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
4195,Blank Slate,"Searching ""tabula rasa"" in ECCO",2006-10-09 00:00:00 UTC,"Thus we should address our selves to the Work of Lord, with an intire Resignation of our selves to his Wisdom and Soveraignty. The Heart must be Tabula Rasa, white Paper to his Pen, soft Wax to his Seal: Let him write upon me what he pleaseth, and make what Impressions he pleaseth upon me. We must enter upon the Service fo God, with Joshua's Question, What saith my Lord unto his Servant? And with St. Paul's, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And with the implicite Faith and Obedience of the Child Samuel, Speak Lord, for thy Servant hears. I desire nothing more, but the Honour of receiving they Commands, and a Heart to comply with them.
(p. 20)",2012-01-20,10875,"•I've included three times: Tabula Rasa, Paper, Wax","""The Heart must be Tabula Rasa, white Paper to his Pen, soft Wax to his Seal: Let him write upon me what he pleaseth, and make what Impressions he pleaseth upon me.""",Writing,2012-01-20 22:36:34 UTC,""
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
4582,"",Searching in ECCO,2006-10-09 00:00:00 UTC,"To express this to us by Similitudes both just and beautiful; some Philosophers compare an human Soul to an empty Cabinet, of inexpressible Value for the Matter and Workmanship: and particularly, for the wonderful Contrivance of it, as having all imaginable Conveniencies within, for treasuring up Jewels and Curiousities of every kind.--But then we ourselves must collect and sort them, and we shall ill deserve such a Present from the Maker, if we either keep it empty, or fill it with Trifles; nay, if we do not, as we have opportunity, furnish and enrich it with whatsoever is of use or worth in Art or nature.----This ought indeed to be the main Business of our Lives.--Others, with equal truth and justice, have likened the Minds of Children to a rasa Tabula, or white Paper, whereon we may imprint, or write what Characters we please; which will prove so lasting, as not to be effaced without injuring or destroying the Beauty of the whole; even as Experience shews, and the Son of Sirach advises, My son gather instruction from thy youth up: so shalt thou find wisdom, till thine old age.--These first Characters therefore ought to be deeply and [end page 7] beautifully struck, and the Learning they express should be of great Price. And this, if timely Care be taken, may be done with ease because the Mind is then soft and tender: and because Truth and Right are by the nature of Things, as pleasant to the Soul, as Light and Proportion to the Eye, or as sweet as Honey to the Taste. But if such Impressions be not made, either ignorance and Folly will prevail; or Errors and Prejudices will take possession, and afterwards prevent the Knowledge of Wisdom from entring or striking on the Mind with its innate force and lustre. And when once we have lost our natural Sense and Love of Truth and Right, and when the Light within us is become Darkness, how great must that Darkness be, and how irretrievable the Misery of such a State? Wise there was the caution of our blessed Master, who is the Way, and the Truth, and the Life, Take heed, that the Light which is in thee be not Darkness.
(pp. 7-8)",2012-04-17,12057,"•I've included thrice: Characters, Eye, Taste.
•Cross-reference: compare previous. Do Bernard and Denne crib from the same script?
","""These first Characters therefore ought to be deeply and beautifully struck, and the Learning they express should be of great Price. And this, if timely Care be taken, may be done with ease because the Mind is then soft and tender: and because Truth and Right are by the nature of Things, as pleasant to the Soul, as Light and Proportion to the Eye, or as sweet as Honey to the Taste.""",Coinage and Writing,2012-04-17 20:35:10 UTC,""
4475,"",Searching in Google Books,2012-01-22 19:11:46 UTC,"Nay further, the Man will also espy some Symbolical Resemblances of Morality, of Vertue and Vice in the variously proportioned Sounds and Airs; for there are Ethical (as Aristotle hath observed) as well as Enthusiastical Harmonies as the Physiognomists in like manner observe Signatures of Morality in the Countenances of Men and their Pictures, which it is yet less possible that a Brute would be sensible of; these Differences arising, not from the Absolute Nature of the Objects without, or their bare Impression which they make; but the Different Analogy which they have to some inward and Active Anticipations which they meet withal in the Percipient. For the Man hath certain Moral Anticipations and Signatures stamped inwardly upon his Soul, which makes him presently take Notice of whatsoever symbolizes with it in Corporeal Things; but the Brute hath none.
