work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
6729,"",Contributed by PC Fleming.,2010-06-25 12:40:35 UTC,"""I desire you to judge of me, not by what I was, but by what I am,"" said a philosopher when he was reproached for some of his past transgressions. If the interval between an offence and its punishment be long, it is possible that during this interval a complete change may be made in the views and habits of the offender; such a change as shall absolutely preclude all probability of his repeating his offence. His punishment must then be purely for the sake of example to others. He suffers pain at the time, perhaps, when he is in the best social dispositions possible; and thus we punish the present good man for the faults of the former offender. We readily excuse the violence which a man in a passion may have committed, when upon his return to his sober senses he expresses contrition and surprise at his own excesses; he assures us, and we believe him, that he is now a perfectly different person. If we do not feel any material ill consequences from his late anger, we are willing, and even desirous, that the passionate man should not in his sober state be punished for his madness; all that we can desire is, to have some security against his falling into any fresh fit of anger: could his habits of temper be instantly changed, and could we have a moral certainty that his phrenzy [end page 237] would never more do us any injury, would it not be malevolent and unjust to punish him for his old insanity? If we think and act upon these principles with respect to men, how much more indulgent should we be to children? Indulgence is perhaps an improper word: but in other words, how careful should we be never to chain children to their dead faults!* Children during their education must be in a continual state of progression; they are not the same to-day that they were yesterday; they have little reflection, their consciousness of the present occupies them, and it would be extremely difficult from day to day, or from hour to hour, to identify their minds. Far from wishing that they should distinctly remember all their past thoughts, and that they should value themselves upon their continuing the same, we must frequently desire that they should forget their former errors, and absolutely change their manner of thinking. They should feel no interest in adhering to former bad habits or false opinions; therefore their pride should not be roused to defend these by our making them a part of their standing character. The character of children is to be formed; we should never speak of it as positively fixed. Man has been defined to be a bundle of habits; till the bundle is made up we may continually increase or diminish it. Children who are zealous in defence of their own perfections, are of all others most likely to become stationary in their intellectual progress, and disingenuous in their temper. It would be in vain to repeat to them this sensible and elegant observation, ""To confess that you have been in the wrong, is only saying in other words, that you are wiser to-day than you were yesterday."" This remark will rather pique than comfort the pride of those, who are anxious to [end page 238] prove that they have been equally wise and immaculate in every day of their existence.
(pp. 237-9)
*Mezentius. VIRGIL.",2010-06-28,17908,"ed. PCF. BMP added text, filling out context from Google, checking against pagination in ECCO.","""Man has been defined to be a bundle of habits; till the bundle is made up we may continually increase or diminish it.""","",2010-06-29 03:08:29 UTC,"Vol. I, Chapter 9, ""On Rewards and Punishments"""
6729,"",Contributed by PC Fleming,2010-07-01 14:41:05 UTC,"In making observations upon subjects which are new to us, we must be content to use our memory unassisted at first by our reason; we must treasure up the ore and rubbish together, because we cannot immediately distinguish them from each other. But the sooner we can separate them the better. In the beginning of all experimental sciences, a number of useless particulars are recorded, because they are not known to be useless; when from comparing these a few general principles are discovered, the memory is immediately relieved, the judgment and inventive faculty have power and liberty to work, and then a rapid progress and great discoveries are made. It is the misfortune, of those who first cultivate new sciences, that their memory is overloaded; but if those who succeed to them submit