation that by the mind of man is added to them.
Página 140 - The ends of language, in our discourse with others, being chiefly these three : First, To make known one man's thoughts or ideas to another : Secondly, To do it with as much ease and quickness as is possible : and, Thirdly, Thereby to convey the knowledge of things.

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