updated_at,id,text,theme,metaphor,work_id,reviewed_on,provenance,created_at,comments,context,dictionary
2013-06-04 15:57:13 UTC,9237,"From all this I am beginning to have a rather better understanding of what I am. But it still appears - and I cannot stop thinking this - that the corporeal things of which images are formed in my thought, and which the senses investigate, are known with much more distinctness than this puzzling 'I' which cannot be pictured in the imagination. And yet it is surely surprising that I should have a more distinct grasp of things which I realize are doubtful, unknown and foreign to me, than I have of that which is true and known - my own self. But I see what it is: my mind enjoys wandering off and will not yet submit to being restrained within the bounds of truth. Very well then; just this once let us give it a completely free rein, so that after a while, when it is time to tighten the reins, it may more readily submit to being curbed.
(Second Meditation, p. 20)","","""But I see what it is: my mind enjoys wandering off and will not yet submit to being restrained within the bounds of truth. Very well then; just this once let us give it a completely free rein, so that after a while, when it is time to tighten the reins, it may more readily submit to being curbed.""",3568,2013-06-04,Past Masters,2003-10-03 00:00:00 UTC,"•Note this second anti-metaphorical moment: The ""I"" cannot be pictured in the imagination. See previous entry.
•But then it is described as a horse! INTEREST",Second Meditation,Animals
2013-07-16 19:14:46 UTC,21802,"Let us consider the soul in its other wants. The human body is a machine that winds up its own springs: it is a living image of the perpetual motion. Food nourishes what a fever heats and excites. Without proper food the soul languishes, raves, and dies with faintness. It is like a taper, which revives in the moment it is going to be extinguished. Give but good nourishment to the body, pour into its tubes vigorous juices and strong liquors, the the soul, generous as these, arms itself with courage; and a soldier whom water would have made run away, becoming undaunted, meets death with alacrity amidst the rattle of drums. Thus it is that hot water agitates the blood, which cold had calmed.
(p. 11)","","""The human body is a machine that winds up its own springs: it is a living image of the perpetual motion.""",7547,,Reading,2013-07-16 19:14:46 UTC,"","",""
2023-07-17 16:49:55 UTC,21813,"As the string of a violin or harpsichord trembles and vibrates, so the fibres or strings of the brain struck by the undulating rays of sound, are excited to return or repeat the words that touched them. But as the structure of this organ is such, that when once the eye formed for vision has received the pictures of objects, the brain cannot help seeing their images and differences: in the same manner when the signs of these differences are marked or ingraved in the brain, the soul must necessarily examine their relations; and examination that would be impossible without the discovery of signs, or invention of languages. At that time when the world was almost mute, the soul was in regard of all objects as a man, who without having any idea of proportion, should look on a picture, or a piece of sculpture: or as a little child (for the soul was then in its infancy) who holding in his hand a parcel of straws or bits of wood, sees them in general in a vague superficial manner, without being able to count or distinguish them. [...]
(p. 26)","","""As the string of a violin or harpsichord trembles and vibrates, so the fibres or strings of the brain struck by the undulating rays of sound, are excited to return or repeat the words that touched them.""",7547,,Reading,2013-07-16 19:23:41 UTC,Epic Simile,"",""
2013-07-16 19:36:42 UTC,21821,"Like that bird on yonder spray, the imagination seems to be perpetually ready to take wing. Hurried with incessant rapidity but the vortex of blood and animal spirits, one undulation makes an impression, which is immediately effaced by another; the soul pursues it, but often in vain: she must wait to bewail the loss of what she did not quickly lay hold of; and thus it is that the imagination, true image of time, is incessantly destroyed and renewed.
(pp. 33-4)","","""Like that bird on yonder spray, the imagination seems to be perpetually ready to take wing.""",7547,,Reading,2013-07-16 19:36:42 UTC,"","",Animals
2014-01-10 21:29:05 UTC,23327,"Fuyez ceux qui, sous prétexte d’expliquer la nature, sèment dans les coeurs des hommes de désolantes doctrines, & dont le scepticisme apparent est cent fois plus affirmatif & que le ton décidé de leurs adversaires. Sous te qu’eux seuls sont éclairés, vrais, de bonne impérieusement à leurs décisions tranchantes, et prétendent nous donner pour les vrais principes des choses les inintelligibles systèmes qu’ils ont bâtis dans leur imagination. Du reste, renversant, détruisant, foulant aux pieds tout ce que les hommes respectent, ils ôtent aux affligés la dernière consolation de leur misère, aux puissants & aux riches le seul frein de leurs passions; ils arrachent du fond des coeurs le remords du crime, l’espoir de la vertu, & se vantent encore d’être les bienfaiteurs du genre humain. jamais, disent-ils, la vérité n’est nuisible aux hommes. Je le crois comme eux, &, c’est, à mon avis, une grande preuve que ce qu’ils enseignent n’est pas la vérité.
(IV, p. 330 in Everyman)","","""Du reste, renversant, détruisant, foulant aux pieds tout ce que les hommes respectent, ils ôtent aux affligés la dernière consolation de leur misère, aux puissants & aux riches le seul frein de leurs passions; ils arrachent du fond des coeurs le remords du crime, l’espoir de la vertu, & se vantent encore d’être les bienfaiteurs du genre humain.""",6428,,Reading,2014-01-10 21:29:05 UTC,"","Book IV, Creed of the Savoyard Curate",Animals