work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
4803,"",Reading,2005-10-05 00:00:00 UTC,"But this obscurity in the profound and abstract philosophy, is objected to, not only as painful and fatiguing, but as the inevitable source of uncertainty and error. Here indeed lies the justest and most plausible objection against a considerable part of metaphysics, that they are not properly a science; but arise either from the fruitless efforts of human vanity, which would penetrate into subjects utterly inaccessible to the understanding, or from the craft of popular superstitions, which, being unable to defend themselves on fair ground, raise these intangling brambles to cover and protect their weakness. Chaced from the open country, these robbers fly into the forest, and lie in wait to break in upon every unguarded avenue of the mind, and overwhelm it with religious fears and prejudices. The stoutest antagonist, if he remit his watch a moment, is oppressed. And many, through cowardice and folly, open the gates to the enemies, and willingly receive them with reverence and submission, as their legal sovereigns.
(p. 11)",,12822,"","""Chaced from the open country, these robbers [i.e., superstitions] fly into the forest, and lie in wait to break in upon every unguarded avenue of the mind, and overwhelm it with religious fears and prejudices.""","",2011-03-05 19:12:18 UTC,Section I.
4871,"","Searching ""idea"" and ""crowd"" in HDIS (Prose); again ""brain""",2006-03-13 00:00:00 UTC,"--This Speech, I own, gave me the first Reflection I ever had in my Life, and lock'd up all my Faculties for a long Time; nor was I able, for the Variety of Ideas that crowded my Brain, to make a Word of Answer, but stood like an Image of Stone; till Patty, seeing my Confusion, desired me to recollect my Reason, for as it was too late to undo what had been done, it remained now only to act with that Prudence, and Caution, which the Nature of the Case required; and that, for her Part, she would concur in every reasonable Measure I should approve of; but, I must remember, she was only a Servant, and had very little due to her for Wages, and not a Penny besides that; and, [Page 10] that there must necessarily be a Preparation made for the Reception of the Infant, when Time should produce it. --I now began to see the absolute Necessity of all she said; but, how to accomplish it, was not in me to comprehend. -- My own small Matter of Money was gone, and had been so a long Time; we therefore agreed, I should write to my Mother for a fresh Supply; I did so, and, to my great Confusion, was answered by my former Friend, in the following Words.",,13030,•I've included twice: Crowd and Lock,"""This Speech, I own, gave me the first Reflection I ever had in my Life, and lock'd up all my Faculties for a long Time; nor was I able, for the Variety of Ideas that crowded my Brain, to make a Word of Answer, but stood like an Image of Stone""",Inhabitants,2009-09-14 19:37:41 UTC,"Vol. 1, Chap. 2, pp. 9-10"
4893,"",Searching haunt and heart in HDIS,2004-04-27 00:00:00 UTC,"Though no person ever stood more in need of a companion or guard, and her heart throbbed with transports of dismay at the prospect of night, she rejected his proposal with due acknowledgement, and resolved to trust solely to the protection of Heaven: not that she thought her innocence or reputation could suffer by her compliance with his request; for hitherto, her heart was a stranger to those young desires wich haunt the fancy and warm the breast of youth; so that being ignorant of her danger, she saw not the necessity of avoiding temptation: but she refused to admit a man into her bed-chamber, merely because it was a step altogether opposite to the forms and decorum of life. Nevertheless, far from being discouraged by this repulse, he knew her fears would multiply, and reduce that reluctance, which, in order to weaken, he had recourse to another piece of machinery, that operated powerfully in behalf of his design.
(I.xxxiv)",,13128,•I've included twice: Haunting and Stranger
,"The heart may a ""stranger to those young desires which haunt the fancy and warm breast of youth""","",2009-09-14 19:37:48 UTC,"Vol 1, Chap. 34"
5366,"",HDIS (Poetry),2004-01-06 00:00:00 UTC,"...But more lovely still
Is nature's charm, where to the full consent
Of complicated members, to the bloom
Of colour, and the vital change of growth,
Life's holy flame and piercing sense are given,
And active motion speaks the temper'd soul:
So moves the bird of Juno; so the steed
With rival ardour beats the dusty plain,
And faithful dogs with eager airs of joy
Salute their fellows. Thus doth beauty dwell
There most conspicuous, even in outward shape,
Where dawns the high expression of a mind:
By steps conducting our inraptur'd search
To that eternal origin, whose power,
Through all the unbounded symmetry of things,
Like rays effulging from the parent sun,
This endless mixture of her charms diffus'd.
Mind, mind alone, (bear witness, earth and heaven!)
The living fountains in itself contains
Of beauteous and sublime: here hand in hand,
Sit paramount the Graces; here inthron'd,
Coelestial Venus, with divinest airs,
Invites the soul to never-fading joy.
