text,updated_at,metaphor,created_at,context,theme,reviewed_on,dictionary,comments,provenance,id,work_id
"In later years the mind is no longer a total slave to the body, and does not refer everything to it. Indeed, it inquires into the truth of things considered in themselves, and discovers very many of its previous judgements to be false. But despite this, it is not easy for the mind to erase these false judgements from its memory; and as long as they stick there, they can cause a variety of errors. For example, in our early childhood we imagined the stars as being very small; and although astronomical arguments now clearly show us that they are very large indeed, our preconceived opinion is still strong enough to make it very hard for us to imagine them differently from the way we did before.
(Part One, p. 219-20)",2009-09-14 19:34:04 UTC,False judgments stick in the memory and are difficult to erase,2003-10-03 00:00:00 UTC,Part One,"",,"",•Latin text first published in 1644. French version published by Le Gras of Paris in 1647.
,Past Masters,9261,3577
"To every Individuall in nature is given an individual property by nature, not to be invaded or usurped by any: for every one as he is himselfe, so he hath a selfe propriety, else he could not be himselfe, and on this no second may presume to deprive any of, without manifest violation and affront to the very principles of nature, and of the Rules of equity and justice between man and man; mine and thine cannot be except this be; No man hath power over my rights and liberties, and I over no mans; I may be but an Individuall, enjoy my selfe, and my self propriety, and may write my selfe no more than my selfe, or presume any further; if I doe, I am an encroacher & an invader upon an other mans Right, to which I have no Right. For by naturall birth, all men are equally and alike borne to like propriety, liberty, and freedome, and as we are delivered of God by the hand of nature into this world, every one with a naturall, innate freedome and propriety (as it were writ in the table of every mans heart, never to be obliterated) even so are we to live, every one equally and alike to enjoy his Birth-right and priviledge; even all whereof God by nature hath made him free.",2009-09-14 19:34:04 UTC,"""For by naturall birth, all men are equally and alike borne to like propriety, liberty, and freedome, and as we are delivered of God by the hand of nature into this world, every one with a naturall, innate freedome and propriety (as it were writ in the table of every mans heart, never to be obliterated) even so are we to live, every one equally and alike to enjoy his Birth-right and priviledge""",2005-06-22 00:00:00 UTC,Opening paragraph,Innate Ideas,,Writing,"•Marked with the ""as it were""",Reading Macpherson's Possessive Individualism (140-1),9267,3580
"it is a firme Law and radicall principle in Nature engraven in the tables of the heart by the finger of God in creation for every living moving thing, wherein there is a breadth of life to defend, preserve, award, and deliver it selfe from all things hurtfull, destructive and obnoctious thereto to the utmost power: Therefore from hence is conveyed to all men in generall, and to every man in particular, an undoubted principle of reason, by all rationall an iust wayes and meanes possibly he may, to save, defend and deliver himselfe from all oppression, violence and cruelty whatsoever, and (in duty to his won safety and being) to leave no iust expedient unattempted for his delivery therefrom: and this is rationall and iust; to deny it is to overture the law of nature, yea, and of Religion too; for the contrary lets in nothing but selfe murther, violence and cruelty.",2009-09-14 19:34:04 UTC,"""it is a firme Law and radicall principle in Nature engraven in the tables of the heart by the finger of God in creation for every living moving thing, wherein there is a breadth of life to defend, preserve, award, and deliver it selfe from all things hurtfull, destructive and obnoctious thereto to the utmost power""",2005-06-22 00:00:00 UTC,"",Innate Ideas,,Writing,"•I've included thrice: Table, Engraving, and Law",Reading Macpherson's Possessive Individualism (141),9268,3582
"But they say again, that though the principles be right, yet common people are not of capacity enough to be made to understand them. I should be glad, that the rich, and potent subjects of a kingdom, or those that are accounted the most learned, were no less incapable than they. But all men know, that the obstructions to this kind of doctrine, proceed not so much from the difficulty of the matter, as from the interest of them that are to learn. Potent men, digest hardly any thing that setteth up a power to bridle their affections; and learned men, any thing that discovereth their errors, and thereby lesseneth their authority: whereas the common people's minds, unless they be tainted with dependance on the potent, or scribbled over with the opinions of their doctors, are like clean paper, fit to receive whatsoever by public authority shall be imprinted in them. Shall whole nations be brought to acquiesce in the great mysteries of Christian religion, which are above reason; and millions of men be made believe, that the same body may be in innumerable places, at one and the same time, which is against reason; and shall not men be able, by their teaching, and preaching, protected by the law, to make that received, which is so consonant to reason, that any unprejudicated man, needs no more to learn it, than to hear it? I conclude therefore, that in the instruction of the people in the essential rights (which are the natural, and fundamental laws) of sovereignty, there is no difficulty, (whilst a sovereign has his power entire,) but what proceeds from his own fault, or the fault of those whom he trusteth in the administration of the commonwealth; and consequently, it is his duty, to cause them so to be instructed; and not only his duty, but his benefit also, and security, against the danger that may arrive to himself in his natural person, from rebellion.
