id,comments,provenance,dictionary,created_at,reviewed_on,work_id,theme,context,updated_at,metaphor,text
8582,•Darwin to Richard Lovell Edgeworth,Contributed by Joann Kleinneiur (email).,"",2005-05-04 00:00:00 UTC,,5737,"","",2009-12-14 16:24:47 UTC,"""[P]ains and diseases of the mind are only cured by Forgetfulness;--Reason but skins the wound, which is perpetually liable to fester again""","I much condole with you on your late loss, I know how to feel for your misfortune! [ref. to death of Edgeworth's daughter Honora (1774-1790)] ... pains and diseases of the mind are only cured by Forgetfulness;--Reason but skins the wound, which is perpetually liable to fester again.
(p. 201)"
15580,Negated Metaphor,"Searching ""tabula rasa"" in ECCO",Writing,2006-10-14 00:00:00 UTC,,5850,Blank Slate,Letter LV,2013-10-27 02:46:29 UTC,"""The mind is not a rasa tabula, though, at the same time, it must be allowed, we gain no actual knowledge of the latent ideas which it possesses, but as they are awakened by reflection and experience.""","The mind is not a rasa tabula, though, at the same time, it must be allowed, we gain no actual knowledge of the latent ideas which it possesses, but as they are awakened by reflection and experience. In the human frame, sensibility is first unfolded, next instinct, then memory; after these, the understanding; and last of all, the [illegible: will?]. All the faculties are rendered active, a short time after birth; but a considerable space of time passes, before they are perfectly developed. The infant at first has only particular sensations; objects appear unconnected: when the number of these sensations, however, are multiplied, the child compares them; perceives their identity or difference; begins to range them in certain classes, according to analogy, and to form ideas. From this instant, the innate desire of happiness has its determinate object, and the will pursues some known good. Is not an animal, also, in general brought forth with every one of its external members? And does it not complete its growth, not by the pro- [end page 143] duction of any new member, but by addition of matter to those already formed? The same holds true with respect to internal members: these are coeval with the individual, and are as gradually unfolded.
(III, Letter LV, pp. 143-4)"
19969,"","Reading Peter Dorsey's Common Bondage: Slavery as Metaphor in Revolutionary America (Knoxville: U. of Tennessee Press, 2009), 33.",Fetters,2013-03-07 16:06:15 UTC,,7331,"","",2013-03-07 16:06:15 UTC,"""Let any man of candour declare, whether the state of servitude and bondage, in which the poor are held both in France and England, does not merit the name of slavery, and justify the assertion of its universal existence at present, as well as the opinion of its having existed from the remotest antiquity, and that it ever must exist in the world--that it is a genus of the state of man, of which the different kinds of servitude are distinct species--that, as it is impossible totally to eradicate it, or put a stop even to the sale and purchase of the Negroes in Africa which is only one branch of the commerce of the human species, so the modification of the kind of servitude in usage in any country is not rashly to be attempted, nor, in any case, to be undertaken by persons not intimately acquainted with it in all its circumstances.""","[...] With respect to the other species of poor people, such as have a place of abode, and are aged and infirm, we need no other proof of their distress and misery, than the testimony of every English traveller who has ever passed through the country, who will tell you, that, wherever he has stopped to change horses, numbers of poor unhappy people crowded round his post-chaise, soliciting the boon of a single liard. Ignorant of the state of the poor in other parts of Europe, I can only hope it is not more deplorable than in those I am acquainted with. Let any man of candour declare, whether the state of servitude and bondage, in which the poor are held both in France and England, does not merit the name of slavery, and justify the assertion of its universal existence at present, as well as the opinion of its having existed from the remotest antiquity, and that it ever must exist in the world--that it is a genus of the state of man, of which the different kinds of servitude are distinct species--that, as it is impossible totally to eradicate it, or put a stop even to the sale and purchase of the Negroes in Africa which is only one branch of the commerce of the human species, so the modification of the kind of servitude in usage in any country is not rashly to be attempted, nor, in any case, to be undertaken by persons not intimately acquainted with it in all its circumstances. Can any gentlemen in England, if they possessed the power, presume themselves competent to frame laws for the enfranchisement of all the serfs in Russia or Poland? Can any man believe, that, if those people were at this moment set free from all controul of their lords, and deprived of their cottages, and their present method of subsisting themselves, they would not be driven to pillage and devastation for their support? That such would be the consequence of giving a nominal freedom to the Negroes in the West Indies is most certain. They must, in such case, be compelled to work, by laws far more severe than the present, and those laws must be much more rigorously executed than what they are now governed by. Neither could such severity be disapproved of by the people of any nation, who, however free their poor are, oblige them to work. The difficulty the poor find of subsisting themselves throughout Europe, even in Great Britain and Ireland, where liberty is so popular a theme, is evident, from the frequent emigrations we hear of. In what does their superior happiness consist?--In the power of abandoning their native country, and changing their masters.--Be it so. I do not mean to enter into a comparison between the different degrees of servitude. Let it be believed, that the Negroes, in that particular, experience an harder lot than Europeans. It in no degree invalidates the argument, that such a desire of change, such frequent emigrations of the poor of Europe, is very far from being a proof of a superior degree of happiness.
