Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	speak_v	true_a	word_n	8,834	5	4.4618	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A49423	A letter about liberty and necessity written to the Duke of Newcastle / by Thomas Hobbes. With observations upon it by a learned Prelate of the Church of England lately deceased.	Hobbes, Thomas, 1588-1679.; Laney, Benjamin, 1591-1675. Observations upon a letter of Mr. T. Hobbs to the Duke of Newcastle.	1676 (1676)	Wing L343; ESTC R14544	24,278	120

to call it let Reflexion be judge As when a man hath a good seat for a House all materials workmen and mony to defray the charges he may and commonly doth use to say He hath all things requisite and needful to build a House and then too when his Will is yet suspended and unresolved whether to use them or not Therefore your Self or if you will Reflexion being judge you have clapt the Nonsense upon your own head But enough of the Points let us see if we can mend our selves with the Reasons of them REASONS Wipe your Eyes I beseech you for never were there such Reasons seen before such Mysteries discovered For the first Point yea for five of the eight Points the Reasons are That they have no Reasons For he sayes they cannot be prov'd but by Reflexion and in that he speaks but truth for 't is sure no reason or proof can be made of the signification and use of Words which is all that the first five Points have blest us with But though he said true in saying no Reasons could be given yet he said not well in promising Reasons when he puts us off with Reflexions Of the five first points himself confesses that no Reasons can be given and of the two next if he will not confess so too he shall be compelled For they are Arguments and contain in effect and substance Syllogisms which are incapable of Reasons for who ever went about to give or could give Reason of a whole Syllogism if the Reasons presented belong to any part of the Syllogism in which case only Reasons can be given Let him but say to which part of his Points his Reason belongs and I will do him so much reason as to acknowledge it In the mean time he stands upon his good Behaviour whether these two points shall be allowed to have any more reason than the five former And for the eighth and last point which is all the hope that is left us to be a point of reason his Reason is That as he said before so now he sayes again and whatsoever Mr. Hobbs is pleased to say twice over you may be assur'd is true This is the summe of his Reasons in the most sober and favourable construction I can make of them yet because under the title of the seventh Reason some new matter is alledg'd that was not spoken of before I shall say something to that too He layes down a Proposition more general than the question That all Events never so casual have necessary Causes If I should grant this yet the voluntary Agent may be free though the work which he produces be necessary This I shall shew in the Instances which are brought to prove this Proposition The first is of the Chance of a Die I confess that though it be very casual to the Caster yet it doth necessarily come to pass upon such postures and motions of the Hand and Die as happen'd to meet together at that time yet I say too that as to the Caster of the Die it was not necessary because he had a double power over that Chance to have hinder'd it if he pleas'd for either he might not have thrown the Dice at all or he might have so ordered the motion and posture of his hand that could have caused another Chance Yea more desiring to avoid controversies as much as Mr. Hobbs doth to make them I grant also that there is a time when and a respect wherein voluntary Agents are in the same condition with natural and do act necessarily For not onely a natural Agent solely and singly doth work his proper natural Effect necessarily as the Fire necessarily heats but also when they are in conjunction together as it were a corporation of Causes whether that be casual as the motions and posture of the hand meeting with suitable postures with the Die and the Table do produce necessarily a certain chance or whether it be artificial as the Medicine compounded of several Drugs do necessarily produce a common Effect beyond the vertue of their particular natures apart which belongs to them onely in that conjunction and society of operation So likewise a voluntary Agent constantly resolv'd and actually cooperating with other sufficient causes doth as necessarily produce the Effect as any natural Agent working either alone or in conjunction and society So as in this case if Mr. Hobbs seeks for an Adversary I assure my self he will find none and if he thinks he hath found a Truth 't is but such as was never lost But when we affirm voluntary Agents to be free from necessity in acting we look upon them in another state and condition for they act not like natural Agents whose work immediately follows and flows from their Being but have a progressive operation that is before any thing beside their Being they deliberate resolve and fall to execution and there is a time for all these allow'd And though when they are come to that perfect state and progress that they have pass'd the irrevocable resolv'd Will they act as necessarily as natural Agents do yet in their imperfect state that is from their first Deliberation to their last constant Resolution they are absolutely free to do or not to do In which case alone we assert the liberty of voluntary Agents against which nothing either is or can be prov'd by the instance of the chance of a Die 2. And for the other instance of the Weather That whatsoever comes to pass rain or not rain it comes so to pass necessarily I answer first that this is impertinent to the question concerning the liberty of voluntary Agents who have no operation or concurrence to the event of Weather And secondly the reason that is us'd to prove that necessary is insufficient in many respects as because it is necessary that one of the two must happen either rain or no rain therefore that which doth happen comes to pass necessarily My first reason is because the truth of a Disjunctive Proposition as this is it must rain or not rain consists in disjunctione partium and not in disjunctis partibus for when you resolve this Proposition into two Categoricks it shall rain for one and it shall not rain for another which resolution the event will make as the nature so the truth of the Proposition is changed For when the Event hath turned the Disjunctive Proposition into a Categorick as that it rains it cannot partake of that Necessity which consisted onely in the Disjunctive And to make this plain I shall quit your Instance with another Suppose I am confin'd to live within the walls of London so as it is now necessary for me either to live in Cheap-side or in some other part of the City yet am I not ty'd by that confinement to London to any one place if I were ty'd and necessitated to any one place it must be either to that place I chuse to live in or to that I do not

