Locke's Conduct of the Understanding

Front Cover
Clarendon Press, 1901 - Education - 136 pages
 

Contents

I
ix
II
3
III
5
IV
6
V
13
VI
15
VII
16
VIII
23
XXIII
50
XXIV
58
XXVI
60
XXVII
61
XXVIII
62
XXIX
64
XXX
66
XXXI
68

IX
26
X
28
XI
29
XII
32
XIII
36
XIV
37
XV
38
XVI
40
XVII
41
XVIII
42
XIX
45
XX
47
XXI
48
XXII
49

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 134 - The commonwealth of learning is not at this time without master-builders, whose mighty designs, in advancing the sciences, will leave lasting monuments to the admiration of posterity : but every one must not hope to be a Boyle or a Sydenham ; and in an age that produces such masters, as the great Huygenius, and the incomparable Mr. Newton...
Page 59 - Truths are not the better nor the worse for their obviousness or difficulty, but their value is to be measured by their usefulness and tendency.
Page 50 - His creatures, our duty to him and our fellow-creatures, and a view of our present and future state, is the comprehension of all other knowledge directed to its true end, ie the honour and veneration of the Creator and the happiness of mankind. This is that noble study which is every man's duty, and every one that can be called a rational creature is capable of.
Page 23 - ... that having got the way of reasoning, which that- study necessarily brings the mind to, they might be able to transfer it to other parts of knowledge as they shall have occasion. For, in all sorts of reasoning, every single argument should be managed as a mathematical demonstration, the connection and dependence of ideas should be followed till the mind is brought to the source on which it bottoms and observes the coherence all along, though, in proofs of probability, one such train is not enough...
Page xi - ... written by incoherent parcels ; and, after long intervals of neglect, resumed again, as my humour or occasions permitted ; and at last, in a retirement, where an attendance on my health gave me leisure, it was brought into that order thou now seest it.
Page 13 - We are born with faculties and powers capable almost of anything, such at least as would carry us farther than can easily be imagined : but it is only the exercise of those powers which gives us ability and skill in anything, and leads us towards perfection.
Page 116 - ... art and formality of disputing, either practising it himself or admiring it in others, unless, instead of an able man, you desire to have him an insignificant wrangler...
Page 54 - ... not, it is not reason to reject them because they are not grown into the ordinary fashion of the country, and every villager doth not know them. Truth, whether in or out of fashion, is the measure of knowledge and the business of the understanding ; whatsoever is besides that, however authorized by consent or recommended by rarity, is nothing but ignorance or something worse.
Page 15 - Nobody is made anything by hearing of rules, or laying them up in his memory; practice must settle the habit of doing without reflecting on the rule, and you may as well hope to make a good painter or musician extempore by a lecture and instruction in the arts of music and painting, as a coherent thinker or strict reasoner by a set of rules, showing him wherein right reasoning consists.
Page 120 - God, which is the first cause ; First, it is good to ask the question Which Job asked of his friends ; " Will you lie for God, as one man will do for another to gratify him ?" For certain it is that God worketh nothing in nature but by second causes ; and if they would have it otherwise believed, it is mere imposture, as it were in favour BOOK 1.

Bibliographic information