Reid, Thomas (1710-1796)

Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man

Edinburgh and London

John Bell, and G.G.J. & J. Robinson

1785

"I say, when we consider such extravagancies of many of the most acute writers on this subject, we may be apt to think the whole to be only a dream of fanciful men, who have entangled themselves in cobwebs spun out of their own brain."

When we find Philosophers maintaining that there is no heat in the fire, nor colour in the rainbow: When we find the gravest Philosophers, from Des Cartes down to Bishop Berkeley, mustering up arguments to prove the existence of a material world, and unable to find any that will bear examination: When we find Bishop Berkeley and Mr Hume, the acutest Metaphysicians of the age, maintaining that there is no such thing as matter in the universe: That sun, moon, and stars, the earth which we inhabit, our own bodies, and those of our friends, are only ideas in our minds, and have no existence but in thought: When we find the last maintaining that there is neither body nor mind; nothing in nature but ideas and impressions, without any substance on which they are impressed: That there is no certainty, nor indeed probability, even in mathematical axioms: I say, when we consider such extravagancies of many of the most acute writers on this subject, we may be apt to think the whole to be only a dream of fanciful men, who have entangled themselves in cobwebs spun out of their own brain. But we ought to consider, that the more closely and ingeniously men reason from false principles, the more absurdities they will be led into; and when such absurdities help to bring to light the false principles from which they are drawn, they may be the more easily forgiven.
(I.vi, p. 66)

Uncategorized::Cobweb

Reading

4 entries in ESTC (1785, 1786, 1790, 1793).

See Thomas Reid, Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (Edinburgh and London: Printed for John Bell, and G.G.J. & J. Robinson, 1785). <Link to Google Books>

03/01/2012