persuade me that the same Water come out of two distinct Fountains 2. Because nothing can go before it self and he tha● loves any thing because he hath reason to think it good mus● of necessity first think it to be so 3. If Thinking and Loving were all one then to think a thing to be evil and to love it is all one too For if the Acts themselves be not all one the Object that is the Good cannot make them so But he will say If a man reflects i. e. if he mark it he that doth the one doth the other too and they go always together and then why not all one 1. I will tell you why and I find it by Reflection too that he that speaks doth always open his Mouth and yet they are not all one The Needle also and the Thred go together and yet not all one They that first told us of Hippocentaures certain Creatures that are half Men and half Beasts I believe found them but by Reflection too For the Barbarians when they first saw Men upon the backs of Beasts so near together thought them to be but one Creature Just so to make Loving and Thinking all one because he sees them together is one of Mr. Hobbs's Hippocentaures for he hath a Herd of them in this little Copse As that Spontaneous and Voluntary are all one that Deliberation and Alternate Hope and Fear are all one that to make an end of Deliberation and to be Free is all one that Sufficient and Necessary is all one that to be necessarily of some Cause and to be necessitated is all one In all these to believe them or not to believe them I hope will be all one too 2. As they are not the same though they go together so they cannot be the same because they go not together I mean necessarily For first there may be thinking of a thing good without loving it a thing too too well known that men act contrary to their knowledge Video meliora probóque Deteriora sequor Secondly there may be a loving of that which they do not think and judge to be good because Love many times embraces the good that Sensuality offers which is contrary to that good which serious thinking commends And I make a question whether every thing that loves can think also and judge For I know that an Ass loves Provender yet I would give somewhat to know what he thinks for all that which I would not if they were all one But it may be I may wrong the poor Ass also to say he cannot think for there be some Philosophers so charitable to Beasts as to say they can reason and discourse Well if I have wrong'd the Ass I will make him amends and say that if he can think he can reflect too and if he can do that he may be one of our new Philosophers that shall find out many Truths that Aristotle never knew and particularly shall see plainly that which never a Philosopher of them all did see that to think a thing to be good and to love it is all one For that is the first benefit of Reflection to see that which is not 2. The next is not to see that which is as that Nunc stans is nothing or signifies nothing of Eternity If Mr. Hobbs his meaning be that those words do not clearly and fully express what Eternity is it is so vulgar a Truth as well for all things that be Infinite as this and for all words that can be invented by Man as well as these that he needed not the help of this rare Invention to discover it But if his meaning be that by those Terms Nunc stans an imperfect knowledge of Eternity such as Infinite things are capable of cannot be known namely that which consists in denying and removing such Qualities and Affections from it as belong to finite things he is very little beholden to his Reflection if it will not let him see so much which is all that any man can desire or hope to see of Infinite things And that so much may be seen of Eternity by Nunc stans I shall desire him to forbear reflecting upon himself that is upon one that deceives him and reflect upon the meaning of the Terms that use them when Eternity is said to be Nunc it is to remove from it praeteritum futurum prius posterius which are parts of Time that is finite therefore they say that all times are present with the Eternal at once And it is likewise called Nunc stans to remove from it a Succession or Motion of part after part which belongs onely to Time that is finite for that to which any thing is added must needs be finite though you adde a thousand thousand and and after that ten thousand times as many more without stint you can never make it Infinitum or Aeternum And therefore to remove from Eternity these finite Conceptions the Terms of Nunc stans are not unfitly us'd for that purpose and for more knowledge of Eternity than that it was never in any mans purpose to use them If your Reflection would not let you see this I am afraid that though it make you quick at seeing some things that no body else can see yet in that otherwhile it takes away from you the sight of that which every body sees I am afraid I say it is not good for the eye-sight I conclude therefore without thinking of any other revenge for the Nonsense and Contradiction and the Tityres and Tu patulaes and such gear as Mr. Hobbs is pleased to daub all those with that are not of his mind with this good counsel that he give over his Reflection in time lest instead of teaching him some new tricks in Philosophy it make him at last play at Old blind c. I should here make an end but that I see Paper enough left and leisure too to answer an Objection that I may seem lyable to as What do I sneaking into a Private Letter which Mr. Hobbs wrote to his Obliging Lord Who besides is said not to write Philosophy for those that like it not and therefore I ought not to trouble him that desires not to trouble me To the first I answer That though the Letter was once a Private one yet I saw it not till it became a Publick till they were Letters Patents for any bodies reading And for the other though it be reason not to trouble them that do not trouble us in some cases as if Mr. Hobbs had vented his new Speculations upon making Faces and Distortions turning and tossing the poor Figures up and down and then guessing at some Reasons of them which he merrily calls his Opticks I say if Mr. Hobbs had spent his Time and Philosophy upon these onely he had onely disturbed the Common-wealth of Images and Representations which are nothing and therefore ought not to have been disturbed by any in those his pleasant Speculations