id,comments,provenance,dictionary,created_at,reviewed_on,work_id,theme,context,updated_at,metaphor,text 12134,•spirits--as in previous Hume citation,Searching in Past Masters,"",2003-09-18 00:00:00 UTC,2010-09-26,4610,"",I.iv.1,2017-04-04 15:28:58 UTC,"""The attention is on the stretch; the posture of the mind is uneasy; and the spirits being diverted from their natural course, are not governed in their movements by the same laws, at least not to the same degree, as when they flow in their usual channel.""","I answer, that after the first and second decision, as the action of the mind becomes forced and unnatural, and the ideas faint and obscure, though the principles of judgment, and the balancing of opposite causes be the same as at the very beginning, yet their influence on the imagination, and the vigour they add to, or diminish from, the thought, is by no means equal. Where the mind reaches not its objects with easiness and facility, the same principles have not the same effect as in a more natural conception of the ideas; nor does the imagination feel a sensation, which holds any proportion with that which arises from its common judgments and opinions. The attention is on the stretch; the posture of the mind is uneasy; and the spirits being diverted from their natural course, are not governed in their movements by the same laws, at least not to the same degree, as when they flow in their usual channel.
(I.iv.1, p. 124 in Oxford ed.) "