(pp. 203-5) "
20160,"",Reading,Animals,2013-05-07 20:57:23 UTC,,7388,"","",2013-05-07 20:57:37 UTC,"""But it is then, and basking in the sunshine of unmerited fortune, that low, sordid, ungenerous, and reptile souls swell with their hoarded poisons; it is then that they display their odious splendour, and shine out in full lustre of their native villainy and baseness.""","In my opinion, their insolence appears more odious even than their crimes. The horrors of the 5th and 6th of October were less detestable than the festival of the 14th of July. There are situations (God forbid I should think that of the 5th and 6th of October one of them) in which the best men may be confounded with the worst, and in the darkness and confusion, in the press and medley of such extremities, it may not be so easy to discriminate the one from the other. The necessities created, even by ill designs, have their excuse. They may be forgotten by others, when the guilty themselves do not choose to cherish their recollection, and by ruminating their offences, nourish themselves through the example of their past, to the perpetration of future crimes. It is in the relaxation of security, it is in the expansion of prosperity, it is in the hour of dilatation of the heart, and of its softening into festivity and pleasure, that the real character of men is discerned. If there is any good in them, it appears then or never. Even wolves and tigers, when gorged with their prey, are safe and gentle. It is at such times that noble minds give all the reins to their good nature. They indulge their genius even to intemperance, in kindness to the afflicted, in generosity to the conquered; forbearing insults, forgiving injuries, overpaying benefits. Full of dignity themselves, they respect dignity in all, but they feel it sacred in the unhappy. But it is then, and basking in the sunshine of unmerited fortune, that low, sordid, ungenerous, and reptile souls swell with their hoarded poisons; it is then that they display their odious splendor, and shine out in full lustre of their native villainy and baseness. It is in that season that no man of sense or honour can be mistaken for one of them. It was in such a season, for them of political ease and security, though their people were but just emerged from actual famine, and were ready to be plunged into the gulf of penury and beggary, that your philosophic lords chose, with an ostentatious pomp and luxury, to feast an incredible number of idle and thoughtless people, collected, with art and pains, from all quarters of the world. They constructed a vast amphitheatre in which they raised a species of pillory. On this pillory they set their lawful king and queen, with an insulting figure over their heads. There they exposed these objects of pity and respect to all good minds to the derision of an unthinking and unprincipled multitude, degenerated even from the versatile tenderness which marks the irregular and capricious feelings of the populace. That their cruel insult might have nothing wanting to complete it, they chose the anniversary of that day in which they exposed the life of their prince to the most imminent dangers, and the vilest indignities, just following the instant when the assassins, whom they had hired without owning, first openly took up arms against their king, corrupted his guards, surprised his castle, butchered some of the poor invalids of his garrison, murdered his governor, and, like wild beasts, tore to pieces the chief magistrate of his capital city, on account of his fidelity to his service.
(pp. 26-9)"
20161,"",Reading,"",2013-05-07 20:58:42 UTC,,7388,"","",2013-05-07 20:58:42 UTC,"""His blood they transfuse into their minds and into their manners.""","The National Assembly proceeds on maxims the very reverse of these. The Assembly commends to its youth a study of the bold experimenters in morality. Everybody knows that there is a great dispute amongst their leaders, which of them is the best resemblance of Rousseau. In truth, they all resemble him. His blood they transfuse into their minds and into their manners. Him they study; him they meditate; him they turn over in all the time they can spare from the laborious mischief of the day, or the debauches of the night. Rousseau is their canon of holy writ; in his life he is their canon of Polycletus; he is their standard figure of perfection. To this man and this writer, as a pattern to authors and to Frenchmen, the foundries of Paris are now running for statues, with the kettles of their poor and the bells of their churches. If an author had written like a great genius on geometry, though his practical and speculative morals were vicious in the extreme, it might appear, that in voting the statue, they honoured only the geometrician. But Rousseau is a moralist, or he is nothing. It is impossible, therefore, putting the circumstances together, to mistake their design in choosing the author with whom they have begun to recommend a course of studies.
