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Elements of intellectual philosophy (1828)
Elements of intellectual philosophy - 1828 Author:Thomas Cogswell Upham 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: strations in geometry. We call them Primary, because they are the ultimate propositions, into which all reasoning resolves itself, and are necessarily involved a... more »nd implied in all the investigations, which we shall make on the present subject. The first of this class of truths, which will come under consideration, is this; §. 15. There are original and authoritative grounds of belief. Nothing is better known, than that there is a certain state of the mind, which is expressed by the term, Belief. As we find all men acting in reference to it, it is not necessary to enter into any verbal explanation. Nor would it be possible by such explanation to increase the clearness of that notion, which every one is already supposed to entertain. Of this belief, we take it for granted, and hold it to be in the strictest sense true, that there are original and authoritative grounds or sources; meaning by the term, original, that these grounds or sources are involved in the nature of the mind itself, and meaning by the term, authoritative, that this belief is not a matter of chance or choice, but naturally and necessarily results from our mental constitution. Sometimes we can trace the state of the mind, which we term belief, to an affection of the senses, sometimes to that quick, internal perception, which is termed intuition, and at others to human testimony. In all these cases, however, the explanation, which we attempt to give, is limited to a statement of the circumstances, in which the belief arises. But the fact, that belief arises under these circumstances, is ultimate, is a primary law; and being such, it no more admits of explanation, than does the mere feeling itself. And further, this belief may exist as really, and may control us as strongly, when we are unable to give a...« less