text,updated_at,metaphor,created_at,context,theme,reviewed_on,dictionary,comments,provenance,id,work_id
"Another precept of this knowledge is by all possible endeavour to frame the mind to be pliant and obedient to occasion; for nothing hindereth men's fortunes so much as this: Idem manebat, neque idem decebat--men are where they were, when occasions turn: and therefore to Cato, whom Livy maketh such an architect of fortune, he addeth that he had versatile ingenium. And thereof it cometh that these grave solemn wits, which must be like themselves and cannot make departures, have more dignity than felicity. But in some it is nature to be somewhat vicious and enwrapped, and not easy to turn. In some it is a conceit that is almost a nature, which is, that men can hardly make themselves believe that they ought to change their course, when they have found good by it in former experience. For Machiavel noted wisely how Fabius Maximus would have been temporising still, according to his old bias, when the nature of the war was altered and required hot pursuit. In some other it is want of point and penetration in their judgment, that they do not discern when things have a period, but come in too late after the occasion; as Demosthenes compareth the people of Athens to country fellows, when they play in a fence school, that if they have a blow, then they remove their weapon to that ward, and not before. In some other it is a lothness to lose labours passed, and a conceit that they can bring about occasions to their ply; and yet in the end, when they see no other remedy, then they come to it with disadvantage; as Tarquinius, that gave for the third part of Sibylla's books the treble price, when he might at first have had all three for the simple. But from whatsoever root or cause this restiveness of mind proceedeth, it is a thing most prejudicial; and nothing is more politic than to make the wheels of our mind concentric and voluble with the wheels of fortune.
(33)",2009-09-14 19:33:51 UTC,"""But from whatsoever root or cause this restiveness of mind proceedeth, it is a thing most prejudicial; and nothing is more politic than to make the wheels of our mind concentric and voluble with the wheels of fortune.""",2006-12-13 00:00:00 UTC,XXIII,"",,"","","Reading Samuel L. Macey's Clocks and the Cosmos: Time in Western Life and Thought. Archon Books: Hamden, CT, 1980. p. 83.",8934,3479
"But what, you ask, is this legitimate method. Please drop all arts and subterfuges, you say, and put the matter plainly before us, so that we may use our own judgment. Would to God, my dear boy, that your situation was such that this could be done. But do you suppose, when all the approaches and entrances to men's minds are beset and blocked by the most obscure idols -- idols deeply implanted and, as it were, burned in -- that any clean and polished surface remains in the mirror of the mind on which the genuine natural light of things can fall? A new method must be found for quiet entry into minds so choked and overgrown. Frenzied men are exacerbated by violent opposition but may be beguiled by art. This gives us a hint how we should proceed in this universal madness. Do you really think it is easy to provide the favourable conditions required for the legitimate passing on of knowledge? The method must be mild and afford no occasion of error. It must have in it an inherent power of winning support and a vital principle which will stand up against the ravages of time, so that the tradition of science may mature and spread like some lively vigorous vine. Then also science must be such as to select her followers, who must be worthy to be adopted into her family. This is what must be provided. Whether I can manage it or not the future must decide.
(p. 62)",2010-04-14 18:28:25 UTC,"""But do you suppose, when all the approaches and entrances to men's minds are beset and blocked by the most obscure idols -- idols deeply implanted and, as it were, burned in -- that any clean and polished surface remains in the mirror of the mind on which the genuine natural light of things can fall?""",2010-04-14 18:28:25 UTC,"","",,"","",Reading,17780,6696
"But, now that I think of it, it will be safer to condemn them one by one by name; for their authority is great and if not named they may be thought to be excepted. Nor would I have anyone suppose, seeing the hatred and fury with which they wage their internecine strife, that I have come to lend my support to one side or the other in this battle of ghosts and shadows. Come, then, let Aristotle be summoned to the bar, that worst of sophists stupefied by his own unprofitable subtlety, the cheap dupe of words. Just when the human mind, borne thither by some favouring gale, had found rest in a little truth, this man presumed to cast the closest fetters on our understandings. He composed an art or manual of madness and made us slaves of words. Nay more, it was in his bosom that were bred and nurtured those crafty triflers, who turned themselves away from the perambulation of our globe and from the light of nature and of history; who from the pliant material provided by his precepts and propositions, and relying on the restless agitation of their own wit, spun out for us the countless quibbles of the Schools. But he, their dictator, is more to blame than they. He still moved in the daylight of honest research when he fetched up his darksome idols from some subterranean cave, and over such observation of particulars as had been made spun as it were spiders' webs which he would have us accept as causal bonds, though they have no strength nor worth.
