And What Is The Greatest Number? Number

I Say Then, That Belief Is Nothing But A More Vivid, Lively, Forcible, Firm, Steady Conception Of An Object, Than What The Imagination Alone Is Ever Able To Attain. This Variety Of Terms, Which May Seem So Unphilosophical, Is Intended Only To Express That Act Of The Mind, Which Renders Realities, Or What Is Taken For Such, More Present To Us Than Fictions, Causes Them To Weigh More In The Thought, And Gives Them A Superior Influence On The Passions And Imagination.

.. That Which Renders Morality An Active Principle And Constitutes Virtue Our Happiness, And Vice Our Misery: It Is Probable, I Say, That This Final Sentence Depends On Some Internal Sense Or Feeling, Which Nature Has Made Universal In The Whole Species.

[a Person’s] Utmost Art And Industry Can Never Equal The Meanest Of Nature's Productions, Either For Beauty Or Value.

How Can We Satisfy Ourselves Without Going On In Infinitum? And, After All, What Satisfaction Is There In That Infinite Progression? Let Us Remember The Story Of The Indian Philosopher And His Elephant. It Was Never More Applicable Than To The Present Subject. If The Material World Rests Upon A Similar Ideal World, This Ideal World Must Rest Upon Some Other; And So On, Without End. It Were Better, Therefore, Never To Look Beyond The Present Material World.

History Is The Discovering Of The Principles Of Human Nature.