Sciolism

Indeed, I ſometimes incline to hope that infidelity is arrived at its higheſt pitch, and that ſcioliſm may advance into found knowledge and ſaving faith […].

Here are painted, the miſchiefs of the multiplication of political Scioliſts, and the progreſs of political Scioliſm; the decay of profound knowledge, the perverſion of what we retain, and the decline of religion.

[T]he crude paralogiſms of a vitiated metaphyſics, ſetting themſelves in oppoſition to the very poſtulates of all geometry, the truth of which we recognize by intuition, may pretend, that motion is a principle foreign to the nature of the ſubject; we are not to rank theſe ſcioliſms among the things which the rigour of the most exact reaſoning requires.

The contempt […] is not accidental, nor yet altogether owing to that epidemic of a proud ignorance occasioned by a diffused sciolism, which gave a sickly and hectic shewiness to the latter half of the last century.

And after all, should it be proved that Unitarian writers of the present generation are sciolists, it will not follow that their principles deserve the opprobrious name of sciolism.

There is no sciolism now which is more dangerous than that which is so very careful to inform us of its entire freedom from all that is superficial […].

Sciolism knows every thing, talks of every thing, and cuts every Gordian knot with ease: but wise knowledge sees that the sphere of light is small; is humble and silent; and allows mysteries to be mysteries.

[H]ow to counteract the tendency to shallow and conceited sciolism, engendered by hearing popular lectures on all manner of subjects, which can only be really learnt by stern methodic study; […] above all, how to develop the physical powers, without engendering brutality and coarseness,—are questions becoming daily more and more to be solved, in an age of enterprise, travel, and emigration, like the present.