text,updated_at,metaphor,created_at,context,theme,reviewed_on,dictionary,comments,provenance,id,work_id
"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)",2013-06-04 16:42:06 UTC,"""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! """,2005-07-25 00:00:00 UTC,Chapter II. Of the Association of Ideas. Section I. ,"",,Inhabitants,"",Reading,14929,5587
"Whilst our minds are taken up with the objects or business before us, we are commonly happy, whatever the object or business be; when the mind is absent, and the thoughts are wandering to something else than what is passing in the place in which we are, we are often miserable.
(p. 22)",2013-06-04 16:43:39 UTC,"""[W]hen the mind is absent, and the thoughts are wandering to something else than what is passing in the place in which we are, we are often miserable""",2005-08-18 00:00:00 UTC,"Book I. Preliminary Considerations, Chapter 6. Human Happiness",Wandering,,Inhabitants,"","Searching ""mind"" in Liberty Fund OLL",15076,5640
"Regularity of imagination, which is of the greatest importance in genius, could never be acquired without the aid of judgment. It is only judgment constantly exerting itself along with fancy, and often checking it and examining its ideas, that produces by degrees a habit of correctness in thinking, and enures the mind to move straight forward to the end proposed, without declining into the byepaths which run off on both sides. Imagination is a faculty so wild in its own nature, that it must be accustomed to the discipline of reason before it can become same and manageable enough for a correct production. Not will it be capable of this even after it has acquired the greatest possible regularity, except judgment attend it and perpetually curb its motions. The most regular imagination will sometimes make an unnatural excursion, and present improper ideas; judgment must therefore be ready to review its work, and to reject such ideas. Many of Bacon's conjectures concerning subjects which he had not opportunity to examine perfectly, are false though they be ingenious, and would have been disavowed by judgment, when it had canvassed them. Newton's imagination was more correct than his, and more constantly under the control of judgment; yet reason would have perhaps, on examination, rejected some of the suppositions which he makes in his queries. The first sketch of every work of genius, is always very different from the finished piece. Not only are many things added by the posterior essays of imagination, affected by new associations in repeated views of the subject, and thus penetrating deeper into its nature; but also many things are retrenched or altered by judgment on a revisal, which it had not force enough to prevent fancy from exhibiting in the course of the invention. Association could not recal the idea of the design, in order to bring back fancy when it has wandered from it, if judgment did not inform us that it had wandered, by perceiving the tendency of the ideas which it has suggested. The finest imagination, totally destitute of assistance from judgment, would in some measure resemble a blind man, who may be very dexterous in groping the right road, but cannot know certainly, whether he continues in it, and has no means of recovering it, if he once stray.
(I.iv, pp. 81-2)",2013-06-27 18:16:08 UTC,"""Association could not recal the idea of the design, in order to bring back fancy when it has wandered from it, if judgment did not inform us that it had wandered, by perceiving the tendency of the ideas which it has suggested. The finest imagination, totally destitute of assistance from judgment, would in some measure resemble a blind man, who may be very dexterous in groping the right road, but cannot know certainly, whether he continues in it, and has no means of recovering it, if he once stray.""",2013-06-27 18:16:08 UTC,"","",,Inhabitants,"",Reading in C-H Lion,21187,7486
"Further, a passion has an influence on the number, as well as on the nature of the ideas introduced. It tends so strongly to keep the attention fixt on the objects strictly connected with it, that it suffers not these to suggest a long train of ideas, successively related to each other. It generally allows us to go only one step or two beyond them; after we have been led by means of them to conceive one idea, we go not forward to the view of others associated with that; still the passion makes the object nearly allied to it, to dwell upon the thought; we recur to the contemplation of this object, and it suggests a new idea, related to itself but not to that idea which it had introduced formerly. In other cases, after the imagination has once received an impulse, it readily goes on from one perception through a number of others, till it arrive at a great distance from that with which it began: and it would be difficult to stop its career, to bring it back to the object from which it set out, or to make it enter into a different track. But when the mind is occupied by a passion, the difficulty lies wholly on the other side: the passion directs the view to things closely connected with it, so powerfully and so constantly, that the imagination is drawn backward to repeated conceptions of them: when our natural propensity to vary the object of our thought, indisposes