On this page

• Text (1)

  Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    conviction that the right pursuit of truth would cancel half the evils which afflict humanity . The errors we have mentioned arose in the department of religion alone . What were men doing in philosophy in the mean while ? Disputes about names and forms and essences were involving society in the evils of bloodshed . The seraphic doctor was wasting powers , which even now are a

    marvel to the learned , in treatises on the nature of angels . Some of the Christian fathers were anathematized for hinting the existence of Antipodes . Galileo was consigned to the dungeons of the Inquisition at Rome , and obliged to do penance by repeating the seven penitential psalms once a week for three years , for asserting that the earth moved on its own axis ; while the perspicuous , the most resolute , the marvellous , the angelical , the irrefragable doctors in philosophy were arguing with more heat than light whether 2 x 3 makes 5 or 7 , whether nonentities have qualities , and whether angels can go from end to end without passing through the middle .

    It is easy to despise these follies , and every one can laugh at them : but are we at all times , and on all subjects , wiser ? Is there any one of us who can declare himself free from a perversion as absurd on every point on which he ought to exercise his reason ? To judge from the absurdities which are daily uttered in conversation , and which are so common as to pass often unnoticed , the noble faculty of Reason has as yet received but a very partial cultivation , and is placed in an undue subservience to her lively sister ,

    Imagination , or is set up as a laughing-stock to her mocking rival , Folly . Go into what society you will , especially where there is a numerical majority of the fair sex , and you will hear much said which , to perfected reason , ( if there were such a thing , ) would appear as absurd as the magic jargon of the dark ages , or the senseless assertions of ancient academics on unfathomable subjects . If we go among the poor of a manufacturing district , we are not surprised to find one person venerating the left-leg stocking above the right , or a woman

    dying of the small-pox , with a slice of fat bacon round her throat , or a man bruised by machinery lamenting that he did not take warning when he heard his shoes dancing on the stairs by their own motion : but we are too little aware how absurdities , as real , though not as glaring , pass current in the intercourse of persons comparatively enlightened . We do not allude to superstitions which are prevalent in particular districts , and which , being early instilled by our grandmothers , are apt to remain when we have become ashamed

    of them . It is true , we have heard very sensible young ladies excuse themselves from being married on a Friday ; not that they really suppose one day worse than another , but sad examples are extant , and if any thing should happen , it would be disagreeable that the world should say , and so forth . Such superstitions we leave to find their own way out of the world . It is enough that their believers are half-ashamed of them . It is our purpose to point out the errors of which we are not . ashamed , of which we are not generally aware .

    Who is not apt , on occasion , to assign a multitude of reasons when one will do ? This is a sure sign of weakness in argument . Who , in the possession of power , political or domestic , is not driven to rivet an assertion or a command on the last link of his chain of reasoning ? What gentleman , unless he have gone through a course of logic , does not sometimes quit his hold of a knotty point , and heap incontrovertible assertions on a subject > vhich no one is inclined to dispute ? What youthful lady , growing warm in a discussion on a matter of taste , does not fly from argument to rapture ,

    Untitled Article

    524 Essays on the Jrt of TJnnking ,

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1829, page 524, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2575/page/4/