text,updated_at,metaphor,created_at,context,theme,reviewed_on,dictionary,comments,provenance,id,work_id
"This is a faculty, which, if it were less common, and we equally qualified to judge of it, would strike us with astonishment. That we should have it in our power to recal past sensations and thoughts, and make them again present, as it were: that a circumstance of our former life should, in respect of us, be no more; and yet occur to us, from time to time, dressed in colours so lively, as to enable us to examine it, and judge of it, as if it were still an object of sense:-- these are facts, whereof we every day have experience, and which, therefore, we overlook as things of course. But, surely, nothing is more wonderful, or more inexplicable. If thoughts could occupy space, we might be tempted to think, that we had laid them up in certain cells or repositories, to remain there till we had occasion for them. But thoughts cannot occupy space; nor be conceived to have any other existence, that what the mind gives them by meditating upon them. Yet, that which has been long forgotten, nay, that which we have often endeavoured in vain to recollect, will sometimes, without any effort of ours, occur to us, on a sudden, and, if I may so speak, of its own accord. A tune, for example, which I hear to-day, and am pleased with, I perhaps endeavour to [end page 8] remember to-morrow, and next day, and the day following, without success: and yet, that very tune shall occur to me, a month after, when my mind is taken up with something else. Where, if I may ask the question, were my ideas of this tune, when I wished to recollect them, and could not? How comes it, that they now present themselves, when I am thinking of them at all? These questions no man can answer: but the fact is certain.
(II.i, pp. 8-9)",2012-01-28 18:59:30 UTC,"""If thoughts could occupy space, we might be tempted to think, that we had laid them up in certain cells or repositories, to remain there till we had occasion for them.""",2005-07-25 00:00:00 UTC,Chapter II. Phenomena and Laws of Memory. Section I.,"",2012-01-28,Rooms,•Beattie supposes the metaphor only to deny it. DISANALOGY. INTEREST. See how careful he is to mark literal from figurative (with his as it weres and if I may so speaks. This care falls away in the later dissertations. ,Reading,14910,5586
"Imagination is that faculty whereby the mind not only reflects on its own operations, but which assembles the various ideas conveyed to the understanding by the canal of sensation, and treasured up in the repository of the memory, compounding or disjoining them at pleasure; and which, by its plastic power of inventing new associations of ideas, and of combining them with infinite variety, is enabled to present a creation of its own, and to exhibit scenes and objects which never existed in nature. So indispensibly necessary is this faculty in the composition of Genius, that all the discoveries in science, and all the inventions and improvements in art, if we except such as have arisen from mere accident, derive their origin from its vigorous exertion. At the same time it must be confessed, that all the false and fallacious systems of the former, and all the irregular and illegitimate performances in the latter, which have ever been obtruded upon mankind, may be justly imputed to the unbounded extravagance of the same faculty: such effects are the natural consequences of an exuberant imagination, without any proportionable share of the reasoning talent. It is evidently necessary therefore, in order to render the productions of Genius regular and just, as well as elegant and ingenious, that the discerning and coercive power of judgment should mark and restrain the excursions of a wanton imagination; in other words, that the austerity of reason should blend itself with the gaiety of the graces. Here then we have another ingredient of Genius; an ingredient essential to its constitution, and without which it cannot possibly be exhibited to full advantage, even an accurate and penetrating JUDGMENT.
(pp. 6-8)",2016-03-11 18:17:29 UTC,"""Imagination is that faculty whereby the mind not only reflects on its own operations, but which assembles the various ideas conveyed to the understanding by the canal of sensation, and treasured up in the repository of the memory, compounding or disjoining them at pleasure; and which, by its plastic power of inventing new associations of ideas, and of combining them with infinite variety, is enabled to present a creation of its own, and to exhibit scenes and objects which never existed in nature.""",2013-07-01 16:45:42 UTC,"","",,"","","Searching in C-H Lion. Found again reading Sean Silver, The Mind is a Collection: Case Studies in Eighteenth-Century Thought (Philadelphia: Penn Press, 2015), 3.",21354,7498
"With regard to the first of these points: though Genius discovers itself in a vast variety of forms, we have already observed, that those forms are distinguished and characterised by one quality common to them all, possessed indeed in very different degrees, and exerted in very different capacities; this quality, it will be understood, is Imagination. The mental powers unfold themselves in exact proportion to our necessities and occasions for exercising them. Imagination therefore being that faculty which lays the foundation of all our knowledge, by collecting and treasuring up in the repository of the memory those materials on which Judgment is afterwards to work, and being peculiarly adapted to the gay, delightful, vacant season of childhood and youth, appears in those early periods in all its puerile brilliance and simplicity, long before the reasoning faculty discovers itself in any considerable degree. Imagination however, in general, exercises itself for some time indiscriminately on the various objects presented to it by the senses, without taking any particular or determinate direction; and sometimes the peculiar bent and conformation of Genius is discernible only in the advanced period of youth. The mind, as soon as it becomes capable of attending to the representation it receives of outward objects by the ministry of the senses, views such a representation with the curiosity of a stranger, who is presented with the prospect of an agreeable and uncommon scene. The novelty of the objects at first only affects it with pleasure and surprise. It afterwards surveys, revolves, and reviews them successively one after another; and, at last, after having been long conversant with them selects one distinguished and favourite object from the rest, which it pursues with its whole bent and vigour. There are some persons, it is true, in whom a certain bias or talent for one particular art or science, rather than another, appears in very early life; and in so great a degree as would incline us to imagine, that such a disposition and talent must have been congenial and innate. While persons are yet children, we discover in their infantile pursuits the opening buds of Genius; we discern the rudiments of the Philosopher, the poet, the Painter, and the Architect.
(pp. 28-30)",2013-07-01 16:52:28 UTC,"""Imagination therefore being that faculty which lays the foundation of all our knowledge, by collecting and treasuring up in the repository of the memory those materials on which Judgment is afterwards to work, and being peculiarly adapted to the gay, delightful, vacant season of childhood and youth, appears in those early periods in all its puerile brilliance and simplicity, long before the reasoning faculty discovers itself in any considerable degree.""",2013-07-01 16:52:28 UTC,"","",,"","",C-H Lion,21360,7498