(IV.ii.14, pp. 181-2)",,19502,Cudworth makes the distinction clear. Throughout he has been denying the impression metaphor. Now he allows it. INTEREST. REVISIT. USE IN ENTRY.,"""For the Man hath certain Moral Anticipations and Signatures stamped inwardly upon his Soul, which makes him presently take Notice of whatsoever symbolizes with it in Corporeal Things; but the Brute hath none.""",Impressions and Writing,2012-01-22 19:11:46 UTC,"Book IV, Chapter ii"
4475,"",Searching in Google Books,2012-01-22 20:30:22 UTC,"13. Hitherto, by the Instance of am Individual and Material Triangle, we have shewed, how the Soul, in Understanding Corporeal Things, doth not meerly suffer from without from the Body, but Actively Exert Intelligible Ideas of its own, and from within it self. Now I observe that it is so far from being true, that all our Objective Cogitations or Ideas are Corporeal Effluxes or Radiations from Corporeal Things without, or impressed upon the Soul from them in a gross Corporeal Manner, as a Signature or Stamp is imprinted by a Seal upon a piece of Wax or Clay; that (as I have before hinted) this is not true sometimes of the Sensible Ideas themselves. For all Perception whatsoever is a Vital Energy, and not a Meer Dead Passion; and as the Atomical Philosophy instructs us, there is nothing Communicated in Sensation from the Material Objects without, but only Certain, Local Motions, that are propagated from them by the Nerves into the Brain; which Motions cannot propagate themselves Corporeally upon the Soul also, because it penetrates and runs through all the Parts of its own Body. But the Soul, by reason of that Vital and Magical Union which is between it and the Body, sympathizing with the several Motions of it in the Brain, doth thereupon exert Sensible Ideas or Phantasms within it self, whereby it perceives or takes Notice of Objects Distant from the Brain, either within or without the Body. Many of which Sentiments and Phantasms have no Similitude at all, either with those Local Motions made in the Brain, or with the Objects without; such as are the Sentiments of Pain, Pleasure, and Titillation, Hunger, Thirst, Heat and Cold, Sweet and Bitter, Light and Colours, &c. Wherefore the Truth is, that Sense, if we well consider it, is but a kind of Speech, (if I may so call it) Nature as it were talking to us in the Sensible-Objects Without, by certain Motions as Signs from thence Communicated to the Brain. For, as in Speech, when Men talk to one another, they do but make Certain Motions upon the Air, which cannot Impress their Thoughts upon one another in a Passive manner; but it being first consented to and agreed upon, that such certain Sounds shall signify such Ideas and Cogitations, he that hears those Sounds in Discourse, doth not fix his Thoughts upon the Sounds themselves, but presently Exerts from within himself such Ideas and Cogitations as those Sounds by Consent signify, though there be no Similitude at all betwixt those Sounds and Thoughts. Just in the same manner Nature doth as it were talk to us in the Outward Objects of Sense, and import Various Sentiments, Ideas, Phantasms, and Cogitations, not by stamping or impressing them passively upon the Soul from without, but only by certain Local Motions from them, as it were dumb Signs made in the Brain; It having been first Constituted and Appointed by Nature's Law, that such Local Motions shall signify such Sensible Ideas and Phantasms, though there be no Similitude at all betwixt them; for what Similitude can there be betwixt any Local Motions and the Senses of Pain or Hunger, and the like, as there is no Similitude betwixt many Words and Sounds, and the Thoughts which they signify. But the Soul, as by a certain secret Instinct, and as it were by Compact, understanding Nature's Language, as soon as these Local Motions are made in the Brain, doth not fix its Attention immediately upon those Motions themselves, as we do not use to do in Discourse upon meer Sounds, but presently exerts such Sensible Ideas, Phantasms and Cogitations, as Nature hath made them to be Signs of, whereby it perceives and takes Cognizance of many other Things both in its own Body, and without it, at a Distance from it, In order to the Good and Conservation of it. Wherefore there are two kinds of Perceptive Powers in the Soul, one below another; The first is that which belongs to the Inferiour Part of the Soul, whereby it sympathizes with the Body, which is determined by the several Motions and Pressures that are made upon that from Corporeal Things without to several Sensitive and Phantastical Energies, whereby it hath a Slight and Superficial Perception of Individual Corporeal Things, and as it were of the Outsides of them, but doth not reach to the Comprehension of the Essence or Indivisible and Immutable Notion of any thing. The Second Perceptive Power is that of the Soul it self, or that Superiour, Interiour Noetical Part of it which is free from Passion or Sympathy, free and disentangled from all that Magical Sympathy with the Body. Which acting alone by it self, Exerts from within the Intelligible Ideas of Things, Virtually Contained in its own Cognoscitive Power, that are Universal and Abstract Notions, from which, as it were looking downward it comprehends Individual Things. Now because these latter, which are pure Active Energies of the Soul, are many times exerted upon occasion of those other Passive or Sympathetical Perceptions of Individual Things anteceding; it is therefore conceived by many, that they are nothing else but thin and Evanid Images of those Sensible Ideas, and therefore that all Intellection and Knowledge ascends from Sense, and Intellection is nothing but the Improvement or Result of Sense. Yet notwithstanding it is most certainly true, that they proceed from a quite different Power of the Soul, whereby it actively protrudes its own Immediate Objects from within it self, and Comprehends Individuals without it, not Passively or consequentially, but as it were Proleptically, and not with an Ascending, but with a Descending Perception; whereby the Mind first reflecting upon it self, and its own Ideas, virtually contained in its own Omniform Cognoscitive Power, and thence descending downward, comprehends Individual Things under them. So that Knowledge doth not begin in Individuals, but end in them. And therefore they are but the Secondary Objects of Intellection, the Soul taking its first Rise from within it self, and so by its own inward Cognoscitive Power comprehending Things without it. Else how would God have Knowledge? And if we know as God knows, then do we know or gain Knowledge by Universals. In which Sense (though not in that other of Protagoras) the Soul may be truly said to be the Measure of all Things.
