text,updated_at,metaphor,created_at,context,theme,reviewed_on,dictionary,comments,provenance,id,work_id
"The science of Human Nature is, like all other sciences, reduced to a few clear points: There are not many certain truths in this world. It is therefore in the Anatomy of the Mind as in that of the Body; more good will accrue to mankind by attending to the large, open, and perceptible parts, than by studying too much such finer nerves and vessels, the conformations and uses of which will for ever escape our observation. The disputes are all upon these last, and, I will venture to say, they have less sharpened the wits than the hearts of men against each other, and have diminished the practice, more than advanced the theory, of Morality. If I could flatter myself that this Essay has any merit, it is in steering betwixt the extremes of doctrines seemingly opposite, in passing over terms utterly unintelligible, and in forming a temperate yet not inconsistent, and a short yet not imperfect system of Ethics.
",2009-09-14 19:36:21 UTC,"""It is therefore in the Anatomy of the Mind as in that of the Body; more good will accrue to mankind by attending to the large, open, and perceptible parts, than by studying too much such finer nerves and vessels, the conformations and uses of which will for ever escape our observation.""",2003-11-03 00:00:00 UTC,The Design,"",,"","•The mind may be dissected? Of course the Anatomy was a favorite genre in the c16-17. Anatomies of the mind, soul, passions, etc. abound.
•Cross-reference: Godwin's Appendix.",HDIS,11874,4525
"As man, perhaps, the moment of his breath,
Receives the lurking principle of death;
The young disease that must subdue at length,
Grows with his growth, and strengthens with his strength:
So, cast and mingled with his very frame,
The mind's disease, its ruling passion came:
Each vital humour which should feed the whole,
Soon flows to this, in body and in soul;
Whatever warms the heart, or fills the head,
As the mind opens, and its functions spread,
Imagination plies her dang'rous art,
And pours it all upon the peccant part.
(Epistle II, ll. 133-44)
",2011-04-26 18:10:21 UTC,"""So, cast and mingled with his very frame, / The mind's disease, its ruling passion came: / Each vital humour which should feed the whole, / Soon flows to this, in body and in soul.""",2003-11-04 00:00:00 UTC,Epistle II,Ruling Passion,2004-05-25,"","•I've included this entry twice: once in Body and once in Government (5/25/2004).
•Christopher Fox reads these lines as influencing Hume and quotes the following from the Treatise: ""a predominant passion swallows up an inferior, and converts it to it self."" See Fox, ""Defining Eighteenth-Century Psychology"" in Psychology and Literature in the Eighteenth Century (New York: AMS Press, 1987). p. 11.",HDIS,11881,4525
"Nature its mother, Habit is its nurse;
Wit, Spirit, Faculties, but make it worse;
Reason itself but gives it edge and pow'r;
As Heaven's blest beam turns vinegar more sowr;
We wretched subjects tho' to lawful sway,
In this weak queen, some fav'rite still obey.
Ah! if she lend not arms, as well as rules,
What can she more than tell us we are fools?
Teach us to mourn our Nature, not to mend,
A sharp accuser, but a helpless friend!
Or from a judge turn pleader, to persuade
The choice we make, or justify it made;
Proud of an easy conquest all along,
She but removes weak passions for the strong:
So, when small humors gather to a gout,
The doctor fancies he has driv'n them out.
(Epistle II, ll. 145-160)
",2009-09-14 19:36:22 UTC,"""She but removes weak passions for the strong: / So, when small humors gather to a gout, / The doctor fancies he has driv'n them out.""",2004-05-25 00:00:00 UTC,Epistle II,Ruling Passion,,"","",HDIS,11893,4525