to the same senseless drudgery, it is not their misfortune, but their fault. Let us look over the history of those who have made discoveries and inventions, we shall perceive, that it has been by rejecting useless ideas that they have first cleared their way to truth. Dr. Priestley’s Histories of Vision and of Electricity are as useful when we consider them as histories of the human mind, as when we read them as histories of science. Dr. P. has published a catalogue of books, from which he gathered his materials. The pains, he tells us, that it cost him to compress and abridge the accounts which ingenious men have given of their own experiments, teach us how much our progress in real knowledge depends upon rejecting all that is superfluous. When Simonides offered to teach Themistocles the art of memory, Themistocles answered, ‘Rather teach me the art of forgetting; for I find that I remember much that I had better forget, and forget’ (consequently) ‘some things which I wish to remember.' (Vol. II, pp. 568-9)",,17919,"","""In making observations upon subjects which are new to us, we must be content to use our memory unassisted at first by our reason; we must treasure up the ore and rubbish together, because we cannot immediately distinguish them from each other.""",Metal,2013-06-11 19:19:05 UTC,"Vol. II, chapter 21, ""Memory and Invention"""
5744,"",Reading,2013-04-22 03:54:11 UTC,"In France you are now in the crisis of a revolution, and in the transit from one form of government to another—you cannot see that character of men exactly in the same situation in which we see it in this country. With us it is militant; with you it is triumphant; and you know how it can act when its power is commensurate to its will. I would not be supposed to confine those observations to any description of men, or to comprehend all men of any description within them--No! far from it. I am as incapable of that injustice, as I am of keeping terms with those who profess principles of extremes; and who under the name of religion teach little else than wild and dangerous politics. The worst of these politics of revolution is this; they temper and harden the breast, in order to prepare it for the desperate strokes which are sometimes used in extreme occasions. But as these occasions may never arrive, the mind receives a gratuitous taint; and the moral sentiments suffer not a little, when no political purpose is served by their depravation. This sort of people are so taken up with their theories about the rights of man, that they have totally forgot his nature. Without opening one new avenue to the understanding, they have succeeded in stopping up those that lead to the heart. They have perverted in themselves, and in those that attend to them, all the well-placed sympathies of the human breast.
(pp. 95-6, p. 56 in Pocock ed.)",,20112,"","""The worst of these politics of revolution is this; they temper and harden the breast, in order to prepare it for the desperate strokes which are sometimes used in extreme occasions.""",Metal,2013-04-22 03:54:11 UTC,""
5744,"",Reading,2013-04-22 03:56:26 UTC,"In France you are now in the crisis of a revolution, and in the transit from one form of government to another—you cannot see that character of men exactly in the same situation in which we see it in this country. With us it is militant; with you it is triumphant; and you know how it can act when its power is commensurate to its will. I would not be supposed to confine those observations to any description of men, or to comprehend all men of any description within them--No! far from it. I am as incapable of that injustice, as I am of keeping terms with those who profess principles of extremes; and who under the name of religion teach little else than wild and dangerous politics. The worst of these politics of revolution is this; they temper and harden the breast, in order to prepare it for the desperate strokes which are sometimes used in extreme occasions. But as these occasions may never arrive, the mind receives a gratuitous taint; and the moral sentiments suffer not a little, when no political purpose is served by their depravation. This sort of people are so taken up with their theories about the rights of man, that they have totally forgot his nature. Without opening one new avenue to the understanding, they have succeeded in stopping up those that lead to the heart. They have perverted
in themselves, and in those that attend to them, all the well-placed sympathies of the human breast.
