Selected quad for the lemma: reason_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
reason_n	angle_n	equal_a	side_n	2,221	5	9.5367	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A42833	The vanity of dogmatizing, or, Confidence in opinions manifested in a discourse of the shortness and uncertainty of our knowledge, and its causes : with some reflexions on peripateticism, and an apology for philosophy / by Jos. Glanvill ...; Scepsis scientifica	Glanvill, Joseph, 1636-1680.	1661 (1661)	Wing G834; ESTC R3090	94,173	290

inlarg'd from the prison of the womb we live we grow and give being to our like we see we hear and outward objects affect our other senses we understand we will we imagine and remember and yet know no more of the immediate reasons of most of these common functions then those little Embryo Anchorites We breath we talk we move while we are ignorant of the manner of these vital performances The Dogmatist knows not how he moves his finger nor by what art or method he turns his tongue in his vocal expressions New parts are added to our substance to supply our continual decayings and as we dye we are born daily nor can we give a certain account how the aliment is so prepared for nutrition or by what mechanism it is so regularly distributed the turning of it into chyle by the stomachs heat is a general and unsatisfying solution We love we hate we joy we grieve passions annoy us and our minds are disturb'd by those corporal aestuations Nor yet can we tell how these should reach our unbodyed selves or how the Soul should be affected by these heterogeneous agitations We lay us down to sleep away our diurnal cares night shuts up the Senses windows the mind contracts into the Brains centre We live in death and lye as in the grave Now we know nothing nor can our waking thoughts inform us who is Morpheus and what that leaden Key that locks us up within our senseless Cels There 's a difficulty that pincheth nor will it easily be resolved The Soul is awake and solicited by external motions for some of them reach the perceptive region in the most silent repose and obscurity of night What is 't then that prevents our Sensations or if we do perceive how is 't that we know it not But we Dream see Visions converse with Chimaera's the one half of our lives is a Romance a fiction We retain a catch of those pretty stories and our awakened imagination smiles in the recollection Nor yet can our most severe inquiries finde what did so abuse us or shew the nature and manner of these nocturnal illusions When we puzzle our selves in the disquisition we do but dream and every Hypothesis is a phancy Our most industrious conceits are but like their object and as uncertain as those of midnight Thus when some dayes and nights have gone over us the stroak of Fate concludes the number of our pulses we take our leave of the Sun and Moon and bid mortality adieu The vital flame is extinct the Soul retires into another world and the body to dwell with dust Nor doth the last Scene yield us any more satisfaction in our autography for we are as ignorant how the soul leaves the light as how it first came into it we know as little how the union is dissolved that is the chain of the so differing subsistencies that compound us as how it first commenced This then is the creature that so pretends to knowledge and that makes such a noise and bustle for Opinions The instruction of Delphos may shame such confidents into modesty and till we have learn't that honest adviso though from hell ΓΝΩΘΙ ΣΕΑΥΤΟΝ Confidence is arrogance and Dogmatizing unreasonable presuming I doubt not but the opinionative resolver thinks all these easie Knowables and the Theories here accounted Mysteries are to him Revelations But let him suspend that conclusion till he hath weigh'd the considerations hereof which the Discourse it self will present him with and if he can untie those knots he is able to teach all humanity and will do well to oblige mankinde by his informations I had thought here to have shut up my Preface being sensible of the taedium of long praeliminaries But lest the Ingenious stumble at my threshold and take offence at the seemingly disproportionate excess which I ascribe to Adam's senses I 'le subjoyn a word to prevent the scruple First then for those that go the way of the Allegorie and assert pre-existence I 'm secure enough from their dissatisfaction For that the aetherial Adam could easily sense the most tender touches upon his passive vehicle and so had a clear and full perception of objects which we since plung'd into the grosser Hyle are not at all or but a little aware of can be no doubt in their