The Love Of Truth, Virtue, And The Happiness Of Mankind Are Specious Pretexts, But Not The Inward Principles That Set Divines At Work; Else Why Should They Affect To Abuse Human Reason, To Disparage Natural Religion, To Traduce The Philosophers As They Universally Do?
Doth The Reality Of Sensible Things Consist In Being Perceived? Or, Is It Something Distinct From Their Being Perceived, And That Bears No Relation To The Mind?
Westward The Course Of Empire Takes Its Way; The Four First Acts Already Past, A Fifth Shall Close The Drama With The Day: Time's Noblest Offspring Is The Last.
If We Admit A Thing So Extraordinary As The Creation Of This World, It Should Seem That We Admit Something Strange, And Odd, And New To Human Apprehension, Beyond Any Other Miracle Whatsoever.
Certainly He Who Can Digest A Second Or Third Fluxion Need Not, Methinks, Be Squeamish About Any Point In Divinity.
All That Stock Of Arguments [the Skeptics] Produce To Depreciate Our Faculties, And Make Mankind Appear Ignorant And Low, Are Drawn Principally From This Head, To Wit, That We Are Under An Invincible Blindness As To The True And Real Nature Of Things.
Colour, Figure, Motion, Extension And The Like, Considered Only So Many Sensations In The Mind, Are Perfectly Known, There Being Nothing In Them Which Is Not Perceived. But If They Are Looked On As Notes Or Images, Referred To Things Or Archetypes Existing Without The Mind, Then Are We Involved All In Scepticism.
I Am Apt To Think, If We Knew What It Was To Be An Angel For One Hour, We Should Return To This World, Though It Were To Sit On The Brightest Throne In It, With Vastly More Loathing And Reluctance Than We Would Now Descend Into A Loathsome Dungeon Or Sepulchre.
But The Velocities Of The Velocities - The Second, Third, Fourth, And Fifth Velocities, Etc. - Exceed, If I Mistake Not, All Human Understanding.
The Fawning Courtier And The Surly Squire Often Mean The Same Thing,--each His Own Interest.
If What You Mean By The Word "matter" Be Only The Unknown Support Of Unknown Qualities, It Is No Matter Whether There Is Such A Thing Or No, Since It No Way Concerns Us; And I Do Not See The Advantage There Is In Disputing About What We Know Not What, And We Know Not Why.
Nothing Can Be Plainer, Than That The Motions, Changes, Decays, And Dissolutions, Which We Hourly See Befall Natural Bodies (and Which Is What We Mean By The Course Of Nature), Cannot Possibly Affect An Active, Simple, Uncompounded Substance: Such A Being Therefore Is Indissoluble By The Force Of Nature, That Is To Say, The Soul Of Man Is Naturally Immortal.
