The Parallel is easily made on the side of Writers. They have at least as much need of learning the several Motions, Counterpoises and Ballances of the Mind and Passions, as the other Students those of the Body and Limbs."

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


Place of Publication
London
Publisher
John Morphew
Date
1710, 1714
Metaphor
The Parallel is easily made on the side of Writers. They have at least as much need of learning the several Motions, Counterpoises and Ballances of the Mind and Passions, as the other Students those of the Body and Limbs."
Metaphor in Context
Now such as these Masters and their Lessons are to a fine Gentleman, such are Philosophers, and Philosophy, to an Author. The Case is the same in the fashionable, and in the literate World. In the former of these 'tis remark'd, that by the help of good Company and the force of Example merely, a decent Carriage is acquir'd, with such apt Motions and such a Freedom of Limbs, as on all ordinary occasions may enable the Party to demean himself like a Gentleman. But when upon further occasion, trial is made in an extraordinary way; when Exercises of the genteeler kind are to be perform'd in publick, 'twill easily appear who of the Pretenders have known Rudiments, and had Masters in private; and who on the other side have contented themselves with bare Imitation, and learnt only casually and by rote. The Parallel is easily made on the side of Writers. They have at least as much need of learning the several Motions, Counterpoises and Ballances of the Mind and Passions, as the other Students those of the Body and Limbs.
(p. 191; p. 86 in Klein)
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
A complicated publication history. At least 10 entries in ESTC (1710, 1711, 1714, 1733, 1744, 1751, 1757, 1758, 1773, 1790).

See Soliloquy, or Advice to an Author (London: John Morphew, 1710). <Link to ESTC><Link to Google Books>

See also "Soliloquy, or Advice to an Author" in Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times. In Three Volumes. (London: John Darby, 1711). <Link to ESTC>

Some text drawn from ECCO and Google Books; also 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
07/09/2013

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