work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
4386,"",Searching in HDIS (Prose),2005-04-25 00:00:00 UTC,"That our Institutions of Government and Law were plainly owing to our gross Defects in Reason, and by consequence, in Vertue; because Reason alone is sufficient to govern a Rational Creature; which was therefore a Character we had no Pretence to challenge, even from the Account I had given of my own People, although he manifestly perceived, that in order to favour them, I had concealed many Particulars, and often said the Thing which was not.
(pp. 102-3)",,11577,"","""Reason alone is sufficient to govern a Rational Creature; which was therefore a Character we had no Pretence to challenge""","",2009-09-14 19:36:02 UTC,"Vol 2, Part 4, Chap. 7"
4748,"",Searching in Past Masters ,2005-05-03 00:00:00 UTC,"106 I do verily think there is not any other medicine whatsoever so effectual to restore a crazy constitution, and cheer a dreary mind, or so likely to subvert that gloomy empire of the spleen (Sect. 103) which tyrannizeth over the better sort (as they are called) of these free nations, and maketh them, in spite of their liberty and property, more wretched slaves than even the subjects of absolute power, who breathe clear air in a sunny climate: while men of low degree often enjoy a tranquility and content that no advantage of birth or fortune can equal. Such, indeed, was the case while the rich alone could afford to be debauched; but when even beggars became debauchees, the case was altered.",,12563,"•INTEREST. REVISIT. This looks like a really crazy work (table of contents includes headings on tar-water, mercury, etc.)","""I do verily think there is not any other medicine whatsoever so effectual to restore a crazy constitution, and cheer a dreary mind, or so likely to subvert that gloomy empire of the spleen (Sect. 103) which tyrannizeth over the better sort (as they are called) of these free nations, and maketh them, in spite of their liberty and property, more wretched slaves than even the subjects of absolute power, who breathe clear air in a sunny climate.""","",2010-12-30 23:37:01 UTC,""
6572,"",Reading,2009-07-09 00:00:00 UTC,"Here it may not be amiss to add a few words upon the laudable practice of wearing quilted caps; which is not a matter of mere custom, humour, or fashion, as some would pretend, but an institution of great sagacity and use; these, when moistened with sweat, stop all perspiration, and by reverberating the heat prevent the spirit from evaporating any way but at the mouth: even as a skilful house-wife, that covers her still with a wet clout, for the same reason, and finds the same effect. For, it is the opinion of choice virtuosi, that the brain is only a crowd of little animals, but with teeth and claws extremely sharp, and therefore cling together in the contexture we behold, like the picture of Hobbes's Leviathan, or like bees in perpendicular swarm upon a tree, or like a carrion corrupted into vermin, still preserving the shape and figure of the mother animal; that all invention is formed by the morsure of two or more of these animals, upon certain capillary nerves, which proceed from thence, whereof three branches spread into the tongue, and two into the right hand. They hold also, that these animals are of a constitution extremely cold; that their food is the air we attract, their excrement phlegm; and that what we vulgarly called rheums, and colds, and distillations, is nothing else but an epidemical looseness, to which that little commonwealth is very subject from the climate it lies under. Further, that nothing less than a violent heat can disentangle these creatures from their hamated station of life, or give them vigour and humour to imprint the marks of their little teeth. That, if the morsure be hexagonal, it produces Poetry; the circular gives Eloquence; if the bite hath been conical, the person, whose nerve is so affected, shall be disposed to write upon Politics; and so of the rest.
(pp. 134-5)",,17460,"","""They hold also, that these animals are of a constitution extremely cold; that their food is the air we attract, their excrement phlegm; and that what we vulgarly called rheums, and colds, and distillations, is nothing else but an epidemical looseness, to which that little commonwealth is very subject from the climate it lies under.""","",2009-09-14 19:50:15 UTC,""
7095,"",Reading in Google Books,2011-09-15 21:08:33 UTC,"You say, you are free. How can that be, when you are subject to so many Passions? Do you acknowledge no Master, but from whom you are discharged by the Praetor?
Go Boy, says your Master, and carry the rubbing Brush to the Bath of Crispinus. If he should grow peevish and say, Do you loiter, you lazy Scoundrel? I suppose this severe Bondage does not in the least move you; nor can any thing external reach you. But if you have your Masters within your corrupt Mind, how are you Freer than this Slave, who is frighted to his Business by his Master's Frown, and Lash.
