William Fleming Quotes

18 Sourced Quotes

Ferguson states that the history of mankind, in their rudest state, may be considered under two heads, viz., that of the savage, who is not yet acquainted with property, and that of the barbarian, to whom it is, although not ascertained by laws, a principal object of care and desire.

William Fleming
Science is knowledge certain and evident in itself, or by the principles from which it is deducted, or with which it is certainly connected. It is subjective, as existing in the mind; objective, as embodied in truths; speculative, as leading to do something, as in practical science.

William Fleming
Proverbs embody the current and practical philosophy of an age or nation.

William Fleming
The term "intellect" includes all those powers by which we acquire, retain, and extend our knowledge; as perception, memory, imagination, judgment, and the like.

William Fleming
The term intellect includes all those powers by which we acquire, retain, and extend our knowledge, as perception, memory, imagination, judgment, &c.

William Fleming
The principle of deduction is, that things which agree with the same thing agree with one another. The principle of induction is, that in the same circumstances and in the same substances, from the same causes the same effects will follow. The mathematical and metaphysical sciences are founded on deduction; the physical sciences rest on induction.

William Fleming
Pantheism, when explained to mean the absorption of the infinite in the finite, of God in nature, is atheism; and the doctrine of Spinoza has been so regarded by many. When explained to mean the absorption of nature in God, of the finite in the infinite, it amounts to an exaggeration of atheism.

William Fleming
It is a fine observation of Plato in his Laws — that atheism is a disease of the soul before it becomes an error of the understanding.

William Fleming
Moral Philosophy is the Science of human duty. The knowledge of human duty implies a knowledge of human nature. To understand what man ought to do, it is necessary to know what man is. Not that the Moral Philosopher, before entering upon those inquiries which peculiarly belong to him, must go over the Science of human nature in all its extent. But it is necessary to examine those elements of human nature which have a direct bearing upon human conduct.

William Fleming
He who is certain, or presumes to say he knows, is, whether he be mistaken or in the right, a dogmatist.

William Fleming
Atheists are confounded with Pantheists, such as Xenophanes among the ancients, or Spinoza and Schelling among the moderns, who, instead of denying God, absorb everything into him.

William Fleming
Moral obligation, being the obligation of a free agent, implies a law, and a law implies a law-giver. The will of God, therefore, is the true ground of all obligation, strictly and properly so called.

William Fleming
The difference between a parable and an apologue is, that the former, being drawn from human life, requires probability in the narration, whereas the apologue, being taken from inanimate things or the inferior animals, is not confined strictly to probability. The fables of Æsop are apologues.

William Fleming
Common sense is a phrase employed to denote that degree of intelligence, sagacity, and prudence, which is common to all men.

William Fleming
As the passions are the springs of most of our actions, a state of apathy has come to signify a sort of moral inertia, the absence of all activity or energy. According to the Stoics, apathy meant the extinction of the passions by the ascendency of reason.

William Fleming
A sense of grandeur and sublimity has been recognized as one of the reflex senses belonging to man. It is different from the sense of the beautiful, though closely allied to it. Beauty charms, sublimity moves us, and is often accompanied with a feeling resembling fear, while beauty rather attracts and draws us towards it.

William Fleming
Of late years, and by the best writers, the term conscience, and the phrases moral faculty, moral judgment, faculty of moral perception, moral sense, susceptibility of moral emotion, have all been applied to that faculty by which we have ideas of right and wrong in reference to actions, and correspondent feelings of approbation and disapprobation.

William Fleming
In the philosophy of Locke the archetypes of our ideas are the things really existing out of us.

William Fleming