(IV.iii.13, pp 214-9)",,19508,"","""Now I observe that it is so far from being true, that all our Objective Cogitations or Ideas are Corporeal Effluxes or Radiations from Corporeal Things without, or impressed upon the Soul from them in a gross Corporeal Manner, as a Signature or Stamp is imprinted by a Seal upon a piece of Wax or Clay; that (as I have before hinted) this is not true sometimes of the Sensible Ideas themselves.""",Impressions and Writing,2012-01-22 20:38:50 UTC,"Book IV, Chapter iii"
4475,"",Searching in Google Books,2012-01-22 21:14:28 UTC,"4. But I have not taken all this Pains only to Confute Scepticism or Phantasticism, or meerly to defend and corroborate our Argument for the Immutable Natures of Just and Unjust; but also for some other Weighty Purposes that are very much conducing to the Business that we have in hand. And first of all, that the Soul is not a meer Rasa Tabula, a Naked and Passive Thing, which has no innate Furniture or Activity of its own, nor any thing at all in it, but what was impressed upon it without; for if it were so, then there could not possibly be any such Thing as Moral Good and Evil, Just and Unjust; Forasmuch as these Differences do not arise meerly from the outward Objects, or from the Impresses which they make upon us by Sense, there being no such Thing in them; in which Sense it is truly affirmed by the Author of the Leviathan, Page 24. That there is no common Rule of Good and Evil. to be taken from the Nature of the Objects themselves, that is, either considered absolutely in themselves, or Relatively to external Sense only, but according to some other interior Analogy which Things have to a certain inward Determination in the Soul it self, from whence the Foundation of all this Difference must needs arise, as I shall shew afterwards; Not that the Anticipations of Morality spring meerly from intellectual Forms and notional Idea's of the Mind, or from certain Rules or Propositions, arbitrarily printed upon the Soul as upon a Book, but from some other other more inward, and vital Principle, in intellectual Beings, as such, whereby they have a natural Determination in them to do some Things, and to avoid others, which could not be, if they were meer naked Passive Things. Wherefore since the Nature of Morality cannot be understood, without some Knowledge of the Nature of the Soul, I thought it seasonable and requisite here to take this Occasion offered, and to prepare the Way to our following Discourse, by shewing in general, that the Soul is not a meer Passive and Receptive Thing, which hath no innate active Principle of its own, Because upon this Hypothesis there could be no such Thing as Morality.
(IV.vi.4, pp. 287-8)",,19515,"","""Not that the Anticipations of Morality spring meerly from intellectual Forms and notional Idea's of the Mind, or from certain Rules or Propositions, arbitrarily printed upon the Soul as upon a Book, but from some other other more inward, and vital Principle, in intellectual Beings, as such, whereby they have a natural Determination in them to do some Things, and to avoid others, which could not be, if they were meer naked Passive Things.""",Impressions and Writing,2012-01-22 21:14:28 UTC,"Book IV, Chapter vi"
4702,"",Searching and Reading in Google Books,2014-02-05 22:19:47 UTC,"What an unknown and unspeakable Happiness would it be to a Man of Judgment, and who is engaged in the Pursuit of Knowledge, if he had but a Power of stamping all his own best Sentiments upon his Memory in some indelible Characters; and if he could but imprint every valuable Paragraph and Sentiment of the most excellent Authors he has read, upon his Mind, with the same Speed and Facility with which he read them? If a Man of good Genius and Sagacity could but retain and survey all those numerous, those wise and beautiful Ideas at once, which have ever passed through his Thoughts upon any one Subject, how admirably would he be furnished to pass a just Judgment about all present Objects and Occurrences? What a glorious Entertainment and Pleasure would fill and felicitate his Spirit, if he could grasp all these in a single Survey, as the skilful Eye of a Painter runs over a fine and complicate Piece of History wrought by the Hand of a Titian or a Raphael, views the whole Scene at once, and feeds himself with the extensive Delight? But these are Joys that do not belong to Mortality.
(p. 253-4)",,23379,INTEREST,"""What an unknown and unspeakable Happiness would it be to a Man of Judgment, and who is engaged in the Pursuit of Knowledge, if he had but a Power of stamping all his own best Sentiments upon his Memory in some indelible Characters; and if he could but imprint every valuable Paragraph and Sentiment of the most excellent Authors he has read, upon his Mind, with the same Speed and Facility with which he read them?""",Impressions and Writing,2014-02-05 22:19:47 UTC,""
7846,"",ECCO-TCP,2014-03-12 21:00:06 UTC,"Child.
May I Father! Then I'll get it all without Book.
Fath.
It is not so much the getting the Words by Heart, Child, as getting the Word of Life wrought in your Heart.
Child.
How is that Father?
Fath.
Why, Child, to have the Spirit of God which wrote that Word, print it in your Mind, and give you Understanding both to read and obey it.
(p. 29)",,23678,"","""Why, Child, to have the Spirit of God which wrote that Word, print it in your Mind, and give you Understanding both to read and obey it.""",Impressions and Writing,2014-03-12 21:00:22 UTC,""