An Anniversary Discourse, Delivered Before the New York Historical Society, Dec. 7, 1818 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1818. Excerpt: ... on its first appearance with a good deal of ridicule; it was fully established, during his own life, by the case of a person who was born blind, and restored to sight by an operation; and all subsequent reasoning has tended to confirm his doctrine. It is to be observed, to the credit of the Edinburgh Reviewers, that they rarely pass by an opportunity of paying honour to Berkeley's genius. The most singular instance of this remarkable man's talent for evolving great thoughts and grand principles from ordinary subjects, is his " Siris, or a Chain of Philosophical Reflections and Inquiries, cpncerning the virtues of Tar-water." This is, indeed, says his ingenious biographer, in the Biographia Britannica, a chain which, like that of the poet, reaches from earth to heaven, conducting the reader by an almost insensible gradation from the phenomena of tar-water, through the depths of the ancient philosophy, to the sublimest mystery of the Christian religion. Berkeley thought with Bacon, that truth and goodness are one, differing but as the seal and the print, and in his constant endeavour to keep this connexion in view, he often hazarded what may seem wild theories or too subtile refinements. His mathematical speculations are also unique in their way. His objections o the doctrine of fluxions are considered, by mathematicians, as having been fully refuted, and, doubtless, this is the fact in a mathematical view of the controversy; but the metaphysical difficulties which he has raised have never been satisfactorily answered, and perhaps cannot be, until we obtain some deeper insight into the principles of knowledge than any that the present systems of intellectual philosophy afford. Be that as it may, certainly there is scarcely any similar instance of ingenious ...