"All is revolution in us."

— Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)


Date
1711, 1714
Metaphor
"All is revolution in us."
Metaphor in Context
Now to be assured that we can never be concerned in anything hereafter, we must understand what it is which concerns or engages us in anything present. We must truly know ourselves, and in what this self of ours consists. We must determine against pre-existence, and give a better reason for our having never been concerned to purpose, of which we have no memory or consciousness remaining. And thus we may happen to be again and again to perpetuity, for any reason we can show to the contrary. All is revolution in us. We are no more the self-same matter or system of matter from one day to another. What succession there may be hereafter we know not, since even now we live by succession, and only perish and are renewed.
Provenance
Reading Robert Marsh, Four Dialectical Theories of Poetry: An Aspect of English Neoclassical Criticism (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1965).
Citation
A complicated publication history. At least 9 entries in ESTC (1711, 1714, 1733, 1744, 1751, 1757, 1758, 1773, 1790).

See Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times. In Three Volumes. (London: John Darby, 1711). <Link to ESTC>

Some text drawn from ECCO, most from Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury. Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, ed. Lawrence E. Klein (Cambridge: CUP, 2001). Klein's text is based on the British Library's copy of the second edition of 1714. [Texts to be collated.]
Date of Entry
03/03/2004

The Mind is a Metaphor is authored by Brad Pasanek, Assistant Professor of English, University of Virginia.