(p. 63)",2011-05-27 14:34:39 UTC,"""Just when the human mind, borne thither by some favouring gale, had found rest in a little truth, this man presumed to cast the closest fetters on our understandings.""",2010-04-14 18:31:39 UTC,"","",2011-06-27,Fetters,"",Reading,17781,6696
"Let Plato next be summoned to the bar, that mocking wit, that swelling poet, that deluded theologian. Your philosophy, Plato, was but scraps of borrowed information polished and strung together. Your wisdom was a sham which you imposed by an affectation of ignorance. By your vague inductions you took men's minds off their guard and weakened their mental sinews. But you had at least the merit of supplying table-talk for men of culture and experience of affairs, even indeed of adding grace and charm to everyday conversation. When, however, you gave out the falsehood that truth is, as it were, the native inhabitant of the human mind and need not come in from, outside to take up its abode there; when you turned our minds away from observation, away from things, to which it is impossible we should ever be sufficiently respectful and attentive; when you taught us to turn our mind's eye inward and grovel before our own blind and confused idols under the name of contemplative philosophy; then truly you dealt us a mortal blow. Nor should it be forgotten that you were guilty of no less a sin when you deified your folly and presumed to shore up your contemptible thoughts with the prop of religion.
(p. 64)",2010-04-14 18:33:14 UTC,"""By your vague inductions you took men's minds off their guard and weakened their mental sinews.""",2010-04-14 18:33:14 UTC,Chapter 2,"",,"","",Reading,17782,6696
"Let Plato next be summoned to the bar, that mocking wit, that swelling poet, that deluded theologian. Your philosophy, Plato, was but scraps of borrowed information polished and strung together. Your wisdom was a sham which you imposed by an affectation of ignorance. By your vague inductions you took men's minds off their guard and weakened their mental sinews. But you had at least the merit of supplying table-talk for men of culture and experience of affairs, even indeed of adding grace and charm to everyday conversation. When, however, you gave out the falsehood that truth is, as it were, the native inhabitant of the human mind and need not come in from, outside to take up its abode there; when you turned our minds away from observation, away from things, to which it is impossible we should ever be sufficiently respectful and attentive; when you taught us to turn our mind's eye inward and grovel before our own blind and confused idols under the name of contemplative philosophy; then truly you dealt us a mortal blow. Nor should it be forgotten that you were guilty of no less a sin when you deified your folly and presumed to shore up your contemptible thoughts with the prop of religion.
