28 May 1805

Evidence

Introd.

Ch. Imbecillity

Of the two connected propositions that which asserts the adequacy /sufficiency/ of the cause in question to the production of the effect in question in all instances, and that which asserts the probability of the existence of a number of individual instances in which the effect has been produced without the immediate and sensible /perceptible/ operation of that cause, the truth (both of them taken together) will appear in the clearest light the more attentively we consider on the one hand the imbecillity of the human /public/ mind in general at the several periods in which the respective arrangements took their birth, on the other hand the influence of the volitional faculty over the intellectual in all ages, and in virtue of the inborn though not altogether incorrigible weakness /frailty/ of human nature.

To Them /Ask the first [...?] to him,/, if any such there be who viewing those essences[?] of imbecillity or opponent imbecillity, by which in the example of Blackstone for example, arrangements pregnant with the most flagrant /barefaced/ as well as mischievous injustice, appear to have bene justified, should be disposed to [...?] it in the class of impossible facts /impossibilities/ that nonsense so palpable should be able to pass itself for sense upon a mind so far from destitute of intellectual power, and that therefore Blackstone throughout the whole system of his who supposed apologies and defences were firing[?] alike against the laws of reason and the dictates of his own conscience, to any such person, if any such there be I would recommend it to bestow a glance of observation on the state of the human mind, even in the present day of comparative light /illumination/, within the vast precincts of German literature. Let them view the immense crowd of lettered men in that extensive region of civilized Europe, vying with each other in the admiration and imitation of the nonsense of a crack brained but indisputably honest elaborate manufacturer of nonsense by whom experience under the dyslogostic name of impression was rejected as an unsafe guide, and imagination, as the superior and only true one. Let him think of this creator ad libstrum of ideal worlds within the human microcosm - all honest all honorable men, pure, as much as it is in the nature of men's mind to be, of every particle of sinister interest, having nothing to gain from /by/ nonsense, but the homage of those who, in the character of whatsoever instruction can be made to swallow it.