(PM p. 378, Hackett p. 221)",2012-04-15 20:23:14 UTC,"""Potent men, digest hardly any thing that setteth up a power to bridle their affections; and learned men, any thing that discovereth their errors, and thereby lesseneth their authority: whereas the common people's minds, unless they be tainted with dependance on the potent, or scribbled over with the opinions of their doctors, are like clean paper, fit to receive whatsoever by public authority shall be imprinted in them.""",2005-06-22 00:00:00 UTC,"Part II, Chapter 30",Blank Slate,,Writing,"•REVISIT and sort out the allegory of the Commonwealth. See also D. Johnston, who connects this to Hobbes' other paper metaphor: students/common people are both figured as paper.","Reading. Found again reading C. B . Macpherson's Possessive Individualism (Oxford: OUP, 1962), 98-9. And again reading David Johnson's The Rhetoric of Leviathan (Princeton UP, 1986), 89.",9283,3586
"Understanding is a power of the soul, [1011] by which we perceive, know, remember, and judge as well singulars, as universals, having certain innate notices or beginnings of arts, a reflecting action, by which it judgeth of his own doings, and examines them. Out of this definition (besides his chief office, which is to apprehend, judge all that he performs, without the help of any instruments or organs) three differences appear betwixt a man and a beast. As first, the sense only comprehends singularities, the understanding universalities. Secondly, the sense hath no innate notions. Thirdly, brutes cannot reflect upon themselves. Bees indeed make neat and curious works, and many other creatures besides; but when they have done, they cannot judge of them. His object is God, ens, all nature, and whatsoever is to be understood: which successively it apprehends. The object first moving the understanding, is some sensible thing; after by discoursing, the mind finds out the corporeal substance, and from thence the spiritual. His actions (some say) are apprehension, composition, division, discoursing, reasoning, memory, which some include in invention, and judgment. The common divisions are of the understanding, agent, and patient; speculative, and practical; in habit, or in act; simple, or compound. The agent is that which is called the wit of man, acumen or subtlety, sharpness of invention, when he doth invent of himself without a teacher, or learns anew, which abstracts those intelligible species from the phantasy, and transfers them to the passive understanding, [1012] because there is nothing in the understanding, which was not first in the sense. That which the imagination hath taken from the sense, this agent judgeth of, whether it be true or false; and being so judged he commits it to the passible to be kept. The agent is a doctor or teacher, the passive a scholar; and his office is to keep and further judge of such things as are committed to his charge; as a bare and rased table at first, capable of all forms and notions. Now these notions are twofold, actions or habits: actions, by which we take notions of, and perceive things; habits, which are durable lights and notions, which we may use when we will. Some reckon up eight kinds of them, sense, experience, intelligence, faith, suspicion, error, opinion, science; to which are added art, prudency, wisdom: as also [1013] synteresis, dictamen rationis, conscience; so that in all there be fourteen species of the understanding, of which some are innate, as the three last mentioned; the other are gotten by doctrine, learning, and use. Plato will have all to be innate: Aristotle reckons up but five intellectual habits; two practical, as prudency, whose end is to practise; to fabricate; wisdom to comprehend the use and experiments of all notions and habits whatsoever. Which division of Aristotle (if it be considered aright) is all one with the precedent; for three being innate, and five acquisite, the rest are improper, imperfect, and in a more strict examination excluded. Of all these I should more amply dilate, but my subject will not permit. Three of them I will only point at, as more necessary to my following discourse.",2009-09-14 19:34:07 UTC,"""The agent is a doctor or teacher, the passive a scholar; and his office is to keep and further judge of such things as are committed to his charge; as a bare and rased table at first, capable of all forms and notions.""",2006-09-21 00:00:00 UTC,"First Partition, Sect I. I. Memb. II, Subsect. X.--Of the Understanding",Blank Slate,,"","•REVISIT. Burton consistently personifies the faculties. Notice that I am not recording all these personifications because they are not ""personifications as.""