Look then abroad through nature, to the range
Of planets, suns, and adamantine spheres
Wheeling unshaken through the void immense;
And speak, o man! does this capacious scene
With half that kindling majesty dilate
Thy strong conception, as when Brutus rose
Refulgent from the stroke of Cæsar's fate,
Amid the croud of patriots; and his arm
Aloft extending, like eternal Jove
When guilt brings down the thunder, call'd aloud
On Tully's name, and shook his crimson steel,
And bade the father of his country, hail!
For lo! the tyrant prostrate on the dust,
And Rome again is free! Is aught so fair
In all the dewy landscapes of the spring,
In the bright eye of Hesper or the morn,
In nature's fairest forms, is aught so fair
As virtuous friendship? as the candid blush
Of him who strives with fortune to be just?
The graceful tear that streams for others woes?
Or the mild majesty of private life,
Where peace with ever-blooming olive crowns
The gate; where honour's liberal hands effuse
Unenvied treasures, and the snowy wings
Of innocence and love protect the scene?
Once more search, undismay'd, the dark profound
Where nature works in secret; view the beds
Of mineral treasure, and the eternal vault
That bounds the hoary ocean; trace the forms
Of atoms moving with incessant change
Their elemental round; behold the seeds
Of being, and the energy of life
Kindling the mass with ever-active flame:
Then to the secrets of the working mind
Attentive turn; from dim oblivion call
Her fleet, ideal band; and bid them, go!
Break through time's barrier, and o'ertake the hour
That saw the heavens created: then declare
If aught were found in those external scenes
To move thy wonder now. For what are all
The forms which brute, unconscious matter wears,
Greatness of bulk, or symmetry of parts?
Not reaching to the heart, soon feeble grows
The superficial impulse; dull their charms,
And satiate soon, and pall the languid eye.
Not so the moral species, nor the powers
Of genius and design; the ambitious mind
There sees herself: by these congenial forms
Touch'd and awaken'd, with intenser act
She bends each nerve, and meditates well-pleas'd
Her features in the mirror. For of all
The inhabitants of earth, to man alone
Creative wisdom gave to lift his eye
To truth's eternal measures; thence to frame
The sacred laws of action and of will,
Discerning justice from unequal deeds,
And temperance from folly. But beyond
This energy of truth, whose dictates bind
Assenting reason, the benignant sire,
To deck the honour'd paths of just and good,
Has added bright imagination's rays:
Where virtue, rising from the awful depth
Of truth's mysterious bosom, doth forsake
The unadorn'd condition of her birth;
And dress'd by fancy in ten thousand hues,
Assumes a various feature, to attract,
With charms responsive to each gazer's eye,
The hearts of men. Amid his rural walk,
The ingenuous youth, whom solitude inspires
With purest wishes, from the pensive shade
Beholds her moving, like a virgin-muse
That wakes her lyre to some indulgent theme
Of harmony and wonder: while among
The herd of servile minds, her strenuous form
Indignant flashes on the patriot's eye,
And through the rolls of memory appeals
To ancient honour, or in act serene,
Yet watchful, raises the majestic sword
Of public power, from dark ambition's reach
To guard the sacred volume of the laws.
(Bk. I, ll. 464-566, pp. 35-40)",2011-06-13,14419,"•There is a kind of metaphor in a metaphor at work here. Fancy usually paints... Is painting here described as a kind of dressing in hue?
• Filed under Dress. But also Population: Fancy is a tailor? A valet?","""Where virtue, rising from the awful depth / Of truth's mysterious bosom, doth forsake / The unadorn'd condition of her birth; / And dress'd by fancy in ten thousand hues, / Assumes a various feature, to attract, / With charms responsive to each gazer's eye, / The hearts of men.""","",2011-06-13 15:24:51 UTC,Book I
6972,"",Reading,2011-06-23 19:45:16 UTC,"Reclaim’d her wild licentious youth,
Confest the potent voice of truth,
And felt it’s just controul:
The Passions ceas’d their loud alarms,
And Virtue’s soft persuasive charms
O’er all their senses stole.
