work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
5587,Reverie; Mind's Eye,Reading,2005-07-25 00:00:00 UTC,"The human soul is essentially active; and none of our faculties are more restless, than this of Imagination, which operates in sleep, as well as awake. While we listen to a discourse, or read a book, how often , in spite of all our care, does the fancy wander, and present thoughts quite different from those we have in view! That energy, which lays a restraint upon the fancy, by fixing the mind on one particular object, or set of objects, is called Attention: and most people know, that the continued exercise of it is accompanied with difficulty, and something of intellectual weariness. Whereas, when, without attending to any one particular idea, we give full scope to our thoughts, and permit them to shift, as Imagination or accident shall determine, a state of mind which is called Reverie; we are conscious of something like mental relaxation; while one idea brings in another, which gives way to a third, and that in its turn is succeeded by others; the mind seeming all along to be passive, and to exert as little authority over its thoughts, as the eye does over the persons who pass before it in the street. The succession of these wandering ideas is often regulated by Memory; as when the particulars of a place we have seen, or of a conversation we [end page 78] have witnessed, pass in review before us. At other time, our thoughts have less connection to reality, and follow each other in an order, in which, perhaps, they never appeared before.
(II.i, pp. 78-9)",,14930,"•Fascinating comparison. Revery, crowd of people in the street, Mind's Eye, etc. USE in ENTRY. INTEREST.
•I've included twice: Eye and Crowd
•Cross-reference: Beattie picks up Hume's language from the Treatise: ""One thought chaces another, and draws after it a third, by which it is expell'd in its turn. In this respect, I cannot compare the soul more properly to any thing than to a republic or commonwealth, in which the several members are united by the reciprocal ties of government and subordination"" (I.iv.6.19).","In reverie ""we are conscious of something like mental relaxation; while one idea brings in another, which gives way to a third, and that in its turn is succeeded by others; the mind seeming all along to be passive, and to exert as little authority over its thoughts, as the eye does over the persons who pass before it in the street.""",Eye,2009-09-14 19:42:19 UTC,Chapter II. Of the Association of Ideas. Section I.
7121,"","Reading Travel Writing: 1700-1830, eds. Elizabeth A. Bohls and Ian Duncan (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005), 33-4.",2011-10-26 03:29:27 UTC,"I have been speaking hitherto of a morning saunter; for in the evening there generally is, on St. Mark's Place, such a mixed multitude of Jews, Turks, and Christians; lawyers, knaves, and pickpockets; mountebanks, old women, and physicians; women of quality with masks; strumpets barefaced; and, in short, such a jumble of senators, citizens, gondoleers, and people of every character and condition, that your ideas are broken, bruised, and dislocated in the crowd, in such a manner that you can think, or reflect, on nothing; yet this being a state of mind which many people are fond of, the place never fails to be well attended, and, in fine weather, numbers pass a great part of the night there. When the piazza is illuminated, and the shops in the adjacent streets lighted up, the whole has a brilliant effect; and as it is the custom for the ladies, as well as the gentlemen, to frequent the cassinos and coffee-houses around, the Place of St. Mark answers all the purposes of either Vauxhall or Ranelagh.