(pp. 31-2)"
20162,"",Reading,"",2013-05-07 20:59:30 UTC,,7388,"","",2013-05-07 20:59:30 UTC,"""It is that new invented virtue, which your masters canonize, that led their moral hero constantly to exhaust the stores of his powerful rhetoric in the expression of universal benevolence; whilst his heart was incapable of harbouring one spark of common parental affection.""","It is that new invented virtue, which your masters canonize, that led their moral hero constantly to exhaust the stores of his powerful rhetoric in the expression of universal benevolence; whilst his heart was incapable of harbouring one spark of common parental affection. Benevolence to the whole species, and want of feeling for every individual with whom the professors come in contact, form the character of the new philosophy. Setting up for an unsocial independence, this their hero of vanity refuses the just price of common labour, as well as the tribute which opulence owes to genius, and which, when paid, honours the giver and the receiver; and then he pleads his beggary as an excuse for his crimes. He melts with tenderness for those only who touch him by the remotest relation, and then, without one natural pang, casts away, as a sort of offal and excrement, the spawn of his disgustful amours, and sends his children to the hospital of foundlings. The bear loves, licks, and forms her young; but bears are not philosophers. Vanity, however, finds its account in reversing the train of our natural feelings. Thousands admire the sentimental writer; the affectionate father is hardly known in his parish.
(pp. 34-5)"
20163,"",Reading,"",2013-05-07 21:00:51 UTC,,7388,"","",2013-05-07 21:00:51 UTC,"""He must have a heart of adamant who could hear a set of traitors puffed up with unexpected and undeserved power, obtained by an ignoble, unmanly, and perfidious rebellion, treating their honest fellow-citizens as rebels, because they refused to bind themselves, through their conscience, against the dictates of conscience itself, and had declined to swear an active compliance with their own ruin.""","Your fundamental laws, as well as ours, suppose a monarchy. Your zeal, Sir, in standing so firmly for it as you have done, shows not only a sacred respect for your honour and fidelity, but a well informed attachment to the real welfare and true liberties of your country. I have expressed myself ill, if I have given you cause to imagine that I prefer the conduct of those who have retired from this warfare to your behaviour, who, with a courage and constancy almost supernatural, have struggled against tyranny, and kept the field to the last. You see I have corrected the exceptionable part in the edition which I now send you. Indeed, in such terrible extremities as yours, it is not easy to say, in a political view, what line of conduct is the most advisable. In that state of things, I cannot bring myself severely to condemn persons who are wholly unable to bear so much as the sight of those men in the throne of legislation, who are only fit to be the objects of criminal justice. If fatigue, if disgust, if unsurmountable nausea drive them away from such spectacles, ubi miseriarum pars non minima erat, videre et aspici, I cannot blame them. He must have a heart of adamant who could hear a set of traitors puffed up with unexpected and undeserved power, obtained by an ignoble, unmanly, and perfidious rebellion, treating their honest fellow-citizens as rebels, because they refused to bind themselves, through their conscience, against the dictates of conscience itself, and had declined to swear an active compliance with their own ruin. How could a man of common flesh and blood endure that those, who but the other day had skulked unobserved in their antechambers, scornfully insulting men, illustrious in their rank, sacred in their function, and venerable in their character, now in decline of life, and swimming on the wrecks of their fortunes, that those miscreants should tell such men scornfully and outrageously, after they had robbed them of all their property, that it is more than enough if they are allowed what will keep them from absolute famine, and that for the rest, they must let their grey hairs fall over the plough, to make out a scanty subsistence, with the labour of their hands! Last, and worst, who could endure to hear this unnatural, insolent, and savage despotism called liberty? If, at this distance, sitting quietly by my fire, I cannot read their decrees and speeches without indignation, shall I condemn those who have fled from the actual sight and hearing of all these horrors? No, no! mankind has no title to demand that we should be slaves to their guilt and insolence; or that we should serve them in spite of themselves. Minds, sore with the poignant sense of insulted virtue, filled with high disdain against the pride of triumphant baseness, often have it not in their choice to stand their ground. Their complexion (which might defy the rack) cannot go through such a trial. Something very high must fortify men to that proof. But when I am driven to comparison, surely I cannot hesitate for a moment to prefer to such men as are common those heroes, who, in the midst of despair, perform all the tasks of hope; who subdue their feelings to their duties; who, in the cause of humanity, liberty, and honour, abandon all the satisfactions of life, and every day incur a fresh risk of life itself. Do me the justice to believe that I never can prefer any fastidious virtue (virtue still) to the unconquered perseverance, to the affectionate patience of those who watch day and night, by the bed-side of their delirious country, who, for their love to that dear and venerable name, bear all the disgusts, and all the buffets they receive from their frantic mother. Sir, I do look on you as true martyrs; I regard you as soldiers who act far more in the spirit of our Commander-in-chief, and the Captain of our salvation, than those who have left you; though I must first bolt myself very thoroughly, and know that I could do better, before I can censure them. I assure you, sir, that, when I consider your unconquerable fidelity to your sovereign and to your country; the courage, fortitude, magnanimity, and long suffering of yourself, and the Abbe Maury, and of Mr. Cazales, and of many worthy persons of all orders, in your Assembly, I forget, in the lustre of these great qualities, that on your side has been displayed an eloquence so rational, manly, and convincing, that no time or country, perhaps, has ever excelled. But your talents disappear in my admiration of your virtues.
