Beattie, James (1735-1803)

An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth; in Opposition to Sophistry and Scepticism

Edinburgh

Printed for A. Kincaid & J. Bell. Sold, at London, by E. & C. Dilly

1770

"A metaphysician, exploring the recesses of the human heart, hath just such a chance for finding the truth, as a man with microscopic eyes would have, for, finding the road."

[...]If, while you learned wisdom from the former, your heart exulted within you, and rejoiced to contemplate the sublime and successful efforts of human intellect; perhaps it may now be of use, as a lesson of humility, to have recourse to the latter, and, for a while, to behold the picture of a soul wandering from thought to thought, without knowing where to fix; and from a total want of feeling, or a total ignorance of what it seek, mistaking names for things, verbal distinctions and analogies for real difference and similitude, and the obscure insinuations of a bewildered understanding, puzzled with words, and perverted with theory, for the sentiments of nature, and the dictates of reason. A metaphysician, exploring the recesses of the human heart, hath just such a chance for finding the truth, as a man with microscopic eyes would have, for, finding the road. The latter might amuse himself with contemplating the various mineral strata that are diffused along the expansion of a needle's point, but of the face of nature he could make nothing: he would start back with horror from the caverns yawning between the mountainous grains of sand that lie before him; but the real gulf or mountain he could not see at all.
(III, pp. 481-2)

Uncategorized::Recess Optics::Microscope

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10 entries in ESTC (1770, 1771, 1772, 1773, 1774, 1777, 1778).

Beattie, James. An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth; in Opposition to Sophistry and Scepticism (Edinburgh: A Kincaid & J. Bell, 1770). <Link to ECCO>

Text from corrected and enlarged second edition of 1771. <Link to Google Books>

09/29/2011