82
“Skepticism,” The Christian Examiner and Theological Review, vol. 1 (1824), p. 35.
Anonymous
The Christian Examiner was founded, as the Christian Disciple, in Boston in 1813. It survived, under various titles, through to 1869. In 1824, when the item reprinted below was published, the editor was John Gorham Palfrey. On the Christian Examiner see API, p. 54; Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1741–1850 (Cambridge, 1938), pp. 284–92. See THN, p. 175.
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The following soliloquy, from Hume’s ‘Treatise of Human Nature,’ (vol. i. p. 458,) though expunged from the later editions, is a standing memorial of the mournful consequences of his principles.
‘I am affrighted, and confounded, with that forlorn solitude, in which I am placed by my philosophy. When I look abroad, I foresee, on every side, dispute, contradiction, and distraction. When I turn my eyes inward, I find nothing but doubt, and ignorance. Where am I, or what? From what causes do I derive existence, or to what condition do I return? I am confounded with these questions; and I begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, environed with the deepest darkness! — p. 332.