Fiends, ghosts, and sprites : including an account of the origin and nature of belief in the supernatural / by John Netten Radcliffe.

  • John Netten Radcliffe
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Fiends, ghosts, and sprites : including an account of the origin and nature of belief in the supernatural / by John Netten Radcliffe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    10/288 page 2
    trine is, however, refuted by an acquaintance with the inlets and modes of obtaining knowledge; by the fact that reason is necessary to its dis- covery ; and by its uselessness.* “ There are neither innate ideas nor innate propositions; but there is an innate power of understanding that shows itself in primitive notions, which, when put into speech, are expressed in propositions, which propositions, decomposed, produce, under the influence of abstraction and analysis, distinct ideas.”f Others have asserted and maintained that man derives his knowledge of the existence of Deity, and, consequently, of the supernatural, from the exercise of reason upon himself and his own powers by self-reflection. If he reflects upon the wonder- ful power of liberty and free-will which he pos- sesses, on his relation to surrounding beings and things, and particularly on his imperfect, limited, and finite powers, it is argued that the antithetical proposition of infinite must of necessity be ad- mitted. “ I cannot have the idea of the finite and of imperfection without having that of perfec- tion and of infinite. These two ideas are logically correlative.5^ Or if man extends his reasoning * Locke. Of Human Understanding, B. I, ch. 2. f Cousin. Cours de l’Histoire de la Philosophic Moderne, edit. 1347, T. Ill, p. 269. J Cousin. Op. cit., T. Ill, p. 368.
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3