(pp. 95-6, p. 56 in Pocock ed.)",,20113,"","""But as these occasions may never arrive, the mind receives a gratuitous taint; and the moral sentiments suffer not a little, when no political purpose is served by their depravation.""","",2013-04-22 03:56:26 UTC,""
7388,"",Reading,2013-05-07 20:57:23 UTC,"In my opinion, their insolence appears more odious even than their crimes. The horrors of the 5th and 6th of October were less detestable than the festival of the 14th of July. There are situations (God forbid I should think that of the 5th and 6th of October one of them) in which the best men may be confounded with the worst, and in the darkness and confusion, in the press and medley of such extremities, it may not be so easy to discriminate the one from the other. The necessities created, even by ill designs, have their excuse. They may be forgotten by others, when the guilty themselves do not choose to cherish their recollection, and by ruminating their offences, nourish themselves through the example of their past, to the perpetration of future crimes. It is in the relaxation of security, it is in the expansion of prosperity, it is in the hour of dilatation of the heart, and of its softening into festivity and pleasure, that the real character of men is discerned. If there is any good in them, it appears then or never. Even wolves and tigers, when gorged with their prey, are safe and gentle. It is at such times that noble minds give all the reins to their good nature. They indulge their genius even to intemperance, in kindness to the afflicted, in generosity to the conquered; forbearing insults, forgiving injuries, overpaying benefits. Full of dignity themselves, they respect dignity in all, but they feel it sacred in the unhappy. But it is then, and basking in the sunshine of unmerited fortune, that low, sordid, ungenerous, and reptile souls swell with their hoarded poisons; it is then that they display their odious splendor, and shine out in full lustre of their native villainy and baseness. It is in that season that no man of sense or honour can be mistaken for one of them. It was in such a season, for them of political ease and security, though their people were but just emerged from actual famine, and were ready to be plunged into the gulf of penury and beggary, that your philosophic lords chose, with an ostentatious pomp and luxury, to feast an incredible number of idle and thoughtless people, collected, with art and pains, from all quarters of the world. They constructed a vast amphitheatre in which they raised a species of pillory. On this pillory they set their lawful king and queen, with an insulting figure over their heads. There they exposed these objects of pity and respect to all good minds to the derision of an unthinking and unprincipled multitude, degenerated even from the versatile tenderness which marks the irregular and capricious feelings of the populace. That their cruel insult might have nothing wanting to complete it, they chose the anniversary of that day in which they exposed the life of their prince to the most imminent dangers, and the vilest indignities, just following the instant when the assassins, whom they had hired without owning, first openly took up arms against their king, corrupted his guards, surprised his castle, butchered some of the poor invalids of his garrison, murdered his governor, and, like wild beasts, tore to pieces the chief magistrate of his capital city, on account of his fidelity to his service.
(pp. 26-9)",,20160,"","""But it is then, and basking in the sunshine of unmerited fortune, that low, sordid, ungenerous, and reptile souls swell with their hoarded poisons; it is then that they display their odious splendour, and shine out in full lustre of their native villainy and baseness.""",Animals,2013-05-07 20:57:37 UTC,""
7388,"",Reading,2013-05-07 20:58:42 UTC,"The National Assembly proceeds on maxims the very reverse of these. The Assembly commends to its youth a study of the bold experimenters in morality. Everybody knows that there is a great dispute amongst their leaders, which of them is the best resemblance of Rousseau. In truth, they all resemble him. His blood they transfuse into their minds and into their manners. Him they study; him they meditate; him they turn over in all the time they can spare from the laborious mischief of the day, or the debauches of the night. Rousseau is their canon of holy writ; in his life he is their canon of Polycletus; he is their standard figure of perfection. To this man and this writer, as a pattern to authors and to Frenchmen, the foundries of Paris are now running for statues, with the kettles of their poor and the bells of their churches. If an author had written like a great genius on geometry, though his practical and speculative morals were vicious in the extreme, it might appear, that in voting the statue, they honoured only the geometrician. But Rousseau is a moralist, or he is nothing. It is impossible, therefore, putting the circumstances together, to mistake their design in choosing the author with whom they have begun to recommend a course of studies.
(pp. 31-2)",,20161,"","""His blood they transfuse into their minds and into their manners.""","",2013-05-07 20:58:42 UTC,""
7991,"",Searching in ECCO,2014-07-29 19:45:17 UTC,"The sensations of anticipated pleasure, are never felt with so much gratification as in our dreams; in our waking thoughts they excite joy, but in the still hour of slumber, they are productive of superlative happiness:--when awake many fortuitous circumstances may happen to perplex and discompose us; but when the body is laid asleep, and the mind disencumbered of its load, we think and act with additional force--nothing then obstructs our activity or retards our promised bliss.--The mind, freed from her weighty companion, roams at large through the regions of fancy; and at once conceives and invents, beautifies and illustrates, amplifies and adorns.
(p. 58)",,24344,"","""When awake many fortuitous circumstances may happen to perplex and discompose us; but when the body is laid asleep, and the mind disencumbered of its load, we think and act with additional force--nothing then obstructs our activity or retards our promised bliss.""","",2014-07-29 19:45:17 UTC,""