work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
4093,"","Found again reading Maclean's John Locke and English Literature, (1962), p. 33",2005-03-27 00:00:00 UTC,"The mind of man is at first (if you will pardon the expression) like a tabula rasa, or like wax, which, while it is soft, is capable of any impression, till time has hardened it. And at length death, that grim tyrant, stops us in the midst of our career. The greatest conquerors have at last been conquered by death, which spares none, from the sceptre to the spade.",,10542,
•I've included twice: Wax and Tabula Rasa,"""The mind of man is at first (if you will pardon the expression) like a tabula rasa, or like wax, which, while it is soft, is capable of any impression, till time has hardened it.""",Impressions and Writing,2013-11-01 15:33:30 UTC,""
4178,"",Past Masters,2004-02-26 00:00:00 UTC,"HYLAS. Explain to me now, O Philonous! how it is possible there should be room for all those trees and houses to exist in your mind. Can extended things be contained in that which is unextended? Or are we to imagine impressions made on a thing void of all solidity? You cannot say objects are in your mind, as books in your study: or that things are imprinted on it, as the figure of a seal upon wax. In what sense therefore are we to understand those expressions? Explain me this if you can: and I shall then be able to answer all those queries you formerly put to me about my substratum.
PHILONOUS. Look you, Hylas, when I speak of objects as existing in the mind or imprinted on the senses; I would not be understood in the gross literal sense, as when bodies are said to exist in a place, or a seal to make an impression upon wax. My meaning is only that the mind comprehends or perceives them; and that it is affected from without, or by some being distinct from itself. This is my explication of your difficulty; and how it can serve to make your tenet of an unperceiving material substratum intelligible, I would fain know.
HYLAS. Nay, if that be all, I confess I do not see what use can be made of it. But are you not guilty of some abuse of language in this?
PHILONOUS. None at all: it is no more than common custom, which you know is the rule of language, hath authorized: nothing being more usual, than for philosophers to speak of the immediate objects of the understanding as things existing in the mind. Nor is there any thing in this, but what is conformable to the general analogy of language; most part of the mental operations being signified by words borrowed from sensible things; as is plain in the terms comprehend, reflect, discourse, &c. which being applied to the mind, must not be taken in their gross original sense.
(Vol ii, p. 241)
",,10848,"•INTEREST. Metaphors and anti-metaphors, figurative language and ordinary language.
•Both of the metaphors most readily associated with Locke (inscribed surface/container) are here denied.
•I had two entries: they were split into two metaphors room/wax. I deleted the second.
","""You cannot say objects are in your mind, as books in your study: or that things are imprinted on it, as the figure of a seal upon wax.""",Impressions and Rooms,2013-09-12 04:08:26 UTC,Third Dialogue
4437,"",Searching in ECCO,2006-10-08 00:00:00 UTC,"Now this is so far from being a just reason to think the Soul of Man Material, that is is an Argument of the quite Contrary. For let us restore that Man to all his Senses again, in the greatest degree of Acuteness he is capable of, insomuch that he shall have his Imagination furnished with the Ideas of all Sensible Objects; yet you have not restored him to any use of his Reason and Understanding; not even to that of a Simple View or Apprehension of those Ideas. With respect to the simple Perception of Mere Sense he is still upon the same Level with Brutes; he is altogether Passive; he retains all the Signatures and Impressions of outward Objects, but in the very Order only in which they are stamped; with Transposing or Altering, Dividing, or Compounding, or even Comparing them one with another: And they would always continue so in the Imagination, if there were not a Principle Above Matter, first to contemplate or view them; and then to work up those rude and gross Materials into a great Variety of curious Arts and Sciences.
(384)",2012-01-20,11689,•I've included twice: Signature and Stamping.,"""With respect to the simple Perception of Mere Sense he is still upon the same Level with Brutes; he is altogether Passive; he retains all the Signatures and Impressions of outward Objects, but in the very Order only in which they are stamped; with Transposing or Altering, Dividing, or Compounding, or even Comparing them one with another.""",Impressions and Writing,2012-01-20 22:33:47 UTC,Book III. Chapter I. The Mind at First a Tabula Rasa