text,updated_at,metaphor,created_at,context,theme,reviewed_on,dictionary,comments,provenance,id,work_id
"According to Mr. Locke, the soul is a mere rasa tabula, an empty recipient, a mechanical blank. According to Plato, she is an ever-written tablet, a plenitude of forms, a vital and intellectual energy. On the former system, she is on a level with the most degraded natures, the receptacle of material species, and the spectator of delusion and non-entity. Hence, her energies are nothing but somnolent perceptions, and encumbered cogitations; of all her knowledge terminated in sense, and her science in passion. Like a man between sleeping and waking, her visions are turbid and confused, and the phantoms of a material night, continually glide before her drowsy eye. But on the latter system, the soul is the connecting medium of an intelligible and sensible nature, the bright repository of all middle forms, and the vigilant eye of all cogitative reasons. Hence she is capable of rousing herself from the sleep of a corporeal life, and emerging from this dark Cimmerian land, into the regions of light and reality. At first, indeed, before she is excited by science, she is oppressed with lethargy, and clouded with oblivion; but in proportion as learning and enquiry stimulate her dormant powers, she wakens from the dreams of ignorance, and opens her eye to the irradiations of wis- [end page xxxi] dom. On Mr. Locke's system, the principles of science and sense are the same, for the energies of both originate from material forms, on which they are continually employed. Hence, science is subject to the flowing and perishable nature of particulars; and if body and its attributes were destroyed, would be nothing but a name. But on the system of Plato, they differ as much as delusions and reality; for here the vital, permanent, and lucid nature of ideas is the fountain of science; and the inert, unstable, and obscure nature of sensible objects, the source of sensation. On Mr. Locke's system, body may be modified into thought, and become an intelligent creature; it may be subtilized into life, and shrink, by its exility, into intellect. On that of Plato, body can never alter its nature by modification, however, it may be rarefied and refined, varied by the transposition of its part, or tortured by the hand of experiment. In short, the two systems may be aptly represented by the two sections of a line, in Plato's Republic. In the ancient, you have truth itself, and whatever participates of the brightest evidence and reality: in the modern, ignorance, and whatever belongs to obscurity and shadow. The former fills the soul with intelligible light, breaks her lethargic fetters, and elevates her to the principle of things; the latter clouds the intellectual eye of the soul, by increasing her oblivion, strengthens her corporeal bands, and hurries her downwards into the dark labyrinths of matter.
(pp. xxxi-xxxii)",2011-05-27 14:11:28 UTC,"""The former [Platonic philosophy] fills the soul with intelligible light, breaks her lethargic fetters, and elevates her to the principle of things; the latter [Lockean philosophy] clouds the intellectual eye of the soul, by increasing her oblivion, strengthens her corporeal bands, and hurries her downwards into the dark labyrinths of matter.""",2006-10-13 00:00:00 UTC,"","",2011-06-26,Fetters,"•Taylor seems like quite a character. See ODNB.
•I've included four times: Light, Fetters, Eye, Bands",Searching in ECCO,15226,5705
"DUSHMANTA
[aside]
What can I do in this retreat, since my darling has left it?
[musing and looking round]
Ah! my departure is happily delayed. Here lies her bracelet of flowers, exquisitely perfumed by the root of síura which had been spread on her bosom: it has fallen from her delicate wrist, and is become a new chain for my heart.
",2011-07-29 16:09:45 UTC,"""Here lies her bracelet of flowers, exquisitely perfumed by the root of síura which had been spread on her bosom: it has fallen from her delicate wrist, and is become a new chain for my heart.""",2011-07-29 16:09:45 UTC,Act III,"",,Fetters,"","Searching ""heart"" and ""chain"" in HDIS (Drama)",19053,5721
"""Ah, much deluded! lay aside
Thy threats, and anger misapplied!
Art not afraid with sounds like these
To offend, where thou canst not appease?
Death is not (wherefore dream'st thou thus?)
The son of Night and Erebus;
Nor was of fell Erynnis born
On gulfs where Chaos rules forlorn:
But, sent from God, his presence leaves,
To gather home his ripen'd sheaves,
To call encumber'd souls away
From fleshly bonds to boundless day,
(As when the winged hours excite,
And summon forth the morning-light)
And each to convoy to her place
Before the Eternal Father's face.
But not the wicked;--them, severe
Yet just, from all their pleasures here
He hurries to the realms below,
Terrific realms of penal woe!
Myself no sooner heard his call,
Than, 'scaping through my prison-wall,
I bade adieu to bolts and bars,
And soar'd, with angels, to the stars,
Like him of old, to whom 'twas given
To mount, on fiery wheels, to heaven.
Boötes' waggon, slow with cold,
Appall'd me not; nor to behold
The sword, that vast Orion draws,
Or even the Scorpion's horrid claws.
Beyond the Sun's bright orb I fly,
And, far beneath my feet, descry
Night's dread goddess, seen with awe,
Whom her winged dragons draw.
Thus, ever wondering at my speed,
Augmented still as I proceed,
I pass the planetary sphere,
The Milky Way--and now appear
Heaven's crystal battlements, her door
Of massy pearl, and emerald floor.
",2012-01-08 22:30:33 UTC,"""But, sent from God, his presence leaves, / To gather home his ripen'd sheaves, / To call encumber'd souls away / From fleshly bonds to boundless day, / (As when the winged hours excite, / And summon forth the morning-light) / And each to convoy to her place / Before the Eternal Father's face.""",2012-01-08 22:29:20 UTC,"","",,Fetters,"","Searching ""bond"" and ""soul"" in HDIS (Poetry)",19400,7147