An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

20. All the objects of human reason or enquiry may naturally be divided into two kinds, to wit, _Relations of Ideas_, and _Matters of Fact_. Of the first kind are the sciences o...

28. But we have not yet attained any tolerable satisfaction with regard to the question first proposed. Each solution still gives rise to a new question as difficult as the fore...

34. The passion for philosophy, like that for religion, seems liable to this inconvenience, that, though it aims at the correction of our manners, and extirpation of our vices,...

39. Nothing is more free than the imagination of man; and though it cannot exceed that original stock of ideas furnished by the internal and external senses, it has unlimited po...

48. The great advantage of the mathematical sciences above the moral consists in this, that the ideas of the former, being sensible, are always clear and determinate, the smalle...

58. But to hasten to a conclusion of this argument, which is already drawn out to too great a length: We have sought in vain for an idea of power or necessary connexion in all t...

62. It might reasonably be expected in questions which have been canvassed and disputed with great eagerness, since the first origin of science and philosophy, that the meaning...

75. There is no method of reasoning more common, and yet none more blameable, than, in philosophical disputes, to endeavour the refutation of any hypothesis, by a pretence of it...

86. There is, in Dr. Tillotson's writings, an argument against the _real presence_, which is as concise, and elegant, and strong as any argument can possibly be supposed against...

92. In the foregoing reasoning we have supposed, that the testimony, upon which a miracle is founded, may possibly amount to an entire proof, and that the falsehood of that test...

116. There is not a greater number of philosophical reasonings, displayed upon any subject, than those, which prove the existence of a Deity, and refute the fallacies of _Atheis...

124. It may seem a very extravagant attempt of the sceptics to destroy _reason_ by argument and ratiocination; yet is this the grand scope of all their enquiries and disputes. T...

129. There is, indeed, a more _mitigated_ scepticism or _academical_ philosophy, which may be both durable and useful, and which may, in part, be the result of this Pyrrhonism,...