(pp. 66-7)",,18796,"","""The Passions ceas’d their loud alarms, / And Virtue’s soft persuasive charms / O’er all their senses stole.""",Inhabitants,2011-06-23 19:45:16 UTC,""
4909,"",Reading at the Folger Library,2012-03-05 16:34:54 UTC,"I. The SOUL, inhabiting the Brain, or acting, where it doubtless does, immediately behind the Optic Nerves, stamps, instantaneously upon the Eye, and Eyebrow, a struck Image of conceiv'd Idea: And that in Fact it does This, and that it does it, in the very Instant of Conception, every Man must every Hour, experience, in his Act, and Attitude, of Thinking; for, no sooner can he set himself to ponder, or intensely meditate, on any Object, than he perceives his Eye, and Brow, imprintedly partaking, and assisting to produce Conception:--If the Image is a pleasing one, the Brow dilates; -- as if to give it Room -- if painfull, it contracts itself, as if it would evade or guard against a half-admitted Object. ------ In Both These, 'tis evident, the Optic Nerves receive Impression from the Thought, in the same Instant, that the Soul conceives it. (v)",,19624,USE IN ENTRY: impressions inward/outward.,"""The SOUL, inhabiting the Brain, or acting, where it doubtless does, immediately behind the Optic Nerves, stamps, instantaneously upon the Eye, and Eyebrow, a struck Image of conceiv'd Idea: And that in Fact it does This, and that it does it, in the very Instant of Conception, every Man must every Hour, experience, in his Act, and Attitude, of Thinking; for, no sooner can he set himself to ponder, or intensely meditate, on any Object, than he perceives his Eye, and Brow, imprintedly partaking, and assisting to produce Conception:--If the Image is a pleasing one, the Brow dilates; -- as if to give it Room -- if painfull, it contracts itself, as if it would evade or guard against a half-admitted Object.""",Impressions and Inhabitants,2012-03-05 16:36:21 UTC,Dedication
4785,"","Reading. Found again in A. D. McKillop's Samuel Richardson: Printer and Novelist (1936; reprint, Shoe String Press, 1960), 131. ",2012-07-31 20:33:33 UTC,"Yet what a contradiction!--Weakness of heart, says she, with such a strength of will!--O Belford! she is a lion-hearted lady, in every case where her honour, her punctilio rather, calls for spirit. But I have had reason more than once in her case, to conclude, that the passions of the gentlest, slower to be moved than those of the quick, are the most flaming, the most irresistible, when raised.--Yet her charming body is not equally organized. The unequal partners pull two ways; and the divinity within her tears her silken frame. But had the same soul informed a masculine body, never would there have been a truer hero.
(IV, L27)",,19907,"","""Yet her charming body is not equally organized. The unequal partners pull two ways; and the divinity within her tears her silken frame.""",Inhabitants,2012-07-31 20:33:33 UTC,"Vol. 4, Letter 27"
7409,"",Reading,2013-06-11 21:53:44 UTC,"Self-knowledge is that acquaintance with ourselves which shows us what we are, and do, and ought to be, in order to our living comfortably and usefully here, and happily hereafter. The means of it is self-examination; the end of it is self-government and self-fruition.--It principally consists in the knowledge of our souls; which is attained by a particular attention to their various powers, capacities, passions, inclinations, operations, state, happiness, and temper. For a man's soul is properly himself, Matt. xvi. 26. compared with Luke ix. 25. The body is but the house; the soul is the tenant that inhabits it; the body is the instrument; the soul the artist that directs it.
(I.i, pp. 10-1)",,20530,"","""The body is but the house; the soul is the tenant that inhabits it; the body is the instrument; the soul the artist that directs it.""",Inhabitants and Rooms,2013-06-11 21:53:44 UTC,"Part I, Chapter I"
7665,"",Reading,2013-09-02 03:14:30 UTC,"Yet this Self-Love Lorenzo makes his choice;
And, in this choice triumphant, boasts of joy.
How is his want of happiness betray'd,
By disaffection to the present hour!
Imagination wanders far afield:
The future pleases: why? The present pains.--
""But that's a secret.""--Yes, which all men know;
And know from thee, discover'd unawares.
Thy ceaseless agitation, restless roll
From cheat to cheat, impatient of a pause;
What is it?--'Tis the cradle of the Soul,
From Instinct sent, to rock her in disease,
Which her physician, Reason, will not cure.
A poor expedient! yet thy best; and while
It mitigates thy pain, it owns it too.
(pp. 172-3, ll. 897-911)",,22635,"","""Tis the cradle of the Soul, / From Instinct sent, to rock her in disease, / Which her physician, Reason, will not cure.""",Inhabitants,2013-09-02 03:14:30 UTC,Night the Eighth
7856,"",Reading,2014-03-14 20:34:51 UTC,"But that the precise meaning of moral words can be so fixed and maintained, that the congruity or incongruity of the ideas and notions they stand for shall be always discerned, clearly and uniformly, I do not believe. Definitions, therefore, consisting of words, they cannot answer Mr. Locke's purpose, as it would not be hard to shew in the very instances he brings. Intellect, the artificer, works lamely without his proper instrument, sense; which is the case when he works on moral ideas. Whenever he can employ this instrument, and as far as it can serve him, which is the case when he works on mathematical ideas, he works securely. I apprehend, therefore, that to expect a new method would be ever found, of preserving as steadily and invariably our moral ideas and notions, as we preserve those that are mathematical, is not very different from expecting that a method should be found, sometime or other, of rendering things, that are not objects of sight by nature, visible by art. Ideas and notions of virtue and vice, very clearly defined, have been often confounded by schoolmen and casuists, in the most flagrant cases. They are so still by them and others in most discourses, and in all disputes about political or moral affairs. But no mathematician ever confounded the idea of any triangle with that of a square, nor that of a square with that of a circle.
(Essay I, §4; vol. iii, pp. 429-30)",,23731,"","""Intellect, the artificer, works lamely without his proper instrument, sense; which is the case when he works on moral ideas.""","",2014-03-14 20:34:51 UTC,""