Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

commentators and interpreters. Ignorance of another's meaning is a sufficient cause of fear, and fear produces hatred: hence arose the rancour and suspicion of his adversaries, who, to quote some fine lines of Spenser,

"Stood all astonied like a sort of steers

'Mongst whom some beast of strange and foreign race
Unwares is chanced, far straying from his peers:
So did their ghastly gaze betray their hidden fears."

ESSAY VII.

ON LIBERTY AND NECESSITY.

ESSAY VII.

ON LIBERTY AND NECESSITY.

[ocr errors]

In this Essay I shall give the best account I can of the question concerning liberty and necessity from the writings of others, and afterwards add a few remarks of my own on the explanation of the terms employed in this controversy. Of Mr Hobbes's discourse on this subject, I should be nearly disposed to say with Gassendi, when another work of his, De Cive,' was presented to him, "This treatise, though small in bulk, is in my judgment the very marrow of philosophy." In order to give a clear and satisfactory view of the question, I shall be obliged to repeat some things I have before stated, for which the importance of the subject as well as other circumstances will, I hope, be a sufficient excuse.

The doctrine of necessity is stated by this author with great force and precision as a general question of cause and effect, and with scarcely any particular reference to his mechan

« AnteriorContinuar »