Hypothesis Nor can there as great a difference be supposed between the senses of eighty and those of twenty between the Opticks of the blind Bat and perspicacious Eagle as there was between those pure un-eclipsed Sensations and these of our now-embodyed muddied Sensitive Now that the prae-existent Adam could so advantageously form his vehicle as to receive better information from the most distant objects than we by the most helpful Telescopes will be no difficult admission to the friends of the Allegory So that what may seem a meer hyperbolical and fanciful display to the Sons of the letter to the Allegorists will be but a defective representation of literal realities And I cannot be obnoxious to their censure but for my coming short in the description But I am like more dangerously to be beset by them that go the way of the plain and 't will be thought somewhat hard to verifie my Hypothesis of the literal Adam Indeed there is difficulty in the Mechanical Defence and Dioptrical impugnations are somewhat formidable For unless the constitution of Adam's Organs was diverse from ours and from those of his fallen self it will to some seem impossible that he should command distant objects by natural as we do by artificial advantages Since those removed bodies of Sun and Stars in which I instance could form but minute angles in Adam's Retina and such as were vastly different from those they form in ours assisted by a Telescope So that granting Adam's eye had no greater Diametrical wideness of the pupil no greater distance from the Cornea to the Retiformis and no more filaments of the Optick nerves of which the tunica Retina is woven than we the unmeasurable odds of Sensitive perfections which I assign him will be conceiv'd mechanically impossible These difficulties may seem irresistibly pressing and incapable of a satisfactory solution But I propound it to the consideration of the Ingenious Objectors whether these supposed Organical defects might not have been supplyed in our unfallen Protoplast by the vast perfections of his Animadversive and some other advantageous circumstances So that though it be granted that an object at the distance of the Stars could not form in the eye of Adam any angles as wide as those it forms by the help of a Tube yet I think my Hypothesis may stand unshaken For suppose two Eyes of an equal and like figure in the same distance from an object so that it forms equal angles in both It may come to pass by other reasons that one of these Eyes shall see this object bigger then the other yea if the difference of the reasons on both sides be so much greater

one Eye shall see it clearly and the other not at all For let one of these eyes be placed in an old body or in a body deprived quite or in a great measure of those spirits which are allowed the Instruments of sight or of the due egress and regress of them in their natural courses and channels and let the other have a body of a clean contrary quality or let the soul that actuates one of the said eyes be indued with an higher faculty of Animadversion I mean with a greater degree of the Animadversive ability than the soul hath that actuates the other In either of these cases the fore-mention'd difformity of vision will fall out in the same uniform case of Dioptrical advantages For a little angle made in the Eye will make as discernible an impression to a Soul of a greater Animadversive power and assisted by more and meeter instruments of sight as a greater angle can make to a soul of a less power and destitute of those other Instruments which are as necessary to sight as those Dioptrical conveniencies So that grant that the object set at the same distance made angles in the eye of Adam no wider than those it formes in ours yet that which we discern not might have been seen by him having more and better spirits and being endued with a stronger Animadversive according to mine Hypothesis For there is the same proportion between a great power and a little help or a little Angle which is between a small power and a great help or a great Angle If all this satisfie not I begg from the ingenious the favour of this consideration That some grains must be allow'd to a rhetorical display which will not bear the rigour of a critical severity But whether this mine Hypothesis stand or fall my Discourse is not at all concerned And I am not so fond of my conjectures but that I can lay them down at the feet of a convictive opposition To the Learned Author of the Eloquent and Ingenious Vanity of DOGMATIZING POets are but Libe'lers I implore no Muse Parnassian praise is an abuse Call up the Spirit of Philosophy Your worth 's