•I've included twice: Table and Doctor or Teacher and Scholar",Distributed Proofreaders text: produced by Karl Hagen and D. Moynihan.,9299,3590
"There are stamp'd and printed upon the being of man, some clear, and undelible principles, some first and Alphabetical Notions; by putting together of which it can spell out the Law of Nature.
(p. 47)",2009-09-14 19:34:07 UTC,"""There are stamp'd and printed upon the being of man, some clear, and undelible principles, some first and Alphabetical Notions; by putting together of which it can spell out the Law of Nature""",2005-03-28 00:00:00 UTC,"","",,"",•I've included twice: Stamp and Printing,Reading Yolton's Locke Dictionary (101),9306,3592
"When a man thinketh on any thing whatsoever, his next thought after, is not altogether so casual as it seems to be. Not every thought to every thought succeeds indifferently. But as we have no imagination, whereof we have not formerly had sense, in whole, or in parts; so we have no transition from one imagination to another, whereof we never had the like before in our senses. The reason whereof is this. All fancies are motions within us, relics of those made in the sense: and those motions that immediately succeeded one another in the sense, continue also together after sense: insomuch as the former coming again to take place, and be predominant, the latter followeth, by coherence of the matter moved, in such manner, as water upon a plain a table is drawn which way any one part of it is guided by the finger. But because in sense, to one and the same thing perceived, sometimes one thing, sometimes another succeedeth, it comes to pass in time, that in the imagining of any thing, there is no certainty what we shall imagine next; only this is certain, it shall be something that succeeded the same before, at one time or another.
(I.iii, p. 12)",2011-07-25 14:15:57 UTC,"""All fancies are motions within us, relics of those made in the sense: and those motions that immediately succeeded one another in the sense, continue also together after sense: insomuch as the former coming again to take place, and be predominant, the latter followeth, by coherence of the matter moved, in such manner, as water upon a plain a table is drawn which way any one part of it is guided by the finger.""",2011-07-25 14:15:57 UTC,"Part I, Chap. iii, ""Of the Consequence or Train of Imagination""","",,"",A complicated comparison.,Reading,18974,3586
"But when once the Earth becomes a Common Treasury again, as it must, for all the Prophesies of Scriptures and Reason are Circled here in this Community, and mankind must have the Law of Righteousnesse once more writ in his heart, and all must be made of one heart, and one mind.
(p. 9)",2011-09-07 15:13:20 UTC,"""But when once the Earth becomes a Common Treasury again, as it must, for all the Prophesies of Scriptures and Reason are Circled here in this Community, and mankind must have the Law of Righteousnesse once more writ in his heart, and all must be made of one heart, and one mind.""",2011-09-07 15:13:20 UTC,"","",,"","",Reading,19145,7084
"So that Reason is the Pen by which Nature writes this Law of her own composing; This Law 'tis publisht by Authority from heaven, and Reason is the Printer: This eye of the soul 'tis to spy out all dangers and all advantages, all conveniences and disconveniences in reference to such a being, and to warne the soul in the name of its Creator, to fly from such irregularities as have an intrinsecal and implacable malice in them, and are prejudicial and destructive to its Nature, but to comply with, and embrace all such acts and objects as have a native comelinesse and amiablenesse, and are for the heightning and ennobling of its being.
