Man Responsible for His Dispositions, Opinions, and Conduct

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Excerpt from Man Responsible for His Dispositions, Opinions, and Conduct: A Lecture Delivered in the Mechanics Institution, Southampton Buildings, on Feb, 17, 1840 Aristotle may have taught a false system of the universe, and Plato may have dreamed in politics and morals, but can we turn over the pages of a greek lexicon, and affect to doubt whether the greek mind was of philosophic cast? With the greek language before us, in its mere words and idioms, we want no historians, we want no poets, we want no marbles, we want no temples, to assure us that the race of men using that tongue, were, in mind and taste, all that historians, poets, marbles, temples, show them to have been. And it deserves particularly to be noted, that, while the languages of civilized races at large furnish evidence on all points touching man's nature, physical, intellectual, and moral, so those especial refinements, which characterize this or that language, and which have resulted from the eminent attainments of the people using it, serve to exhibit that one rudiment of human nature, as we might say magnified, and its inner structure expanded. It is not in the rude speech of nomadic hordes, or in the talk of the fish-eaters of a deso late shore, that we are to look for the record of the genuine rudiments of human nature, but rather in the copiousnessof tongues which have conveyed the choicest refinements of those rudiments. Were it questioned whether man be an imaginative being, formed to catch analogies, and to be charmed with resem blance, three-fourths of every language, barbarous or civilized, attests the fact, nor is this evidence touched by any instances of what may be false in taste, or factitious, in the literature of the people. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.