(p. 64)",2010-04-14 18:35:16 UTC,"""When, however, you gave out the falsehood that truth is, as it were, the native inhabitant of the human mind and need not come in from, outside to take up its abode there; when you turned our minds away from observation, away from things, to which it is impossible we should ever be sufficiently respectful and attentive; when you taught us to turn our mind's eye inward and grovel before our own blind and confused idols under the name of contemplative philosophy; then truly you dealt us a mortal blow.""",2010-04-14 18:35:16 UTC,Chapter 2,Mind's Eye,,"","",Reading,17783,6696
"Now about those heads of schools you mentioned judgment is easy. Unity is the hall-mark of truth, and the variety of their opinions is proof of error. In fact, had not political conditions and prospects put an end to these mental voyages, many another coast of error would have been visited by those mariners. For the island of truth is lapped by a mighty ocean in which many intellects will still be wrecked by the gales of illusion. Nay, it was only yesterday that Bernardinus Telesius mounted the rostrum and staged a new comedy, which was neither well received nor well conceived. Then there are the ingenious contrivers of eccentrics and epicycles on the one hand, and those charioteers of the earth on the other. Do you not observe, son, how both sides delight to support their contrary opinions with the same phenomena? It is the same with the cosmologists. I will suggest a parallel which will explain the universal failure. Take a man who understands only his own vernacular. Put into his hands a writing in an unknown tongue. He picks out a few words here and there which sound like, or are spelled like, words in his own tongue. With complete confidence he jumps to the conclusion that their meaning is the same, though as a rule this is very far from true. Then, on the basis of this resemblance, he proceeds to guess the sense of the rest of the document with great mental exertion and equal licence. This is a true image of these interpreters of nature. For each man brings his own idols -- I am not now speaking of those of the stage, but particularly of those of the market-place and the cave -- and applies them, like his own vernacular, to the interpretation of nature, snatching at any facts which fit in with his preconceptions and forcing everything else into harmony with them.
(pp. 69-70)",2010-04-14 18:39:43 UTC,"""In fact, had not political conditions and prospects put an end to these mental voyages, many another coast of error would have been visited by those mariners.""",2010-04-14 18:39:43 UTC,Chapter 2,"",,"","",Reading,17784,6696
"The fact is, my son, that the human mind in studying nature becomes big under the impact of things and brings forth a teeming brood of errors. Aristotle stands for the tallest growth of one kind of error, Plato of another, and so on for the rest. Now, you would like me to confute them individually. But verily that would be to sin on the grand scale against the golden future of the human race, to sacrifice its promise of dominion by turning aside to attack transitory shadows. The need is to set up in the midst one bright and radiant light of truth, shedding its beams in all directions and dispelling all errors in a moment. It is pointless to light pale candles and carry them about to every nook and cranny of error and falsehood. I would have you learn to hate that for which you ask. Believe me, it is to sin against the light.
(p. 70)",2010-04-14 18:41:37 UTC,"""The fact is, my son, that the human mind in studying nature becomes big under the impact of things and brings forth a teeming brood of errors.""",2010-04-14 18:41:37 UTC,Chapter 2,"",,"","",Reading,17785,6696
"But, my son, if I should ask you to grapple immediately with the bewildering complexities of experimental science before your mind has been purged of its idols, beyond a peradventure you would promptly desert your leader. Nor, even if you wished to do so, could you rid yourself of idols by simply taking my advice without familiarising yourself with nature. On waxen tablets you cannot write anything new until you rub out the old. With the mind it is not so; there you cannot rub out the old till you have written in the new. Nay, though you might possibly divest yourself of the idols of the inn, there would be every fear of your falling victim to the idols of the road, unless you were prepared. You have become too accustomed to following a guide. At Rome, too, when tyranny was once in the saddle, the oath of allegiance to the Senate and the People became a vain thing. Take heart, then, my son, and give yourself to me so that I may restore you to yourself.