(pp. 69-70)",2013-06-06 21:39:54 UTC,"""So that Reason is the Pen by which Nature writes this Law of her own composing; This Law 'tis publisht by Authority from heaven, and Reason is the Printer: This eye of the soul 'tis to spy out all dangers and all advantages, all conveniences and disconveniences in reference to such a being, and to warne the soul in the name of its Creator, to fly from such irregularities as have an intrinsecal and implacable malice in them, and are prejudicial and destructive to its Nature.""",2013-06-06 21:38:06 UTC,Chap. IX. The Light of Reason,"",,Writing,"",Reading,20461,3591
"This makes the Platonists look upon the spirit of man as the Candle of the Lord for illuminating and irradiating of objects, and darting more light upon them then it receives from them. But Plato as he failed in corporeal vision whilest he thought that it was per extramiss•onem radiorum; So he did not ab errore suo recedere in his intellectual optio••but in the very same manner tells us that spiritual vision also is per emissionem radiorum. And truly he might as well phansie such implanted Ideas, such seeds of light in his external eye, as such seminal principles in the eye of the minde. Therefore Aristotle (who did better clarifie both these kindes of visions) pluckt these motes out of the sensitive eye, and those beames out of the intellectual. He did not antedate his own knowledge, nor remember the several postures of his soul, and the famous exploits of his minde before he was born; but plainly profest that his understanding came naked into the world. He shews you an [GREEK], an abrasa tabula, a virgin-soul espousing it self to the body, in a most entire, affectionate, and conjugal union, and by the blessing of heaven upon this loving paire, he did not doubt of a Notional off-spring & posterity; this makes him set open the windows of sense to welcome and entertain the first dawnings, the early glimmerings of morninglight. Clarum mane fenestras intrat & Angustas extendit lumine rimas. Many sparks and appearances fly from variety of objects to the understanding; The minde, that catches them all, and cherishes them, and blows them; and thus the Candle of knowledge is lighted. As he could perceive no connate colours, no pictures or portraictures in his external eye: so neither could he finde any signatures in his minde till some outward objects had made some impression upon his [GREEK] his soft and plyable understanding impartially prepared for every seal. That this is the true method of knowledge he doth appeal to their own eyes, to their own understandings; do but analyse your own thoughts, do but consult with your own breasts, tell us whence it was that the light first sprang in upon you. Had you such notions as these when you first peept into being? at the first opening of the souls eye? in the first exordium of infancy? had you these connate Species in the cradle? and were they rockt asleep with you? or did you then meditate upon these principles? Totum est majus parte, & Nihil potest esse & non esse simul. Ne're tell us that you wanted origanical dispositiōs, for you plainly have recourse to the sensitive powers, and must needs subscribe to this, that al knowledg comes flourishing in at these lattices. Why else should not your Candle enlighten you before? who was it that chained up; and fettered your common notions▪ Who was it that restrained and imprisoned your connate Idea's? Me thinks the working of a Platonists soul should not at all depend on [GREEK]; and why had you no connate demonstrations, as well as connate principles? Let's but see a catalogue of all these truths you brought with you into the world. If you speak of the principles of the Laws of Nature, you shall hear the Schoolmen determining. Infans pro illo statu non obligatur lege naturali, quia non habet usum Rationis & libertatis. And a more sacred Author saies as much, Lex Naturae est lex intelligentiae quam tamen ignorat pueritia, nescit infantia. There's some time to be allowed for the promulgation of Natures Law by the voice of Reason. They must have some time to spell the [GREEK] that was of Reasons writing. The minde having such gradual and climbing accomplishments, doth strongly evince that the true rise of knowledge is from the observing and comparing of objects, and from thence exstracting the quintessence of some such principles as are worthy of all acceptation; that have so much of certainty in them, that they are neer to a Tautology and Identity, for this first principles are.
(pp. 90-2)",2013-06-06 21:51:54 UTC,"""He did not antedate his own knowledge, nor remember the several postures of his soul, and the famous exploits of his minde before he was born; but plainly profest that his understanding came naked into the world. He shews you an [...], an abrasa tabula, a virgin-soul espousing it self to the body, in a most entire, affectionate, and conjugal union, and by the blessing of heaven upon this loving paire, he did not doubt of a Notional off-spring & posterity; this makes him set open the windows of sense to welcome and entertain the first dawnings, the early glimmerings of morning light.""",2013-06-06 21:51:54 UTC,"Chap. XI. The light of Reason is a derivative light.
","",,"","",Reading,20464,3591