Nay, he has had the temerity to affirm that the only use of authority was to give countenance and support to that which was false and erroneous. I believe my friend volunteered this eccentric affirmative proposition, because he was well aware that the faculty of believing or disbelieving the verity of facts as reported, is the principal germ of improvability in man. To this fact are we indebted for almost all we know. Here is no exaggeration. If the difference could be computed, it is probable I should be found to have fallen short of the mark.
Experience is neither more nor less than another name for memory.
I discover what I call a more forcible proof of the argument against the deistical nation of natural religion, or the supposed power we have to originate the idea of God, spirit, angels, heaven, a future state, etc. I gave one forcible proof, as I think, in merely asking Mr. Owen to originate the idea of a sixth sense. This, I think, is an irresistible proof, that the human mind, however cultivated, has not the power of originating an idea entirely new. But perhaps the following puzzle will carry conviction farther and deeper than any argument yet adduced upon this subject. This is the mundane system.