Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Serious Reflections on Time and Eternity
Bear the fatigues of such a journey, and to whom the labours of the midnight oil afford a congenial and much-loved employment, and who have had their intellectual powers disciplined to the march of a logical or lengthened investigation. The Smith of the one science, and the Newton of the other, afford very striking illustrations of this kind of men tal superiority over the rest of the species - and in virtue of which they were enabled to discover what before to the whole of mankind was utterly unknown and in virtue of which their followers are enabled to see what the majority of mankind do not see. It is only seen in fact from a summit of demonstration and this is only attained by a series of ascending movements - and the few who have made their way to the temple which stands upon such an eminence as this, find inscribed upon it the temple of philo sophy.' Now, what we maintain is, that this is alto gether distinct from the temple of wisdom.' Its successful worshippers are men of reach and men of acquirement, and men who, from the elevation they have won, and on which they have posted themselves, can command a farther prospect over some walk, or some domain of the great intellectual territory, than their fellows around them. And yet they are not on this account men of wisdom, nor have we arrived at the true meaning and' application of this epithet, if we either think that to be wise we must be philosophers, or that, if philosophers, we are therefore wise.
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