updated_at,id,text,theme,metaphor,work_id,reviewed_on,provenance,created_at,comments,context,dictionary
2011-03-31 21:46:51 UTC,18272,"IX. Atheism therefore, that bugbear of women and fools, is the very top and perfection of free-thinking. It is the grand arcanum to which a true genius naturally riseth, by a certain climax or gradation of thought, and without which he can never possess his soul in absolute liberty and repose. For your thorough conviction in this main article, do but examine the notion of a God with the same freedom that you would other prejudices. Trace it to the fountain-head, and you shall not find that you had it by any of your senses, the only true means of discovering what is real and substantial in nature: you will find it lying amongst other old lumber in some obscure corner of the imagination, the proper receptacle of visions, fancies, and prejudices of all kinds; and if you are more attached to this than the rest, it is only because it is the oldest. This is all, take my word for it, and not mine only, but that of many more the most ingenious men of the age, who, I can assure you, think as I do on the subject of a deity. Though some of them hold it proper to proceed with more reserve in declaring to the world their opinion in this particular, than in most others. And it must be owned, there are still too many in England who retain a foolish prejudice against the name of atheist. But it lessens every day among the better sort: and when it is quite worn out, our free-thinkers may then (and not till then) be said to have given the finishing stroke to religion; it being evident that so long as the existence of God is believed, religion must subsist in some shape or other. But the root being once plucked up, the scions which shot from it will of course wither and decay. Such are all those whimsical notions of conscience, duty, principle, and the like, which fill a man's head with scruples, awe him with fears, and make him a more thorough slave than the horse he rides. A man had better a thousand things be hunted by bailiffs or messengers than haunted by these spectres, which embarrass and embitter all his pleasures, creating the most real and sore servitude upon earth. But the free-thinker, with a vigorous flight of thought, breaks through those airy springes, and asserts his original independency. Others indeed may talk, and write, and fight about liberty, and make an outward pretence to it; but the free-thinker alone is truly free.
(pp. 44-5)","","""Trace it to the fountain-head, and you shall not find that you had it by any of your senses, the only true means of discovering what is real and substantial in nature: you will find it lying amongst other old lumber in some obscure corner of the imagination, the proper receptacle of visions, fancies, and prejudices of all kinds; and if you are more attached to this than the rest, it is only because it is the oldest.""",4495,,Reading,2011-03-31 21:46:51 UTC,INTEREST. USE: Mention in ROOMS?,Dialogue I,Rooms
2013-09-18 04:12:22 UTC,22777,"What are we to say to such actions as these; or how account for this operation of the mind in dreaming? It should seem, that the imagination, by day, as well as by night, is always employed; and that often, against our wills, it intrudes where it is least commanded or desired. While awake, and in health, this busy principle cannot much delude us: it may build castles in the air, and raise a thousand phantoms before us; but we have every one of the senses alive, to bear testimony to its falsehood. Our eyes shew us that the prospect is not present; our hearing, and our touch, depose against its reality; and our taste and smelling are equally vigilant in detecting the impostor. Reason, therefore, at once gives judgment upon the cause; and the vagrant intruder, imagination, is imprisoned, or banished from the mind. But in sleep it is otherwise; having, as much as possible, put our senses from their duty, having closed the eyes from seeing, and the ears, taste, and smelling, from their peculiar functions, and having diminished even the touch itself, by all the arts of softness, the imagination is then left to riot at large, and to lead the understanding without an opposer. Every incursive idea then becomes a reality; and the mind, not having one power that can prove the illusion, takes them for truths. As in madness, the senses, from struggling with the imagination, are at length forced to submit, so, in sleep, they seem for a while soothed into the like submission: the smallest violence exerted upon any one of them, however, rouzes all the rest in their mutual defence; and the imagination, that had for a while told its thousand falshoods, is totally driven away, or only permitted to pass under the custody of such as are every moment ready to detect its imposition.
(pp. 143-4)","","""While awake, and in health, this busy principle [the imagination] cannot much delude us: it may build castles in the air, and raise a thousand phantoms before us; but we have every one of the senses alive, to bear testimony to its falsehood.""",7677,,"Searching ""testimony"" and ""sense"" in ECCO-TCP",2013-09-18 04:12:22 UTC,"",Chap. VI. Of Sleep and Hunger.,Court