Part II - Defending Value
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Summary
“It may not, therefore, in this Place, be improper to apply ourselves to the Examination of that modern Doctrine, by which certain Philosophers, among many other wonderful Discoveries, pretend to have found out, that there is no such Passion [as Love] in the human Breast. Whether these Philosophers be the same with that surprising Sect, who are honourably mentioned by the late Dr. Swift; as having … discovered that profound and invaluable Secret, That there is no God: or whether they are not rather the same with those who, some Years since, very much alarmed the World, by shewing that there were no such Things as Virtue and Goodness really existing in Human Nature, and who deduced our best Actions from Pride, I will not here presume to determine. In reality, I am inclined to suspect, that all these several Finders of Truth are very identical men. … Whereas the Truth-finder having raked out that Jakes, his own Mind, and being there capable of tracing no Ray of Divinity, nor any thing virtuous, or good, or lovely, or loving, very fairly, honestly, and logically concludes, that no such things exist in the whole Creation.”
Henry Fielding, Tom Jones (1750 ed.), Book VI, chapter 1.- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- In Defense of HumanismValue in the Arts and Letters, pp. 71 - 72Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996