JB/058/225/001

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28 May 1805
Evidence

Of the two connected propositions that which asserts the adequacy sufficiency
of the cause in question by the production of the effect in question in all
instances and that which asserts the probability of its having
the existence of a number of individual instances in which the effect
has been produced without the immediate and perceptible question of that
cause, the truth (both of them taken together) will appear in the
clearer light point of view, if the more attentively we consider on the one hand
the imbecillity of the human public mind in general at the several periods in which the
respective arrangements took their birth, on the other hand the influence
of the faculty over the intellectual in all ages, and in
virtue of the innate inborn though not altogether incorrigible weakness frailty of
human nature.

As to the first point, to him To these, if any such there be who viewing those offences of
imbecillity or apparent imbecillity, by which in the conception of Blackstone for example,
arrangement pregnant with the most flagrant barefaced as well as mischievous
injustice, appear to have been justified, should be disposed to
rank it in the class of impossible facts impossibilities that nonsense so palpable
should be able to pass itself for sense upon a mind so far from
destitute of intellectual power,⊞ ⊞ and that therefore Blackstone
throughout the whole
system of his mock sham also
supposed apologies and de
defences were fuming alike
against the laws of reason
and the dictates mountains weariness of his
own conscience, to any such person, if any such there
be I would recommend it to cast an eye bestow a glance of observation on the
state of the human mind, even in the present day of comparative
light illumination, in the within the vast precincts of German literature. Let
them view the immense crowd of lettered men in that extensive region
of civilized Europe, vying with each other in the admiration and
imitation of the nonsense of a crackbrained but indisputably honest
wholesale manufacturer of nonsense by whom under the dyslogistic name of empiricism experience was rejected
as an unsafe guide, and imagination, as the superior and only true one.

Let him think of their creators ad d libitum of what worlds within the human
microcosm – all honest all honourable men, pure as much as it is in the nature of man's mind to be of from every particle
of sinister interest, having nothing to gain from by nonsense, but the
homage of those who in the character of wholesome instruction can
be made to swallow it.

Identifier: | JB/058/225/001"JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 58.
Date_1	1805-05-28	Marginal Summary Numbering	5-6
Box	058	Main Headings	evidence
Folio number	225	Info in main headings field	evidence
Image	001	Titles
Category	text sheet	Number of Pages	1
Recto/Verso	recto	Page Numbering	c2 / d2
Penner	jeremy bentham	Watermarks
Marginals	jeremy bentham	Paper Producer
Corrections		Paper Produced in Year
Notes public		ID Number	18894
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