14 Aug. 1815

Jug True

Ch Believers Resources

Hardness of Heart

Among the habits and propensities of an unfurnished as also and what is as bad of an ill—furnished mind is that of confounding in the first place at the time of perception, and thereafter down to the time of narration, perceptions with imaginations and inferences and imaginations suggested by those perceptions. A man presents to their senses certain phænomena, asserting all the while in the character of efficient causes, effects or concomitant circumstances other phænomena which have no existence: unable to discriminate the one from the other that which they see or hear from that which they only hear of, they give credence to the whole compound of truth and falshood in the lump.

Of this species of intellectual weakness — this incapacity of distinguishing the work of their own imaginations from the work fruit of their own perceptions — no one can have been in a considerable degree in the habit of being present at trials at law in the Jury trial mode, without having had frequent occasion to take notice.

At the present day, a man among men whose had the benefit of situation on the scale of education and intellectual acquirement is in any considerable degree elevated above that of the labouring the lowest vulgar class is in general pretty well effectually exempt for this species of intellectual weakness.

But at the all times preceding the days of Locke, and in particular at and about the time in question, men of the very highest class in point of intellectual acquirement may be seen labouring under it. Of such among the Jews Flavius Josephus, and among the Romans, Tacitus.