The Light of Nature Pursued (Volume 1, P. 2) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: thrown upon us defignedly by education and inftruction and others formed infenfibly by cuftom and example; fome we fall into by habit without intending it, and others we work out for ourfelves by our own care and induftry. But the principal fupply of our ftores comes from Tranflation: upon which though perhaps I may not have a great deat to fay, yet becaufe we mall fina frequent oc- caflon to jnention it hereafter, therefore I fhall make a chapter of it by itfelf. CHAP. XVIII. Translation. WE have taken notice in the chapter on judgement ( 38) of the transferable nature of aflent, and how it pafles from the premhTes to the conclufion: I do not mean while we retain the whole procefs of argumentation in view, for then aflent does not adhere directly to the point concluded on, but only connects with it remotely by the intervening evidence. But daily experience teftifies that conviction will often remain after the grounds of it have flipped out of our thought: whenever we reflect on the thing B 4 provedproved there occurs a judgement of its being true united in the fame aflemblage without aid of any proof to fupport it; and this many times after the proofs are fo far gone out of Our memory that we cannot poffibly recall them. By this channel we are fupplied with many truths commonly reputed felf evident becaufe though we know them affuredly for truths we cannot difcover how we came by that knowledge. In like manner we have ftore of propenfities generally efteemed natu ral becaufe we cannot readily trace them to any other origin than that quality of affecting us affigned by nature to certain ideas. But having fhown how tranflation prevails in fatisfaction as well as aflent there will appear reafon to conclude that we derive our inclinations and moral fenfes through ...