(pp. 49-53)"
20164,"",Reading,Fetters,2013-05-07 21:01:43 UTC,,7388,"","",2013-05-07 21:03:42 UTC,"""Men are qualified for civil liberty, in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites; in proportion as their love of justice is above their rapacity; in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption; in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves.""","Until you make out practically that great work, a combination of opposing forces, ""a work of labour long, and endless praise,"" the utmost caution ought to have been used in the reduction of the royal power, which alone was capable of holding together the comparatively heterogeneous mass of your states. But, at this day, all these considerations are unseasonable. To what end should we discuss the limitations of royal power? Your king is in prison. Why speculate on the measure and standard of liberty? I doubt much, very much, indeed, whether France is at all ripe for liberty on any standard. Men are qualified for civil liberty, in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites; in proportion as their love of justice is above their rapacity; in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption; in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.
(pp. 68-9)"
20165,"",Reading,Metal and Fetters,2013-05-07 21:05:08 UTC,,7388,"","",2013-05-07 21:05:08 UTC,"""It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.""","Until you make out practically that great work, a combination of opposing forces, ""a work of labour long, and endless praise,"" the utmost caution ought to have been used in the reduction of the royal power, which alone was capable of holding together the comparatively heterogeneous mass of your states. But, at this day, all these considerations are unseasonable. To what end should we discuss the limitations of royal power? Your king is in prison. Why speculate on the measure and standard of liberty? I doubt much, very much, indeed, whether France is at all ripe for liberty on any standard. Men are qualified for civil liberty, in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites; in proportion as their love of justice is above their rapacity; in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption; in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.
(pp. 68-9)"
20166,"",Reading,"",2013-05-07 21:07:04 UTC,,7388,"","",2013-05-07 21:07:04 UTC,"""You know them but at a distance, on the statements of those who always flatter the reigning power, and who, amidst their representations of the grievances, inflame your minds against those who are oppressed. These are amongst the effects of unremitted labour, when men exhaust their attention, burn out their candles, and are left in the dark.""","In England we cannot work so hard as Frenchmen. Frequent relaxation is necessary to us. You are naturally more intense in your application. I did not know this part of your national character, until I went into France in 1773. At present, this your disposition to labour is rather increased than lessened. In your Assembly you do not allow yourselves a recess even on Sundays. We have two days in the week, besides the festivals; and besides five or six months of the summer and autumn. This continued, unremitted effort of the members of your Assembly, I take to be one among the causes of the mischief they have done. They who always labour can have no true judgment. You never give yourselves time to cool. You can never survey, from its proper point of sight, the work you have finished, before you decree its final execution. You can never plan the future by the past. You never go into the country, soberly and dispassionately to observe the effect of your measures on their objects. You cannot feel distinctly how far the people are rendered better and improved, or more miserable and depraved, by what you have done. You cannot see with your own eyes the sufferings and afflictions you cause. You know them but at a distance, on the statements of those who always flatter the reigning power, and who, amidst their representations of the grievances, inflame your minds against those who are oppressed. These are amongst the effects of unremitted labour, when men exhaust their attention, burn out their candles, and are left in the dark.--Malo meorum negligentiam, quam istorum obscuram diligentiam.
(pp. 72-4)"