Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Considerations Against Dogmatizing, II
Joseph Glanvill (1636-1680), Scepsis Scientifica: or, Confest Ignorance, the Way to Science; in an Essay of the Vanity of Dogmatizing and Confident Opinion, ed. John Owen (London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co, 1885), p. 195 (from Chap. XXVII):
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(2.) Confidence in Opinions evermore dwells with untamed passions, and is maintained upon the depraved obstinacy of an ungovern'd spirit. He's but a novice in the Art of Autocrasy, that cannot castigate his passions in reference to those presumptions, and will come as far short of wisdom as science: for the Judgement being the leading power, and director of action, if It be swaied by the over-bearings of passion, and stor'd with lubricous opinions in stead of clearly conceived truths, and be peremptorily resolved in them, the practice will be as irregular, as the conceptions erroneous. Opinions hold the stirrup, while vice mount into the saddle.Autocrasy: "power over oneself; self-control" (Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. autocracy, sense 1, citing this passage).
