work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
3866,"","Reading Arthur A. Cash, ""The Sermon in Tristram Shandy."" ELH 31:4 (1964): 399.",2012-06-12 20:34:32 UTC,"12. Thirdly, probabilities, which cross men's appetites and prevailing passions, run the same fate. Let ever so much probability hang on one side of a covetous man's reasoning, and money on the other; it is easy to foresee which will outweigh. Earthly minds, like mud-walls, resist the strongest batteries: And though perhaps sometimes the force of a clear argument may make some impression, yet they nevertheless stand firm, and keep out the enemy truth, that would captivate or disturb them. Tell a man passionately in love, that he is jilted; bring a score of witnesses of the falsehood of his mistress, it is ten to one but three kind words of hers shall invalidate all their testimonies, Quod volumus, facile credits; What suits our wishes, is forwardly believed; is, I suppose, what every one hath more than once experimented: And though men cannot always openly gainsay or resist the force of manifest probabilities that make against them, yet yield they not to the argument. Not but that it is the nature of the understanding constantly to close with the more probable side; but yet a man hath a power to suspend and restrain its inquiries, and not permit a full and satisfactory examination, as far as the matter in question is capable, and will bear it to be made. Until that be done, there will be always these two ways left of evading the most apparent probabilities.
(IV.xx.12)",,19792,"","""Earthly minds, like mud-walls, resist the strongest batteries: And though perhaps sometimes the force of a clear argument may make some impression, yet they nevertheless stand firm, and keep out the enemy truth, that would captivate or disturb them.""",Empire and Impressions,2012-06-12 20:34:32 UTC,IV.xx.12
3866,"",Searching in EEBO-TCP,2014-07-28 15:30:41 UTC,"ยง. 6. But let it help us (as, perhaps, may be said) in convincing Men of their Errors or Mistakes; (and yet I would fain see the Man, that was forced out of his Opinions by dint of Syllogism;) yet still it fails our Reason in that part, which if not its highest Perfection, is yet certainly its hardest Task, and that which we most need its help in; and that is the finding out of Proofs, and making new Discoveries. The Rules of Syllogism serve not to furnish the Mind with those intermediate Ideas, that may shew the connexion of remote ones. This way of reasoning discovers no new Proofs, but is the Art of marshalling, and ranging the old ones we have already. The 47th Proposition of the First Book of Euclid is very true; but the discovery of it, I think, not owing to any Rules of common Logick. A Man knows first, and then he is able to prove syllogistically. So that Syllogism comes after Knowledge, and then a Man has little or no need of it. But 'tis chiefly by the finding out those Ideas that shew the connexion of distant ones, that our stock of Knowledge is increased, and that useful Arts and Sciences are advanced. Syllogism, at best, is but the Art of fencing with the little Knowledge we have, without making any Addition to it: And if a Man should employ his Reason all this way, he will not doe much otherwise than he, who having got some Iron out of the Bowels of the Earth, should have it beaten up all into Swords, and put it into his Servants Hands to fence with, and bang one another. Had the King of Spain imploy'd the Hands of his People, and his Spanish Iron so, he had brought to Light but little of that Treasure, that lay so long hid in the dark Entrails of America. And I am apt to think, that he who shall employ all the force of his Reason only in brandishing of Syllogisms, will discover very little of that Mass of Knowledge, which lies yet concealed in the secret recesses of Nature; and which I am apt to think, native rustick Reason (as it formerly has done) is likelier to open a way to, and add to the common stock of Mankind, rather than any scholastick Proceeding by the strict Rules of Mode and Figure.
(IV.xvii.6, p. 343)",,24322,INTEREST! ,"""Syllogism, at best, is but the Art of fencing with the little Knowledge we have, without making any Addition to it: And if a Man should employ his Reason all this way, he will not doe much otherwise than he, who having got some Iron out of the Bowels of the Earth, should have it beaten up all into Swords, and put it into his Servants Hands to fence with, and bang one another.""",Metal,2014-07-28 15:32:13 UTC,""