A History of Western Philosophy

vortex in the plenum, which carries the planets round with it. The theory is ingenious, but cannot explain why planetary orbits ...

ful than powerful employing all his industry in misleading me. If there be such a demon, it may be that all the things I see are ...

has been inferred from the fact that I think, therefore I exist while I think, and only then. If I ceased to think, there would ...

side things. (The word "idea" includes sense-perceptions, as used by Descartes.) Ideas seem to be of three sorts: (1) those that ...

less interesting than the earlier destructive part. It uses all sorts of scholastic maxims, such as that an effect can never hav ...

indicated "sorrow." From the religious point of view, however, there was a grave drawback to this theory; and this brings me to ...

the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus and the Tractatus Politicus. The former is a curious combination of biblical criticism and po ...

tic physics, and sought, within this framework, to find room for reverence and a life devoted to the Good. His attempt was magni ...

reconciled with the orthodox doctrine of sin and damnation. It is bound up with Spinoza's complete rejection of free will. Altho ...

rocated, and can on the other hand be destroyed by love." Self-preservation is the fundamental motive of the passions, according ...

irrelevant. The wise man, so far as human finitude allows, endeavours to see the world as God sees it, sub specie æternitatis, ...

the understanding, he has grasped the sole reality of the whole, he is free. The implications of this doctrine are developed in ...

emotions loves God, and so much the more in proportion as he understands himself and his emotions"; V, 11 states: "In proportion ...

human beings: "Spiritual unhealthiness and misfortunes can generally be traced to excessive love of something which is subject t ...

cally deduced from self-evident axioms; we ought to be as resigned to events as to the fact that 2 and 2 are 4, since they are e ...

soldiers. Ought you, in these circumstances, to preserve a philosophic calm? If you follow Christ's teaching, you will say "Fath ...

urge you, even under the greatest misfortunes, to avoid being shut up in the world of your sorrow; he would have you understand ...

CHAPTER XI Leibniz LEIBNIZ ( 1646-1716) was one of the supreme intellects of all time, but as a human being he was not admirable ...

infidel had gone out of fashion. His project remained unknown to the public until it was discovered by Napoleon when he occupied ...

made England unfriendly to him. However, the Princess of Wales, as he told all his correspondents, sided with him against Newton ...