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C. Scribner's sons, 1927 - Philosophy - 403 pages

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Page xxvi - I hold, with the Materialist, that the human body, like all living bodies, is a machine, all the operations of which will, sooner or later, be explained on physical principles. I believe that we shall, sooner or later, arrive at a mechanical equivalent of consciousness, just as we have arrived at a mechanical equivalent of heat.
Page 106 - So if I judge that the wax exists from the fact that I touch it, the same thing will follow, to wit, that I am; and if I judge that my imagination, or some other cause, whatever it is, persuades me that wax exists, I shall still conclude the same.
Page 177 - But nevertheless, on the one hand I have a clear and distinct idea of myself, in so far as I am...
Page 123 - I have just said, it is perfectly evident that there must be at least as much reality in the cause as in the effect...
Page 99 - I am not a subtle air distributed through these members; I am not a wind, a fire, a vapor, a breath, nor anything at all which I can imagine or conceive; because I have assumed that all these were nothing.
Page 213 - ... the animal spirits to pass thence into the nerves, in such a manner as is required to produce this motion, in the same way as in a machine, and without the mind being able to hinder it. Now since we observe this in ourselves, why...
Page 36 - And if I write in French, which is the language of my country, in preference to Latin, which is that of my preceptors...
Page 3 - ... been my singular good fortune to have very early in life fallen in with certain tracks which have conducted me to considerations and maxims, of which I have formed a Method that gives me the means, as I think, of gradually augmenting my knowledge, and of raising it by little and little to the highest point which the mediocrity of my talents and the brief duration of my life will permit me to reach. For I have already reaped from it such fruits that, although I have been accustomed to think lowly...
Page 92 - And for the same reason, although these general things, to wit, [a body], eyes, a head, and such like, may be imaginary, we are bound at the same time to confess that there are at least some other objects yet more simple and more -universal, which are real and true; and of these just in the same way as with certain real colours, all these images of things which dwell in our thoughts, whether true and real or false and fantastic, are formed. To such a class of things pertains corporeal nature in general,...
Page 147 - ... so that this mode of thinking differs from pure intellection only inasmuch as mind in its intellectual activity in some manner turns on itself, and considers some of the ideas -which it possesses in itself; while in imagining it turns towards the body, and there beholds in it something •conformable to the idea which it has either conceived of itself or perceived by the senses.

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