The procedure, extent, and limits of human understanding / [Anon].

  • Browne, Peter, approximately 1666-1735.
Date:
1729
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The procedure, extent, and limits of human understanding / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    peration of the Intellect. We are not furnifhed with any Innate Ideas of things material or im¬ material ; nor are we endued with a Faculty or Difpofition of forming Purely Intellectual Ideas or Conceptions independent of all Senla- tion : Much lefs has the human Soul a Power of railing up to itfelf Ideas out of Nothing, which is a kind of Creation ; or of attaining any Fir(l Principles exclufive of all Illation or confequential Deduction from Ideas of Material Objefts ; without which the Mind of Man, during its Union with the Body, could never have arrived even to a Confcioufnefi of its own Operations or Exiftence. Daily Experience fhews us that as far as Perfons are from their firffc Infancy deprived of any of their Senfes, they are lo far imperfect in their Intellectuals. What a vaft degree of Knowledge do we find cut off together with that one Senfe of Hearing ? Take away the Sight likewile, and then conlider how limited and confin'd the Op erations of the Intellect muft be ? If after this you remove from a Man all Pafte and Smelling, and if he hath no Ideas left for the Mind to work upon but thole of his Feeling ; how far would he differ from the fenfitive Plant F The Mind in fuch cafe would not be able to infer the bare Exiftence of any thing external to it but what was Felt ; and if it were poflible for the Man to have Jnimal Life without Feeling., he would be as utterly f- void