text,updated_at,metaphor,created_at,context,theme,reviewed_on,dictionary,comments,provenance,id,work_id
"Man is a machine so compound, that it is impossible to form at first a clear idea thereof, and consequently to define it. This is the reason, that all the enquiries the philosophers have made a priori, that is, by endeavouring to raise themselves on the wings of the understanding have proved ineffectual. Thus it is only a posteriori, or as it were by disentangling the soul from the organs of the body, that we can, I do not say, discover with evidence the nature of man, but obtain the greatest degree of probability the subject will admit of.
(p. 6)",2013-07-16 19:10:41 UTC,"""Man is a machine so compound, that it is impossible to form at first a clear idea thereof, and consequently to define it. This is the reason, that all the enquiries the philosophers have made a priori, that is, by endeavouring to raise themselves on the wings of the understanding have proved ineffectual.""",2013-07-16 19:10:41 UTC,"","",,Animals,"",Reading,21798,7547
"Like that bird on yonder spray, the imagination seems to be perpetually ready to take wing. Hurried with incessant rapidity but the vortex of blood and animal spirits, one undulation makes an impression, which is immediately effaced by another; the soul pursues it, but often in vain: she must wait to bewail the loss of what she did not quickly lay hold of; and thus it is that the imagination, true image of time, is incessantly destroyed and renewed.
(pp. 33-4)",2013-07-16 19:36:42 UTC,"""Like that bird on yonder spray, the imagination seems to be perpetually ready to take wing.""",2013-07-16 19:36:42 UTC,"","",,Animals,"",Reading,21821,7547
"..] since certain traces of the brain likewise excite the same itching, and create the same inclinations; why should we make a difference, or endeavour to make two things of what is apparently but one? It is ridiculous to exclaim against the dominion of the will. For one order which it gives, a hundred times does it come under the yoke. And where is the wonder that the body when in health should be subservient, for how can it resist that torrent of blood, and all those spirits which are ready to force obedience, the will having for its ministers an invisible army of fluids, always ready to receive its orders, and as quick as lightening in the execution of them! But as it is by the nerves that the power of the will is exercis'd, so it it likewise by them that it is oftentimes check'd. Can the highest efforts of the will alone, bring aid to the exhausted new married lover, of the greatest warmth of desire bring back his fallen vigour? [...]
(p. 64)",2013-07-16 20:20:41 UTC,"""It is ridiculous to exclaim against the dominion of the will. For one order which it gives, a hundred times does it come under the yoke.""",2013-07-16 20:16:12 UTC,"","",,Animals,"",Reading,21834,7547