us for dwelling longer on them alone, they yet retain their hold of us so far that we enter easily into another track pointed out by them: we cannot without a painful effort, often we cannot at all, proceed so long in one path as to leave them far behind us; all the ideas introduced after a few removes, are but slightly connected with the object which the passion disposes us to rest upon, and that passion checks all propensity to go through or attend to many ideas but slightly connected. The imagination resembles a person attached to home, who cannot without reluctance undertake a long journey, but can with pleasure make short excursions, returning home from each, and thence setting out anew. Opposite forces in mechanics tend to destroy one another. This is analogous to the case before us. The objects strictly connected with a passion are naturally fit for introducing ideas related to themselves; the passion acts in a contrary direction, and endeavours to keep the mind from running off to these: there is a perpetual struggle between the two. The passion having kept the attention fixt for some time on an object intimately connected with it, its force begins to flag: that object is conceived in a lively and vigorous manner, by reason of its relation to the passion, and therefore very powerfully draws in ideas associated with it. But the conception of all the succeeding objects drawn in by it, is still weaker and weaker; on this account their power of introducing ideas becomes continually less and less; so that after a few steps they give us a very inconsiderable propensity to go forward. The passion exerts a force superior to their's; it therefore prevails, it prevents farther association, it brings back the attention to some object closely connected with it, it invigorates the conception of that object so as to enable it to suggest a new idea; but it hinders us from going to a greater distance than before. Here we discover a new cause of that abruptness of thought which a passion occasions. It arises partly, we have seen, from the mind's dividing its attention between several objects all closely and almost equally connected with the passion; partly from the rapidity with which the mind takes in dissimilar views of any one of these objects; and partly from the struggle between objects suggested by the passion, and objects suggested by other means: but it also arises partly from the constant vibration of the thought between the objects immediately connected with the passion, and the ideas which they tend to introduce. The mind leaves any of these ideas as soon as it has conceived it, it lays hold of an object more closely connected with the passion, it runs from it to an idea suggested by it, but wholly unrelated to the former. This alone must produce a great want of connexion, and many breaks, in the expression of sentiments resulting from a passion. These principles now laid down, are sufficiently illustrated by the last example which we cited. Alonzo's grief made the loss of his son to suggest the distance of his daughter, and the consequence of that distance, the improbability of his ever seeing her; but without allowing him to pursue that thought, hurries him back to the loss of his son, and sets him a thinking on new circumstances connected with it. The marriage of his daughter, the loss of his son, the loss of his daughter, her distance, the little chance for his seeing her again, the loss of his son, his being heir to extensive territories, his being devoured by fishes, all succeed one another in his thoughts, with great abruptness and rapidity.
(II.iii, pp. 165-9)",2013-06-27 18:25:59 UTC,"""The imagination resembles a person attached to home, who cannot without reluctance undertake a long journey, but can with pleasure make short excursions, returning home from each, and thence setting out anew.""",2013-06-27 18:25:59 UTC,"","",,Inhabitants,"",Reading in C-H Lion,21195,7486
"The proper office of JUDGMENT in composition, is to compare the ideas which imagination collects; to observe their agreement or disagreement, their relations and resemblances; to point out such as are of a homogeneous nature; to mark and reject such as are discordant; and finally, to determine the truth and utility of the inventions or discoveries which are produced by the power of imagination. This faculty is, in all its operations, cool, attentive, and considerate. It canvasses the design, ponders the sentiments, examines their propriety and connection, and reviews the whole composition with severe impartiality. Thus it appears to be in every respect a proper counterbalance to the RAMBLING and VOLATILE power of IMAGINATION. The one, perpetually attempting to soar, is apt to deviate into the mazes of error; while the other arrests the wanderer in its vagrant course, and compels it to follow the path of nature and of truth.
(pp. 8-10)",2013-07-01 16:47:33 UTC,"""Thus it appears to be in every respect a proper counterbalance to the RAMBLING and VOLATILE power of IMAGINATION. The one, perpetually attempting to soar, is apt to deviate into the mazes of error; while the other arrests the wanderer in its vagrant course, and compels it to follow the path of nature and of truth.""",2013-07-01 16:47:33 UTC,"","",,Inhabitants,"",C-H Lion,21355,7498