disgrac't by Poetry Summon Des-Cartes Plato Socrates Let this great Triad speak your praise Other Encomiasts that attempt set-forth Their own defects and not your worth As if a Chamber-light should dare essay To gloss the beauty of the day He that thinks fully to describe it dreams You 're only seen by your own beams And only Eagle-eyes can bear that light Your strength and lustre blindes weak sight Let pedants quarrel with th' light that detects Their belov'd vanities and defects And let the Bat assoon as day 's begun Commence a suit against the Sun Let reprehended Dogmatizers stamp And the scorch't Moore curse Heavens lamp While nobler souls that understand what 's writ Are debtors to your strength and wit You have remov'd the old Antipathy 'Tween Rhetorick and Philosophy And in your Book have cloath'd Socratick sense In Demosthenian Eloquence Yo 've smooth'd the Satyr and the wanton have Reform'd and made Rhetorick grave And since your Pen hath thus oblig'd them both 'T is fit they club t' express your worth H. Darsy Esq To his Worthy Friend Mr. IOSEPH GLANVILL Upon the Vanity of DOGMATIZING in Philosophy displayed in his Ingenious Book NO controversies do me please Unless they do contend for Peace Nor scarce a demonstration But such as yours which proves there 's none Doubful I liv'd and doubtful die Thus ΑΥΤΟΣ gave Ε'ΦΗ the lye And with his own more aged Criticks Expung'd his Youthful Analyticks To make my Shrift that certain I Am only of Uncertainty Is no less glorious then due After the Stagirite and You I am absolved if the Hand Of great Apollo's Priest may stand You have made Ignorance a Boast Pride hath its ancient channel lost Like Arethusa only found By those that follow 't under ground Title your Book The Works of MAN The Index of the Vatican Call it Arts Encyclopaedy The Universal Pansophy The State of all the Questions Since Peter Lumbard solv'd at once Ignorance in a learned dress Which Volumes teach but not profess The Learning which all Ages knew Being Epitomiz'd by you You teach us doubting and no more Do Libraries turn'd o're and o're Take up the Folio that comes next 'T will prove a Comment on your Text And the Quotation would be good If BODLEY in your Margin stood A. Borfet M. A. TO HIS Ingenious Friend the Author on his Vanity of DOGMATIZING LEt vaunting Knowledge now strike sail And unto modest Ign'rance vail Our firmest Science when all 's done Is nought but bold Opinion He that hath conquer'd every Art Th' Encyclopaedy all by heart Is but some few conjectures better Than he that cannot read a letter If any certainty there be 'T is this that there 's no certaintie Reason's a draught that do's display And cast its aspects ev'ry way It do's acknowledge no back parts 'T is fac'd like Ianus and regard's Opposite sides what one frowns on T'other face sweetly smiles upon Then may the Sciolist hereby Correct his Metoposcopy Let him e're censure reason found And view her lineaments all round And since that Science he has none Let him with you his nescience owne Weakness acknowledged is best And imperfection when confest Meek and unboasting Ignorance Is but a single impotence But when 't is clad in high profession 'T is then a double imperfection A silly Ape struttingly drest Would but appear the greater jest But your example teacheth us To become less ridiculous He that would learn but what you show The narrow bounds of what men know And would but take a serious view Of the foundations with you He 'd scarce his confidence adventure On bottomes which are so unsure In disquisitions first gust It would be Shipwrackt sunk and lost P. H. READER That the Author may not be accountable for more faults then his own he desires thee to correct or at least to take notice of these Typographical mistakes some of which are less considerable but others if unobserv'd may disturb the sense and render the meaning less obvious thou art therefore requested to exercise thine ingenuity in pardoning the Printer and thy justice in doing right to the Author ERRATA Page line read 20. 5. unite 22. 2. apprehenders 24. 9. spirits 25. 7. spontaneous 27. 7. principles and. 28. 27. motions 29. 21. conceive it 41. 10. considerations 42. 11. composition 60. 6. makes 67. 16. and our 70. 12. of reason 99. 25. mad that 102. 5. be what 103. 26. of 113. 9. cousenage 129. 20. the world 140. 1. the best Books newly published A perfect History of The Civil Warrs of Great Brittain and Ireland by an Impartial pen in folio Britannia Baconica or the Natural Rarities of England Scotland and Wales as they are to be found in every Shire in octavo The Vanity of DOGMATIZING OR Confidence in Opinions CHAP. I.