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Click on the phrases to see them in context. The original texts by Immanuel Kant and David Hume are available from the Gutenberg Projet.
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Please forgive me if I made an error; I'm a two-fingered typist. The naturalist of pure reason lays it down as his principle that common reason, without the aid of science--which he calls sound reason, or common sense--can give a more satisfactory answer to the most important questions of metaphysics than speculation is able to do. The same care of avoiding prolixity is the reason why I wave the examination of the will and direct passions, as they appear in animals; since nothing is more evident, than that they are of the same nature, and excited by the same causes as in human creatures. [Footnote 7. In general we may observe, that as our assent to all probable reasonings is founded on the vivacity of ideas, It resembles many of those whimsies and prejudices, which are rejected under the opprobrious character of being the offspring of the imagination. Such judgments are always attended with passion [Book I, Part III. SECT. 10.]; and nothing tends more to disturb our understanding, and precipitate us into any opinions, however unreasonable, than their connexion with passion; which diffuses itself over the imagination, and gives an additional force to every related idea. Now it is evident, that the inference of the judgment is here much more lively than what is usual in our common reasonings, and that a man has a more vivid conception of the vast extent of the ocean from the image he receives by the eye, when he stands on the top of the high promontory, than merely from hearing the roaring of the waters. Besides, every particular man has a peculiar position with regard to others; and it is impossible we coued ever converse together on any reasonable terms, were each of us to consider characters and persons, only as they appear from his peculiar point of view. To excite reason against itself, to place weapons in the hands of the party on the one side as well as in those of the other, and to remain an undisturbed and sarcastic spectator of the fierce struggle that ensues, seems, from the dogmatical point of view, to be a part fitting only a malevolent disposition. We shall thus ascertain whether, from the point of view of its practical interest, reason may not be able to supply us with that which, on the speculative side, it wholly denies us. This important change in the field of the sciences, this loss of its fancied possessions, to which speculative reason must submit, does not prove in any way detrimental to the general interests of humanity.