(p. 72)",2010-04-14 18:55:22 UTC,"""On waxen tablets you cannot write anything new until you rub out the old. With the mind it is not so; there you cannot rub out the old till you have written in the new.""",2010-04-14 18:55:22 UTC,Chapter 2,"",,"","An example of disanalogy. Note, You need both sentences to make the figuration work. ",Reading,17786,6696
"The second which followeth is in nature worse than the former: for as substance of matter is better than beauty of words, so contrariwise vain matter is worse than vain words: wherein it seemeth the reprehension of St. Paul was not only proper for those times, but prophetical for the times following; and not only respective to divinity, but extensive to all knowledge: Devita profanas vocum novitates, et oppositiones falsi nominis scientiae. For he assigneth two marks and badges of suspected and falsified science: the one, the novelty and strangeness of terms; the other, the strictness of positions, which of necessity doth induce oppositions, and so questions and altercations. Surely, like as many substances in nature which are solid do putrefy and corrupt into worms;--so it is the property of good and sound knowledge to putrefy and dissolve into a number of subtle, idle, unwholesome, and (as I may term them) vermiculate questions, which have indeed a kind of quickness and life of spirit, but no soundness of matter or goodness of quality. This kind of degenerate learning did chiefly reign amongst the schoolmen, who having sharp and strong wits, and abundance of leisure, and small variety of reading, but their wits being shut up in the cells of a few authors (chiefly Aristotle their dictator) as their persons were shut up in the cells of monasteries and colleges, and knowing little history, either of nature or time, did out of no great quantity of matter and infinite agitation of wit spin out unto us those laborious webs of learning which are extant in their books. For the wit and mind of man, if it work upon matter, which is the contemplation of the creatures of God, worketh according to the stuff and is limited thereby; but if it work upon itself, as the spider worketh his web, then it is endless, and brings forth indeed cobwebs of learning, admirable for the fineness of thread and work, but of no substance or profit.
(I.iv.5, pp. 183-4 in Modern Library edition)",2012-05-11 14:37:46 UTC,"""This kind of degenerate learning did chiefly reign amongst the schoolmen, who having sharp and strong wits, and abundance of leisure, and small variety of reading, but their wits being shut up in the cells of a few authors (chiefly Aristotle their dictator) as their persons were shut up in the cells of monasteries and colleges, and knowing little history, either of nature or time, did out of no great quantity of matter and infinite agitation of wit spin out unto us those laborious webs of learning which are extant in their books.""",2012-05-11 14:37:46 UTC,"","",,Rooms,"","Reading Irvin Ehrenpreis, Swift: The Man, His Works, and the Age, 2 vols. (1962, reprinted Harvard UP, 1983), I, 233.",19766,3479
"The second which followeth is in nature worse than the former: for as substance of matter is better than beauty of words, so contrariwise vain matter is worse than vain words: wherein it seemeth the reprehension of St. Paul was not only proper for those times, but prophetical for the times following; and not only respective to divinity, but extensive to all knowledge: Devita profanas vocum novitates, et oppositiones falsi nominis scientiae. For he assigneth two marks and badges of suspected and falsified science: the one, the novelty and strangeness of terms; the other, the strictness of positions, which of necessity doth induce oppositions, and so questions and altercations. Surely, like as many substances in nature which are solid do putrefy and corrupt into worms;--so it is the property of good and sound knowledge to putrefy and dissolve into a number of subtle, idle, unwholesome, and (as I may term them) vermiculate questions, which have indeed a kind of quickness and life of spirit, but no soundness of matter or goodness of quality. This kind of degenerate learning did chiefly reign amongst the schoolmen, who having sharp and strong wits, and abundance of leisure, and small variety of reading, but their wits being shut up in the cells of a few authors (chiefly Aristotle their dictator) as their persons were shut up in the cells of monasteries and colleges, and knowing little history, either of nature or time, did out of no great quantity of matter and infinite agitation of wit spin out unto us those laborious webs of learning which are extant in their books. For the wit and mind of man, if it work upon matter, which is the contemplation of the creatures of God, worketh according to the stuff and is limited thereby; but if it work upon itself, as the spider worketh his web, then it is endless, and brings forth indeed cobwebs of learning, admirable for the fineness of thread and work, but of no substance or profit.
(I.iv.5, pp. 183-4 in Modern Library edition)",2012-05-11 14:39:34 UTC,"""For the wit and mind of man, if it work upon matter, which is the contemplation of the creatures of God, worketh according to the stuff and is limited thereby; but if it work upon itself, as the spider worketh his web, then it is endless, and brings forth indeed cobwebs of learning, admirable for the fineness of thread and work, but of no substance or profit.""",2012-05-11 14:39:19 UTC,"","",,Beasts,"","Reading Irvin Ehrenpreis, Swift: The Man, His Works, and the Age, 2 vols. (1962, reprinted Harvard UP, 1983), I, 233.",19767,3479