quote · Legacy record

Man is a reasonable being. Nothing is freer than the imagination. Human body complexity is beyond our comprehension. Liberty is a power of acting or not acting according to the determination of our will. When your opinion leads to absurdities, it is certainly false. Actions are, by their very nature, temporary and perishing. The actions themselves can be blamable, but the person is not answerable to them. The Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but also even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one. Poets…..though liars by profession, always endeavor to give an air of truth to their fictions. Beauty in things exists in the mind, which contemplates them. Everyone has observed how much more dogs are animated when they hunt in a pack, than when they pursue their game apart. We might, perhaps, be at a loss to explain this phenomenon, if we had not experience of a similar in ourselves. Does a man of sense run after every silly tale of hobgoblins or fairies, and canvass particularly the evidence? I never knew anyone that examined and deliberated about nonsense who did not believe it before the end of his enquiries. For the purposes of life, conduct, and society, a little good sense is surely better than all this genius and a little good humor than this extreme sensibility.

Man is a reasonable being. Nothing is freer than the imagination. Human body complexity is beyond our comprehension. Liberty is a power of acting or not acting according to the determination of our will. When your opinion leads to absurdities, it is certainly false. Actions are, by their very nature, temporary and perishing. The actions themselves can be blamable, but the person is not answerable to them. The Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but also even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one. Poets…..though liars by profession, always endeavor to give an air of truth to their fictions. Beauty in things exists in the mind, which contemplates them. Everyone has observed how much more dogs are animated when they hunt in a pack, than when they pursue their game apart. We might, perhaps, be at a loss to explain this phenomenon, if we had not experience of a similar in ourselves. Does a man of sense run after every silly tale of hobgoblins or fairies, and canvass particularly the evidence? I never knew anyone that examined and deliberated about nonsense who did not believe it before the end of his enquiries. For the purposes of life, conduct, and society, a little good sense is surely better than all this genius and a little good humor than this extreme sensibility.

Approximate author period: c. 1743 AD · early modern