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Untitled Article
more than the great mechanists of the human mind , the Platos of ancient , and the Wesleys of modern times , were obliged to do ; whilst we propose to avoid the great error they committed , namely , of confounding truth and falsehood — making their hearers believe something false in order that they might learn something true . We , I repeat , intend to avoid the pernicious
error , which destroys truth by uniting it with falsehood , by distinguishing our language of imagination from their language of mystery . Is it necessary to give an example of my meaning ? Whilst Plato would have the great doctrine of a future state believed because Eros the Pamphylian asserted he beheld certain wonderful things in another state of being , as he lay dead on the field of battle , we would have this great tenet of instinctive and universal
apprehension' But in that sleep of death what dreams may come 'received , not on the authority of the buried majesty of Denmark , which assuredly never rose to reveal the secrets of the prison house , but on the authority of its own reasonableness , suggesting comfort to the good and anxiety to the wicked . Whilst Wesley would have the corruption of human nature admitted on the
evidence of certain convictions of sin which he set forth as supernatural , but which certainly were altogether natural , we would have the existence in human nature of strong temptations to crime proved , not by the Weird Sisters' temptation of Macbeth by lies like truth , but by facts which have too often occurred to the best dispositions , demonstrating the necessity of restraining ' the cursed thoughts nature gives way to /
But instead of urging this argument further , I will beg to remind the objector to the plan of discipline I proposed , that it was a beginning , a commencing discipline ; and that , independently of the advantage it offers in enabling us to lead forward the mind willingly , when the imagination is once excited and the feelings are once roused , it was distinct ! v admitted and the feelings are once rousedit was distinctly admitted
, throughout the whole of my last lecture , that it was only a beginning , only a commencing discipline . And let me now add , what I shall immediately endeavour to prove , that this , or any other moral discipline , if it be not accompanied by an adequate discipline in physics , must prove defective even as a moral discipline ; and that , as my last lecture was on the best means of
commencing to communicate moral knowledge to such audiences as are to be found in small country towns , so my present lecture will be on the best means of beginning to teach physics or natural philosophy to the same audiences ; always keeping in view this most important difference , which distinguishes the disci pline we are about to propose from that of the teacher who contem plates nothing beyond the teaching of natural philosophy ,
Untitled Article
The Diffusion of Knowledge amongst the People . 269
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1834, page 269, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2632/page/37/
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