Items related to Lecture on the Nature and Objects of the Modern Philosophy
Synopsis
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. 1830 edition. Excerpt: ...general improvement and strengthening of our faculties. Now, we learn to reason, in familiarity with the sciences. Let us take an example. When a boy, of good parts, at that peculiar season of life (which most of us can recollect) when the faculties expand themselves almost at once,--who has gone through the usual education of his years, but not yet introduced to the sciences,--is placed, by a judicious tutor, before a volume of geometry; he finds, for the first time, what Reason means. A new world is opened to him. He is acquiring the art of reasoning, and becomes, perhaps for the first time, a reasoning creature. He learns to confine his attention: to think patiently: to perceive how one thing follows from another; he deduces consequences: he follows the reasonings, (whose adamantine chain forms a severe and reali logic, far different from the empty syllogisms of the schools) step by step, through a long train of deductions, till he arrives at the most important truths, from elements which a child may be made to comprehend in an hour. He becomes habituated to thinking: he exults in his expanding powers: he feels his mind, daily, hourly, growing stronger. He carries the faculty, so acquired, to the study of philosophy: he studies with delight, for he comprehends every thing. Science becomes to him a pleasure: knowledge a thing of course. He does more. He carries these faculties into the business of life. Though destined for a profession, in which he will never once have occasion to solve a problem of Geometry or an equation in Algebra he applies his well-earned powers of reasoning to every topic of human inquiry--to matters of every-day interest--to the great interests of society--to his own private affairs, his pursuits, his happiness--to the...
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