work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
4656,"","Searching in HDIS (Poetry); found again searching ""heart"" and ""bird""",2005-06-07 00:00:00 UTC,"Stubborn heart, ungrateful, hard,
With a red-hot iron sear'd!
Carnal heart, immersed in sin,
All a cage of birds unclean!
Downward all thy motions tend;
Lust, the beast, or pride, the fiend,
Show thee, since thy total fall,
Earthly, sensual, devilish all.",2012-04-29,12243,•Cross-reference: compare Plato's image of the soul filled with birds. ,"""Carnal heart, immersed in sin, / All a cage of birds unclean!""","",2012-04-29 20:24:42 UTC,Part I.
4687,"",Reading,2004-04-20 00:00:00 UTC,"Though I'm afraid I have transgressed upon my reader's patience already, I cannot help taking notice of one thing more extraordinary than any yet mentioned; which was Crambe's Treatise of Syllogisms. He supposed that a philosopher's brain was like a great forest, where ideas ranged like animals of several kinds; that those ideas copulated and engendered conclusions; that when those different species copulate, they bring forth monsters and absurdities; that the major is the male, the minor the female, which copulate by the middle term, and engender the conclusion. Hence they are called the praemissa, or predecessors of the conclusion; and it is properly said by the logicians quod pariunt scientiam, opinionem: they beget science, opinion, etc. Universal propositions are persons of quality; and therefore in logic they are said to be of the first figure. Singular propositions are private persons, and therefore placed in the third or last figure, or rank. From those the principles all the rules of syllogism naturally follow.
(pp. 39-40)",2007-04-26,12361,•I've included this entry twice: once in Gardens and once in Animals.,"""He supposed that a philosopher's brain was like a great forest, where ideas ranged like animals of several kinds; that those ideas copulated and engendered conclusions; that when those different species copulate, they bring forth monsters and absurdities; that the major is the male, the minor the female, which copulate by the middle term, and engender the conclusion.""","",2009-09-14 19:36:53 UTC,"Chapter VII: Rhetoric, Logic, Metaphysics"
4687,Materialism,Reading,2004-05-18 00:00:00 UTC,"We proceed now to explain, by the structure of the brain, the several modes of thinking. It is well known to anatomists that the brain is a congeries of glands that separate the finer parts of the blood, called animal spirits; that a gland is nothing but a canal of a greater length, variously intorted and wound up together. From the arietation and motion of the spirits in those canals proceed all the different sorts of thought. Simple ideas are produced by the motion of the spirits in one simple canal. When two of these canals disembogue themselves into one, they make what we call a proposition; and when two of these propositional channels empty themselves into a third, they form a syllogism, or a ratiocination.
Memory is performed in a distinct apartment of the brain, made up of vessels similar, and like situated to the ideal, propositional and syllogistical vessels, in the primary part of the brain. After the same manner it is easy to explain the other modes of thinking; as also why some people think so wrong and perversely, which proceeds from the bad configuration of those glands. Some, for example, are born without the propositional or syllogistical canals; in others that reason ill, they are of unequal capacities; in dull fellows, of too great a length, whereby the motion of the spirits is retarded; in trifling geniuses weak and small; in the over-refining spirits, too much intorted and winding; and so of the rest.
We are so much persuaded of the truth of this our hypothesis that we have employed one of our members, a great virtuoso at Nuremberg, to make a sort of an hydraulic engine, in which a chemical liquor resembling blood is driven through elastic channels resembling arteries and veins by the force of an embolus like the heart, and wrought by a pneumatic machine of the nature of the lungs, with ropes and pullies, like the nerves, tendons and muscles. And we are persuaded that this our artificial man will not only walk and speak, and perform most of the outward actions of animal life, but (being wound up once a week) will perhaps reason as well as most of your country parsons.
(XII, pp. 63-4)",2011-04-26,12380,"•A hydraulic account of thinking. INTEREST.
