work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
4610,"","Searching in Past Masters; found again searching ""mind"" and ""theatre""",2003-09-18 00:00:00 UTC,"But setting aside some metaphysicians of this kind, I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement. Our eyes cannot turn in their sockets without varying our perceptions. Our thought is still more variable than our sight; and all our other senses and faculties contribute to this change: nor is there any single power of the soul, which remains unalterably the same, perhaps for one moment. The mind is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, repass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations. There is properly no simplicity in it at one time, nor identity in different, whatever natural propension we may have to imagine that simplicity and identity. The comparison of the theatre must not mislead us. They are the successive perceptions only, that constitute the mind ; nor have we the most distant notion of the place where these scenes are represented, or of the materials of which it is composed.
(I.iv.6) ",2010-09-26,12137,"•Hume's first real, robust metaphor in the Treatise?
•Note the qualification, ""is a kind of""
•This is also a kind of Population metaphor. REVISIT for conversation essay.
•This is the second time Hume has talked about postures... INTEREST?","""The mind is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, repass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations.""",Theater,2010-09-27 01:49:03 UTC,""
4610,"",Reading,2011-03-07 17:58:35 UTC,"Since the imagination, therefore, in running from low to high, finds an opposition in its internal qualities and principles, and since the soul, when elevated with joy and courage, in a manner seeks opposition, and throws itself with alacrity into any scene of thought or action where its courage meets with matter to nourish and employ it, it follows that every thing which invigorates and enlivens the soul, whether by touching the passions or imagination, naturally conveys to the fancy this inclination for ascent, and determines it to run against the natural stream of its thoughts and conceptions. This aspiring progress of the imagination suits the present disposition of the mind; and the difficulty, instead of extinguishing its vigour and alacrity, has the contrary effect of sustaining and increasing it. Virtue, genius, power, and riches, are for this reason associated with height and sublimity, as poverty, slavery, and folly are conjoined with descent and lowness. Were the case the same with us as Milton represents it to be with the angels, to whom descent is adverse and who cannot sink without labour and compulsion, this order of things would be entirely inverted; as appears hence, that the very nature of ascent and descent is derived from the difficulty and propensity, and consequently every one of their effects proceeds from that origin.
(II.iii.8.9, p. 278-9)",,18223,"","""Since the imagination, therefore, in running from low to high, finds an opposition in its internal qualities and principles, and since the soul, when elevated with joy and courage, in a manner seeks opposition, and throws itself with alacrity into any scene of thought or action where its courage meets with matter to nourish and employ it, it follows that every thing which invigorates and enlivens the soul, whether by touching the passions or imagination, naturally conveys to the fancy this inclination for ascent, and determines it to run against the natural stream of its thoughts and conceptions.""","",2011-03-07 17:58:35 UTC,"Book II, Part iii, Section 8"
7622,"",ECCO-TCP,2013-08-18 04:57:05 UTC,"LUCINUS
'Tis generally in favour of the Senses that the Passions are exerted; these are alarm'd and rise in arms, when our Pleasures are in danger. It belongs to the Understanding to regulate the Passions or Affections; or, in other words, to keep the Pleasures in order: for it cannot alter our Sensations or Feelings. And if it be said that the Understanding, which is but passive it self, like the bodily Eye, cannot be called the Leader of the rest of the Faculties; it must be granted, that (strictly speaking) it is rather the Light than the Guide: for if we consider it in the three Operations mention'd by the Logicians, 'tis still but one Light operating in three different manners. The governing Power therefore must be something of Life, Force, and Activity, which sets all the other Faculties at work; and tho' the Will is a more vital Principle than the Understanding and the Memory, the Spirit may be consider'd as somewhat superiour to the Will it self, since the same Person may have a very different Will at different times. Sometimes the Will is manageable, sometimes obstinate; a Man will not so much as hearken: What is it that makes him reflect and yield? Sometimes the Persuasion is address'd to the Understanding, sometimes to the Heart; and Intreaty commonly prevails more than Reasoning. The Memory is only applied to as a Register.
(pp. 98-9)",,22344,"","""And if it be said that the Understanding, which is but passive it self, like the bodily Eye, cannot be called the Leader of the rest of the Faculties; it must be granted, that (strictly speaking) it is rather the Light than the Guide: for if we consider it in the three Operations mention'd by the Logicians, 'tis still but one Light operating in three different manners.""","",2013-08-18 04:57:05 UTC,""