He did well at his studies and founded a debating club there. Burke went to England in 1750 to study law. But his heart was not in becoming a lawyer and he made little progress in his legal studies. Not much is known about his activities during the first nine years he spent in England following his graduation from college. It is known that he remained undecided about what to do with his life.
Early Books Praised
In 1756, when Burke was in his mid-twenties, he published two books on topics in philosophy. In the first, A Vindication of Natural Society, he declared that it was a mistake for rationalists to demand a logical justification for why moral and social institutions, such as rule by kings, should exist in society. Rationalists are people who accept reason as the only authority in determining one's opinions or actions. This is as opposed to people who accept other sources as authoritative, for example, the word of God in the Bible. Burke argued that the king and other authorities ruled in a society because it was the will of God.
Burke's second work was A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful.
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