• arietation: ""The action of butting like a ram; hence, the striking with a battering-ram or similar instrument."" (OED)","""From the arietation and motion of the spirits in those canals proceed all the different sorts of thought.""",Animals,2013-11-01 20:36:10 UTC,Chapter XII. Letter from Freethinkers
5070,"","Reading Susan C. Greenfield's ""Money or Mind? Cecilia, the Novel, and the Real Madness of Selfhood"" in SECC Vol. 33. p. 54.",2005-07-21 00:00:00 UTC,"""To indulge the power of fiction, and send imagination out upon the wing, is often the sport of those who delight too much in silent speculation. When we are alone we are not always busy; the labour of excogitation is too violent to last long; the ardour of enquiry will sometimes give way to idleness or satiety. He who has nothing external that can divert him, must find pleasure in his own thoughts, and must conceive himself what he is not; for who is pleased with what he is? He then expatiates in boundless futurity, and culls from all imaginable conditions that which for the present moment he should most desire, amuses his desires with impossible enjoyments, and confers upon his pride unattainable dominion. The mind dances from scene to scene, unites all pleasures in all combinations, and riots in delights which nature and fortune, with all their bounty, cannot bestow.",2011-05-23,13636,Reviewed 2009-08-14,"""To indulge the power of fiction, and send imagination out upon the wing, is often the sport of those who delight too much in silent speculation.""",Beasts,2011-05-25 16:26:15 UTC,""
4495,"",Reading,2011-03-31 21:58:50 UTC,"Alc. Academical study may be comprised in two points, reading and meditation. Their reading is chiefly employed on ancient authors in dead languages: so that a great part of their time is spent in learning words; which, when they have mastered with infinite pains, what do they get by it but old and obsolete notions, that are now quite exploded and out of use? Then, as to their meditations, what can they possibly be good for? He that wants the proper materials of thought, may think and meditate for ever to no purpose: those cobwebs spun by scholars out of their own brains being alike unserviceable, either for use or ornament. Proper ideas or materials are only to be got by frequenting good company. I know several gentlemen, who, since their appearance in the world, have spent as much time in rubbing off the rust and pedantry of a college education, as they had done before in acquiring it.
(p. 47)",,18276,"","""He that wants the proper materials of thought, may think and meditate for ever to no purpose: those cobwebs spun by scholars out of their own brains being alike unserviceable, either for use or ornament.""",Beasts,2011-03-31 21:58:50 UTC,Dialogue I
6869,"",Searching in UVa E-Text Center,2011-05-24 21:20:59 UTC,"No man has ever been drawn to crimes by love or jealousy, envy or hatred, but he can tell how easily he might at first have repelled the temptation, how readily his mind would have obeyed a call to any other object, and how weak his passion has been after some casual avocation, till he has recalled it again to his heart, and revived the viper by too warm a fondness.
(p. 48)",,18486,"","""No man has ever been drawn to crimes by love or jealousy, envy or hatred, but he can tell how easily he might at first have repelled the temptation, how readily his mind would have obeyed a call to any other object, and how weak his passion has been after some casual avocation, till he has recalled it again to his heart, and revived the viper by too warm a fondness.""",Beasts,2011-05-24 21:20:59 UTC,""
6906,"",Searching in UVa E-Text Center,2011-05-26 01:53:08 UTC,"There is no snare more dangerous to busy and excursive minds, than the cobwebs of petty inquisitiveness, which entangle them in trivial employments and minute studies, and detain them in a middle state, between the tediousness of total inactivity, and the fatigue of laborious efforts, enchant them at once with ease and novelty, and vitiate them with the luxury of learning. The necessity of doing something, and the fear of undertaking much, sinks the historian to a genealogist, the philosopher to a journalist ofthe weather, and the mathematician to a constructor of dials.
(p. 300)",,18559,"","""There is no snare more dangerous to busy and excursive minds, than the cobwebs of petty inquisitiveness, which entangle them in trivial employments and minute studies, and detain them in a middle state, between the tediousness of total inactivity, and the fatigue of laborious efforts, enchant them at once with ease and novelty, and vitiate them with the luxury of learning.""",Beasts,2011-05-26 01:53:08 UTC,""
3330,"","Searching ""soul"" and ""bird"" in HDIS (Poetry)",2012-04-29 15:19:26 UTC,"I am the man who long have known
The strength and rage of inbred sin;
My soul is dead, my heart is stone,
A cage of birds and beasts unclean,
A den of thieves, a dire abode
Of dragons, but no house of God.",,19734,"","""My soul is dead, my heart is stone, / A cage of birds and beasts unclean, / A den of thieves, a dire abode / Of dragons, but no house of God.""",Beasts,2012-04-29 15:19:26 UTC,""
7237,"","Searching ""soul"" and ""bird"" in HDIS (Poetry)",2012-04-29 15:35:55 UTC,"My heart and flesh cry out for God:
There would I fix my soul's abode,
As birds that in the altars nest;
There would I all my young ones bring,
An offering to my God and King,
And in Thy courts for ever rest.
",,19735,"","""My heart and flesh cry out for God: / There would I fix my soul's abode, / As birds that in the altars nest.""",Beasts,2012-04-29 15:36:08 UTC,""
7245,"","Searching ""heart"" and ""bird"" in HDIS (Poetry)",2012-04-29 20:58:18 UTC,"Soon, if I cease to watch and pray,
The unbelieving heart returns,
Rebels against Thy gracious sway,
With pride, desire, or anger burns.
My heart a cage of birds unclean,
Its old corrupt affections feels,
Its strong propensity to sin;
And God in me no longer dwells.",,19743,"","""My heart a cage of birds unclean, / Its old corrupt affections feels, / Its strong propensity to sin; / And God in me no longer dwells.""",Beasts,2012-04-29 21:05:35 UTC,""