14th Century to the French Revolution, with a Glimpse Into the 19th Century (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1873 edition. Excerpt: ...if that is so, your intelligible world comes soon to an end. If when I shut my eyes I annihilate the intelligible chamber which I see now, I would not give much for the reality of that chamber. If it is sufficient for me to open my eyes in order to create an intelligible world, that world is surely not as good as the one in which our bodies dwe." Theodore replies, --" That is true, Ariste. If you give being to your ideas--if it only depends upon a wink of your eye to annihilate them--the whole thing is as poor as you say it is. But if they are eternal, unchangeable, necessary--in one word, divine--I mean the intelligible reality of which they consist--assuredly they must be much more considerable than this ineflectual, this in itself quite invisible, matter. What Ariste, can you believe that when ou choose, for instance, to think about a circle, you 've the being to the substance of which your idea is formed, an that when you choose to cease to think about it, you annihilaw it? Take care. If it is you who give the being to your ideas, it must be by choosing to think about them. Then I beg to know how you can will to think of a circle, if you have not already some idea out of which to form and to complete it? Can one will anything without knowing it' Can you make something out of nothing?" 'A1-iste answers, --" You convince me, but you do not persuade me. This earth is real. I feel it. When I strike it with my foot, it resists me. That is solid. But that my ideas have any reality independent of my thought--that they are when I do not think about themthis I cannot understand." " I grant that the earth resists your foot," is the answer. " I deny that there is no resistance in...