(pp. 59-60)",,19300,"INTERESTING: metaphor of mind, out there? USE IN ENTRY.","""I have been speaking hitherto of a morning saunter; for in the evening there generally is, on St. Mark's Place, such a mixed multitude of Jews, Turks, and Christians; lawyers, knaves, and pickpockets; mountebanks, old women, and physicians; women of quality with masks; strumpets barefaced; and, in short, such a jumble of senators, citizens, gondoleers, and people of every character and condition, that your ideas are broken, bruised, and dislocated in the crowd, in such a manner that you can think, or reflect, on nothing; yet this being a state of mind which many people are fond of, the place never fails to be well attended, and, in fine weather, numbers pass a great part of the night there.""",Inhabitants,2011-10-26 03:29:27 UTC,Letter VI
7486,"",Reading in C-H Lion,2013-06-27 18:11:50 UTC,"In a man of genius, imagination can scarce take a single step, but judgment should attend it. The most luxuriant fancy stands most in need of being checked by judgment. As a rich soil produces not only the largest quantity of grain, but also the greatest profusion of such weeds as tend to choak it; so a fertile imagination, along with just and useful ideas, produces many trifling, false, and improper thoughts, which, if they be not immediately examined by reason, and speedily rejected, will over-run and obstruct the truth or the beauty which the others might have produced. Judgment cannot collect ideas, but it revises those which fancy has collected, and either adopts or rejects them, as it finds cause. Though a bright and comprehensive fancy be the principal ingredient in genius, yet nothing is so dangerous as to affect to display it constantly, or to indulge it without any control from reflection; nothing is productive of greater faults. This leads philosophers to construct whimsical hypotheses, instead of inventing just theories. This leads poets to describe improbable events and unnatural characters, and to search for unseasonable wit and ill-timed splendour, when judgment would have directed them to imitate nature with exactness, and to study simplicity of expression. This leads painters capriciously to create imaginary decorations, instead of inventing natural and consistent embeilishments. Imagination must set all the ideas and all the analogies of things, which it collects, before the discerning eye of reason, and submit them absolutely to its sovereign decision. It is justly observed by Quintilian, that every fiction of the human fancy is approved in the moment of its production. The exertion of the mind which is requisite in forming it, is agreeable; and the face of novelty which infant conceptions wear, fails not to recommend them promiscuously, till reason has had time to survey and examine them. Were reason never to scrutinize them, all our ideas would be retained indiscriminately, and the productions of fancy would be perfectly monstrous. While a man is engaged in composition or investigation, he often seems to himself to be fired with his subject, and to teem with ideas; but on revising the work, finds that his judgment is offended, and his time lost. An idea that sparkled in the eye of fancy, is often condemned by judgment as false and unsubstantial. A more rigid exercise of this latter faculty, would have preserved Tasso from introducing sentiments which have show without justness, and figures which surprise and dazzle, but are unsuitable to the purpose to which they ought to have been subservient; and would have enabled him to escape the censure of having overspread his work with tinsel, and thus sullied the lustre of the pure gold which it contains.
(I.iv, pp. 75-8)",,21184,"","""It is justly observed by Quintilian, that every fiction of the human fancy is approved in the moment of its production. The exertion of the mind which is requisite in forming it, is agreeable; and the face of novelty which infant conceptions wear, fails not to recommend them promiscuously, till reason has had time to survey and examine them.""",Inhabitants,2013-06-27 18:11:50 UTC,""
7486,"",Reading in C-H Lion,2013-06-27 18:48:19 UTC,"On the other hand, there may be some degree of invention in a particular art, without a capacity of correspondent execution. A person may compose in music, who cannot perform. Many have invented the subject of a picture, and in idea designed the whole of it, so that, from their description of their conception, a master might execute it, though they themselves never used the pencil. Others might proceed a step farther; they could sketch out the piece, without being able to colour it. It is remarked of Pietro Testa, that in drawings, his execution is both masterly and correct, but notwithstanding this, and notwithstanding his having possessed invention sublime and exuberant, he attempted often, without success, to acquire the art of colouring. In like manner, a person may conceive the whole plan of a poem, and even express it agreeably in prose, who cannot cloath it with numbers. The Telemachus of Fenelon is a direct example of this. Such persons possess real genius, and perhaps a high degree of it, so far as it extends: but they show not a genius complete in the art to which it points. In order to compleat genius in any of the arts, a man must possess the power of employing a proper vehicle, congruous to the nature of that art, for conveying the conceptions of his imagination to the senses and the souls of other men. It is this that puts it in the power of genius to show itself: without this, its finest conceptions would perish, like an infant in the womb; without this, the brightest imagination would be like a vigorous mind confined in a lame or paralytic body. Want of skill in execution was, perhaps, the only thing that hindered some of the earliest painters, and some of the first restorers of the art, who are now neglected and almost forgotten, from obtaining a very high rank.
(III.vii, pp. 418-20)",,21216,"","""It is this that puts it in the power of genius to show itself: without this, its finest conceptions would perish, like an infant in the womb; without this, the brightest imagination would be like a vigorous mind confined in a lame or paralytic body.""",Inhabitants,2013-06-27 18:48:19 UTC,""