Uniform ideas originating among entire peoples unknown to each other must have a common ground of truth.

Uniform ideas originating among entire peoples unknown to each other must have a common ground of truth.

But the nature of our civilized minds is so detached from the senses, even in the vulgar, by abstractions corresponding to all theabstract terms our languages abound in, and so refined by the art of writing, and as it were spiritualized by the use of numbers, because even the vulgar know how to count and reckon, that it is naturally beyond our power to form the vast image of this mistress called "Sympathetic Nature.

Understanding arises through making

Metaphysics abstracts the mind from the senses, and the poetic faculty must submerge the whole mind in the senses. Metaphysics soars up to universals, and the poetic faculty must plunge deep into particulars.

Common sense is judgment without reflection, shared by an entire class, an entire nation, or the entire human race.

The nature of peoples is first crude, then severe, then benign, then delicate, finally dissolute.