work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
7856,"",Reading,2014-03-14 20:32:33 UTC,"Names indeed are given to signify all our ideas and all our notions to ourselves and to others, and to help the memory in meditation as well as in discourse. When they are assigned to complex ideas, they are meant as knots according to the very proper image Mr. Locke gives of them, to tie each specific bundle of ideas together: and in these respects they are not only useful, but necessary. It happens, however, that names, far from having these effects, have such very often as are quite contrary to these. Whilst we retain the names of complex ideas and notions, we imagine that we retain the ideas and notions; but the ideas and notions shift and vary, whilst the names remain the same. The scene of the mind, like a moving picture, must be governed with attention, that it may bring into our view the images we want, and as we want them. Otherwise ideas that are foreign to our actual train of thinking will frequently rush into our thoughts, and become objects of them whether we will or no. But there is another and a greater mischief which will flow from this constitution of the mind, unless the utmost attention be employed, and often when it is. The former is a sort of violence, which cannot be offered unperceived, and may be therefore resisted. This that I am going to mention steals so silently upon us, that we do not perceive it very often even when it has worked its effect. When we recall our ideas and notions, whether this be done with ease or difficulty, we review them in some sort: and if they are more liable to have been altered, we have a better chance for perceiving any alteration that may have been made in the determination of them. But when the ideas and notions we want present themselves, as it were of themselves, to the mind, under their usual names and appearances, we are apt to employ them without examination, and perhaps we advert very often to nothing more than the word by which we are used to signify them. In this manner our ideas and notions become unsteady imperceptibly, and I would not answer that something may not happen to me of this kind, even in writing this essay, though I am on my guard against it. How much more must it happen to those who are not thus on their guard?
(Essay I, ยง4; vol. iii, pp. 419-20)",,23728,"","""The scene of the mind, like a moving picture, must be governed with attention, that it may bring into our view the images we want, and as we want them. Otherwise ideas that are foreign to our actual train of thinking will frequently rush into our thoughts, and become objects of them whether we will or no.""","",2014-03-14 20:32:33 UTC,""
7984,"",Reading,2014-07-25 18:20:09 UTC,"Whoever thinks must see that man was made
To face the storm, not languish in the shade;
Action's his sphere, and,for that sphere design'd,
Eternal pleasures open on his mind.
For this, fair hope leads on the' impassion'd soul
Through life's wild labyrinths to her distant goal;
Paints in each dream, to fan the genial flame,
The pomp of riches, and the pride of fame,
Or fondly gives reflection's cooler eye
A glance, an image, of a future sky.
Yet, though kind Heaven points out the' unerring road
That leads through nature up to bliss and God;
Spite of that God, and all his voice divine
Speaks in the heart, or teaches from the shrine,
Man, feebly vain, and impotently wise,
Disdains the manna sent him from the skies;
Tasteless of all that virtue gives to please,
For thought too active, and too mad for ease,
From wish to wish in life's mad vortex toss'd,
For ever struggling, and for ever lost;
He scorns religion, though her seraphs call,
And lives in rapture, or not lives at all.
(pp. 154-155)",,24302,"","""For this, fair hope leads on the' impassion'd soul / Through life's wild labyrinths to her distant goal; / Paints in each dream, to fan the genial flame, / The pomp of riches, and the pride of fame, / Or fondly gives reflection's cooler eye / A glance, an image, of a future sky.""","",2014-07-25 18:20:09 UTC,""
8274,"",Reading at The Yale Digital Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson. ,2018-04-19 20:22:22 UTC,"Now commences the reign of judgment or reason; we begin to find little pleasure, but in comparing arguments, stating propositions, disentangling perplexities, clearing ambiguities, and deducing consequences. The painted vales of imagination are deserted, and our intellectual activity is exercised in winding through the labyrinths of fallacy, and toiling with firm and cautious steps up the narrow tracks of demonstration. Whatever may lull vigilance, or mislead attention, is contemptuously rejected, and every disguise in which error may be concealed, is carefully observed, till by degrees a certain number of incontestable or unsuspected propositions are established, and at last concatenated into arguments, or compacted into systems.",,25184,"","""The painted vales of imagination are deserted, and our intellectual activity is exercised in winding through the labyrinths of fallacy, and toiling with firm and cautious steps up the narrow tracks of demonstration.""","",2018-04-19 20:22:22 UTC,""