To
bring us to so salutary a determination, nothing can be more
serviceable than to be once thoroughly convinced of the force of
the PYRRHONIAN doubt, and of the impossibility that anything but
the strong power of natural instinct could free us from it. Those
who have a propensity to philosophy will still continue their
researches; because they reflect, that, besides the immediate
pleasure attending such an occupation, philosophical decisions are
nothing but the reflections of common life, methodised and
corrected. But they will never be tempted to go beyond common life,
so long as they consider the imperfection of those faculties which
they employ, their narrow reach, and their inaccurate operations.
While we cannot give a satisfactory reason why we believe, after a
thousand experiments, that a stone will fall or fire burn; can we
ever satisfy ourselves concerning any determination which we may
form with regard to the origin of worlds and the situation of
nature from and to eternity?"--(IV. pp. 189--90.)
But further, it is the business of criticism not only to keep watch over
the vagaries of philosophy, but to do the duty of police in the whole
world of thought. Wherever it espies sophistry or superstition they are
to be bidden to stand; nay, they are to be followed to their very dens
and there apprehended and exterminated, as Othello smothered Desdemona,
"else she'll betray more men.
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