The Monthly messenger; a repository of information, comprising original articles on various subjects, and select and elegant extracts from the ... with remarks critical and explanatory - Tapa blanda

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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1840 Excerpt: ... have endeavoured to elucidate. We have shown that everything which begins to be must have a cause, and that every cause must be a necessary cause; therefore, all effects must be produced necessarily. Now the views of a man respecting going to New Zealand would be effects, and must be produced necessarily. The cause or causes of these effects would probably be an immense variety of external circumstances operating on his mind through the medium of his senses. For instance, he might have read, at some time, a glowing description of the beauty of the country, or have heard some individual depict its advantages in vivid colours. These circumstances, combined with the love of adventure, natural to some minds--the pressure of poverty, and the desire of enjoying the good things of life in greater abundance--and perhaps a thousand other things--would be quite sufficient to produce the determination to go; and the reverse of these, or a change in the aspect of the man's affairs, would be adequate to the production of the decision not to go. It is evident that the determinations of the man are produced necessarily by the causes we have specified, or others; he cannot therefore be free as it regards the production of his decisions. If, now, the individual be free at all in this case, it must be in relation to the production of his views and feelings respecting going to New Zealand, or not going to it. But these views, feelings, and desires begin to be, and ara therefore effects produced necessarily. The man possesses no philosophical independency of mind in the matter--no more power to resist the force of truth when it is made evident to his understanding, than the feather possesses to resist the swell of the ever booming ocean. He is, in short, throughout the whole p...