work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
4178,"",Past Masters,2004-02-26 00:00:00 UTC,"HYLAS. Explain to me now, O Philonous! how it is possible there should be room for all those trees and houses to exist in your mind. Can extended things be contained in that which is unextended? Or are we to imagine impressions made on a thing void of all solidity? You cannot say objects are in your mind, as books in your study: or that things are imprinted on it, as the figure of a seal upon wax. In what sense therefore are we to understand those expressions? Explain me this if you can: and I shall then be able to answer all those queries you formerly put to me about my substratum.
PHILONOUS. Look you, Hylas, when I speak of objects as existing in the mind or imprinted on the senses; I would not be understood in the gross literal sense, as when bodies are said to exist in a place, or a seal to make an impression upon wax. My meaning is only that the mind comprehends or perceives them; and that it is affected from without, or by some being distinct from itself. This is my explication of your difficulty; and how it can serve to make your tenet of an unperceiving material substratum intelligible, I would fain know.
HYLAS. Nay, if that be all, I confess I do not see what use can be made of it. But are you not guilty of some abuse of language in this?
PHILONOUS. None at all: it is no more than common custom, which you know is the rule of language, hath authorized: nothing being more usual, than for philosophers to speak of the immediate objects of the understanding as things existing in the mind. Nor is there any thing in this, but what is conformable to the general analogy of language; most part of the mental operations being signified by words borrowed from sensible things; as is plain in the terms comprehend, reflect, discourse, &c. which being applied to the mind, must not be taken in their gross original sense.
(Vol ii, p. 241)
",,10848,"•INTEREST. Metaphors and anti-metaphors, figurative language and ordinary language.
•Both of the metaphors most readily associated with Locke (inscribed surface/container) are here denied.
•I had two entries: they were split into two metaphors room/wax. I deleted the second.
","""You cannot say objects are in your mind, as books in your study: or that things are imprinted on it, as the figure of a seal upon wax.""",Impressions and Rooms,2013-09-12 04:08:26 UTC,Third Dialogue
4437,"","Reading Wasserman, Earl R. ""The Inherent Values of Eighteenth-Century Personification."" PMLA 65.4 (1950): 435-63. p. 449.",2006-06-01 00:00:00 UTC,"... we have no other Faculties of perceiving or knowing anything divine or human but our Five Senses, and our Reason. ... [it is by the senses that] the Ideas of external sensible Objects are first conveyed into the Imagination; and Reason or the pure Intellect ... operates upon those Ideas, and upon them, Only after they are so lodged in that common Receptacle.
(p. 53)",,11726,"","It is by the senses that ""the Ideas of external sensible Objects are first conveyed into the Imagination; and Reason or the pure Intellect ... operates upon those Ideas, and upon them, Only after they are so lodged in that common Receptacle""","",2013-09-27 21:48:23 UTC,""
4503,"",Reading Alciphron: In Focus,2004-02-17 00:00:00 UTC,"The substance of his first answer is, that whereas the objection supposeth every general term in an intelligible discourse, to stand for a distinct abstract general idea; he proceeds to shew, very justly indeed, how groundless and false that notion is, of men's forming any universal ideas by abstracting intirely from all the particulars of any kind of thing whatsoever. The application he makes of it is this. That men are as little capable of forming abstract ideas or conceptions even of things natural and sensible, as they are of things divine and supernatural; that they can form no such general abstract idea of number and force, any more than they can of grace: and his consequence is, that both being upon the same level with respect to our forming any abstract conception or idea of them; it is unreasonable that men should insist upon having such an idea of grace, when they cannot have a like idea of number or force. But to what purpose is all this? For the objection, as it is stated by infidels supposeth no such thing; nor doth he himself mention any sort of abstract ideas in any part of it, to give even a colour to his being so prolix in discanting upon them in his answer. No, the whole strength of their objection is resolved into this; that they can obtain no ideas, either general or particular, either in the abstract or in the concrete, either clear or obscure, distinct or indeterminate, of things divine and spiritual contained in the gospel mysteries; different from the ideas of common worldly objects: nor of grace in particular, different from that of human grace or favour; and therefore they reject it as an insignificant term, without any real and useful meaning when taken in a divine and religious sence. They do not insist upon ideas of things divine and spiritual, rendred general by abstraction from all the particulars; nor upon such as become general by one of the particulars being made to stand for an indefinite number of things of the same kind, which is the true abstraction: no nor upon an idea of divine grace abstracted from the cause operating, from the subject operated upon, and from the effects produced; as he groundlessly supposes in his answer. But what they demand is, any ideas of them as different from all the ideas and conceptions of things sensible and human, as these are from things imperceptible and divine: and accordingly they tell you that when they look inward for such ideas to annex to the terms, their mind is an empty void; and therefore they look no farther than the strictly proper and formal and literal acceptation of those words.
(pp. 164-5)",,11833,Browne attacks Berkeley's theory of language,"""But what they demand is, any ideas of them as different from all the ideas and conceptions of things sensible and human, as these are from things imperceptible and divine: and accordingly they tell you that when they look inward for such ideas to annex to the terms, their mind is an empty void; and therefore they look no farther than the strictly proper and formal and literal acceptation of those words.""","",2013-09-28 14:17:49 UTC,""
4495,"",Reading,2011-03-31 21:46:51 UTC,"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)",,18272,INTEREST. USE: Mention in ROOMS?,"""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.""",Rooms,2011-03-31 21:46:51 UTC,Dialogue I