In the Morning you lie dissolved in Sloth; Rise up, says Avarice; arise, I say. You refuse her. But still she repeats arise. I cannot. Again she presses. What shall I do? Do you ask? Go, bring some of the Saperda Fish from Pontus, Castoreum, Flax, Ebony, Frankincense, and Coan Wines. Get before-hand with the rest, by unloading the thirsty Camel of his Pepper. Traffick, and perjure your self. But Jupiter alas will hear me! You great Fool, you must be as poor as a Church-Mouse, if you have any Regard for God or Religion.
(p. 89)",,19179,"Footnote cites Seneca nat quaest lib 3: ""But if you be a Slave to your Passions, you are in as wretched a Condition as if you were a Slave to the severest Master. Liber est qui servitutem essugit sui. Haec est assidua servitus, & ineluctabilis, ac per diem & noctem aequaliter premens, sine intervallo, sine commeatu.","""But if you have your Masters within your corrupt Mind, how are you Freer than this Slave, who is frighted to his Business by his Master's Frown, and Lash.""",Fetters,2011-09-15 21:08:52 UTC,Satire V
4024,"",Reading,2013-09-11 21:30:05 UTC,"Let us next examine the great introducers of new schemes in philosophy, and search till we can find from what faculty of the soul the disposition arises in mortal man of taking it into his head to advance new systems with such an eager zeal in things agreed on all hands impossible to be known; from what seeds this disposition springs, and to what quality of human nature these grand innovators have been indebted for their number of disciples, because it is plain that several of the chief among them, both ancient and modern, were usually mistaken by their adversaries, and, indeed, by all, except their own followers, to have been persons crazed or out of their wits, having generally proceeded in the common course of their words and actions by a method very different from the vulgar dictates of unrefined reason, agreeing for the most part in their several models with their present undoubted successors in the academy of modern Bedlam, whose merits and principles I shall further examine in due place. Of this kind were Epicurus, Diogenes, Apollonius, Lucretius, Paracelsus, Des Cartes, and others, who, if they were now in the world, tied fast and separate from their followers, would in this our undistinguishing age incur manifest danger of phlebotomy, and whips, and chains, and dark chambers, and straw. For what man in the natural state or course of thinking did ever conceive it in his power to reduce the notions of all mankind exactly to the same length, and breadth, and height of his own? Yet this is the first humble and civil design of all innovators in the empire of reason. Epicurus modestly hoped that one time or other a certain fortuitous concourse of all men’s opinions, after perpetual jostlings, the sharp with the smooth, the light and the heavy, the round and the square, would, by certain clinamina, unite in the notions of atoms and void, as these did in the originals of all things. Cartesius reckoned to see before he died the sentiments of all philosophers, like so many lesser stars in his romantic system, rapt and drawn within his own vortex. Now I would gladly be informed how it is possible to account for such imaginations as these in particular men, without recourse to my phenomenon of vapours ascending from the lower faculties to overshadow the brain, and there distilling into conceptions, for which the narrowness of our mother-tongue has not yet assigned any other name beside that of madness or frenzy. Let us therefore now conjecture how it comes to pass that none of these great prescribers do ever fail providing themselves and their notions with a number of implicit disciples, and I think the reason is easy to be assigned, for there is a peculiar string in the harmony of human understanding, which in several individuals is exactly of the same tuning. This, if you can dexterously screw up to its right key, and then strike gently upon it whenever you have the good fortune to light among those of the same pitch, they will by a secret necessary sympathy strike exactly at the same time. And in this one circumstance lies all the skill or luck of the matter; for, if you chance to jar the string among those who are either above or below your own height, instead of subscribing to your doctrine, they will tie you fast, call you mad, and feed you with bread and water. It is therefore a point of the nicest conduct to distinguish and adapt this noble talent with respect to the differences of persons and of times. Cicero understood this very well, when, writing to a friend in England, with a caution, among other matters, to beware of being cheated by our hackney-coachmen (who, it seems, in those days were as arrant rascals as they are now), has these remarkable words, Est quod gaudeas te in ista loca venisse, ubi aliquid sapere viderere. For, to speak a bold truth, it is a fatal miscarriage so ill to order affairs as to pass for a fool in one company, when in another you might be treated as a philosopher; which I desire some certain gentlemen of my acquaintance to lay up in their hearts as a very seasonable innuendo.
(pp. 80-1 in OUP ed.)",,22718,"","""Yet this is the first humble and civil design of all innovators in the empire of reason.""",Empire,2013-09-11 21:30:05 UTC,""