5 May 1812

Credulity

2

Ch 1

2

 After a sort of definitional and anticipative account of each as per Rudiment Sheet Col [N-O/E-G.] proceed as follows. Ipsi dixit philosophy its logic as Applied to morals, I believe this to be right therefore it is right: that to be wrong, therefore it is wrong. Applied to intellectuals: I believe this to be true: therefore it is true.

Of these two works both written in the same spirit and for the same purpose D r Campbel's is the one that by many titles claims to be the first examined.

1. It forms a part of a sort of system of irrationality of misreasoning which though it sprung up in England has taken root and spread to a prodigious extent in Scotland has spread over and infected the ear of the principal source of instruction in that country philosophical no less than religion: it may be termed as the philosophy of Pythagoras was in its day the philosophy of Ipse

dixit.

2. The extent of the ground taken by this principle is much greater than that of the ground taken by D r Price. In the ground it professes to cover are contained as well things probable as things improbable.

3. The occasion on which it was written owes the publication of a work of David Hume viz. his Essays: in which work is contained his Essay on Miracles, of which the work of D r Campbel undertakes the refutation: and as will appear it is supposed in the sequel of those pages, Hume's argument having a weakness in the mode of putting it Campbel in the attack he made upon it, had in some considerable respects the advantage.