Essays, or discourses, vol. 4 (of 4)

I. The Greek word Paradox, or Paradoxologia, does not properly signify a false or implicatory proposition, but an improbable or incredible one; and therefore, this word is commo...

XXIII. And whether these spots are sooty or smoaky vapours, which arise from the great furnace of the sun, as some think, or are any other different thing; it is clear, that dur...

VI. It is commonly said of Pyrrho, who was by so much the most famous of all the sceptics, that he in a manner obscured the others, by giving his name to the system of universal...

XXV. This is the utmost extent to which the matter of doubting can be carried. But by way of answer to it, I shall reply, that the persuasion we have of being awake when we are...

XLI. I may be told, that the corporeality of Angels has been condemned, and their incorporeality defined, in the second Council of Nice, and the fourth Lateran one. But in the f...

LVII. The second argument, is built on the correspondence of the four humours of the body, with the four Aristotelic elements; that is to say, the blood with the air, the choler...

LXXVI. The Aristotelites, who are great adepts at the easy invention of giving the name of quality, virtue, or faculty, to express the cause they are enquiring after, and by the...

XC. I say again, if in those natural things that are open to our view, and which we touch with our hands every day, there occur a thousand difficulties, that are insuperable to,...

XV. Being tenacious, insolent, and overbearing in argument, is also another means, which, although it is equally base and bad with the beforementioned, is sometimes very efficac...

V. It has not only been observed, that there has been a saving of men and time in sieges, since they have introduced carrying them on by artillery; but it has also been remarked...

XXVIII. The same Alexander, being requested by his friend Perilus to furnish him with a sum of money to portion out his daughters, ordered fifty talents to be delivered to him....

XLV. But the prodigious child, that was born at Lubec in 1721, and died in 1725, exceeded every thing we have hitherto heard of. His name was Christian Henry Heneiken. The relat...

LXIX. But notwithstanding that in such accusations, on account of their being so frequently ill-founded, the hazard of innocence being oppressed by the anguish of the torture be...

XCI. There is no appetite or craving of man can be more irrational, than that, which is directed to an object he can never taste of or enjoy; and such a one, is the desire of ha...

III. Idearia by the banishment of her rival, now becoming triumphant, entertained thoughts of establishing an absolute and despotic sway over her disciples; and to accomplish th...

XXVI. Who judging by general or common principles, would not conclude, that wet hay was much less liable to take fire than dry? But experience teaches us, that by putting togeth...

L. There is a certain delusion, that is very fortunate for the apothecaries, and very fatal to the sick, that is derived from a persuasion in many of these last, that their dise...

LXXV. I am confirmed in the truth of the remark I have just made, by the reflexion, that a diversity of appetites, must undoubtedly proceed from a diversity or alteration of tem...

XI. The Persians, are still more polished than the Turks. They have their colleges and universities, where they study arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, natural and moral philosop...

XXXII. Much less then can we determine the point by physical reasonings. Many have endeavoured to establish, that this inequality bears proportion, to the predominance of the el...