work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
5229,"","Reading Maclean's John Locke and English Literature, (1962), p. 33",2005-03-27 00:00:00 UTC,"une pierre de marbre qui a des veines plutôt que d'une pierre de marbre tout unie ou de tablettes vides, c'est-à-dire de ce qui s'appelle tabula rasa chez les philosophes.",2007-04-26,8544,"","""Une pierre de marbre qui a des veines plutôt que d'une pierre de marbre tout unie ou de tablettes vides, c'est-à-dire de ce qui s'appelle tabula rasa chez les philosophes.""","",2013-10-13 19:00:43 UTC,""
5229,"",Reading,2005-06-01 00:00:00 UTC,"THEO.
The mind is capable not merely of knowing them, but also of finding them within itself. If all it had was the mere capacity to receive those items of knowledge--a passive power to do so, as indeterminate as the power of wax to receive shapes or of a blank page to receive words--it would not be the source of necessary truths, as I have just shown that it is. For it cannot be denied that the senses are inadequate to show their necessity, and that therefore the mind has a disposition (as much active as passive) to draw them from its own depths; thoughthe senses are necessary to give the mind the opportunity and the attention for this, and to direct it towards certain necessary truths rather than others. So you see, sir, that these people who hold a different view, able though they are, have apparently failed to think through the implications of the distinction between necessary or eternal truths and truths of experience. I said this before, and our entire debate confirms it. The fundamental proof of necessary truths comes from the understanding alone, and other truths come from experience fo from observations of the senses. Our mind is capable of knowing truths of both sorts, but it is the source of the former; and however often one experienced instances of universal truth, one could never know inductively that it would always hold unless one knew through reason that it was necessary.
(pp. 79-80)",,14081,"•I.i.5. Whether there are Innate Principles
I've included twice: Wax and Blank Page","""If all [the mind] had was the mere capacity to receive those items of knowledge--a passive power to do so, as indeterminate as the power of wax to receive shapes or of a blank page to receive words--it would not be the source of necessary truths""",Impression,2013-10-13 19:00:07 UTC,""
5229,Innate Ideas,Reading,2006-12-11 00:00:00 UTC,"[...] In view of this, can it be denied that there is a great deal that is innate in our minds, since we are innate to ourselves, so to speak, and since we include Being, Unity, Substance, Duration, Change, Action, Perception, Pleasure, and hosts of other objects of our intellectual ideas? And since these objects are immediately related to our understanding and always present to it (although our distractions and needs prevent our being always aware of them), is it any wonder that we say that these ideas, along with what depends on them, are innate in us? I have also used the analogy of a veined block of marble, as opposed to an entirely homogenous block of marble, or to a blank tablet--what the philosophers call a tabula rasa. For if the soul were like such a blank tablet then truths would be in us as as the shape of Hercules is in a piece of marble when the marble is entirely neutral as to whether it assumes this shape or some other. However, if there were veins in the block of which marked out the shape of Hercules rather than other shapes, then that block would be more determined to that shape and required to expose the veins and to polish them into clarity, removing everything that prevents their being seen. This is how ideas and truths are innate in us--as inclinations, dispositions, tendencies, or natural potentialities, and not as actualities; although these potentialities are always accompanied by certain actualities, often insensible ones, which correspond to them.
(51-2)",,14112,•I've included twice: Marble and Tabula Rasa,"""I have also used the analogy of a veined block of marble, as opposed to an entirely homogenous block of marble, or to a blank tablet--what the philosophers call a tabula rasa""","",2013-11-11 04:41:58 UTC,Preface
5457,"",Searching internet for something else: http://www.english.upenn.edu/~mgamer/Etexts/barbauldessays.html,2005-09-03 00:00:00 UTC,"It is however easy to account for this enchantment. To follow the chain of perplexed ratiocination, to view with critical skill the airy architecture of systems, to unravel the web of sophistry, or weigh the merits of opposite hypotheses, requires perspicacity, and presupposes learning. Works of this kind, therefore, are not so well adapted to the generality of readers as familiar and colloquial composition; for few can reason, but all can feel, and many who cannot enter into an argument, may yet listen to a tale. The writer of Romance has even an advantage over those who endeavour to amuse by the play of fancy; who from the fortuitous collision of dissimilar ideas produce the scintillations of wit; or by the vivid glow of poetical imagery delight the imagination with colours of ideal radiance. The attraction of the magnet is only exerted upon similar particles; and to taste the beauties of Homer it is requisite to partake his fire: but every one can relish the author who represents common life, because every one can refer to the originals from whence his ideas were taken. He relates events to which all are liable, and applies to passions which all have felt. The gloom of solitude, the languor of inaction, the corrosions of disappointment, and the toil of thought, induce men to step aside from the rugged road of life, and wander in the fairy land of fiction; where every bank is sprinkled with flowers, and every gale loaded with perfume; where every event introduces a hero, and every cottage is inhabited by a Grace. Invited by these flattering scenes, the student quits the investigation of truth, in which he perhaps meets with no less fallacy, to exhilarate his mind with new ideas, more agreeable, and more easily attained: the busy relax their attention by desultory reading, and smooth the agitation of a ruffled mind with images of peace, tranquility, and pleasure: the idle and the gay relieve the listlessness of leisure, and diversify the round of life by a rapid series of events pregnant with rapture and astonishment; and the pensive solitary fills up the vacuities of his heart by interesting himself in the fortunes of imaginary beings, and forming connections with ideal excellence. ",,14584,"","""The attraction of the magnet is only exerted upon similar particles; and to taste the beauties of Homer it is requisite to partake his fire: but every one can relish the author who represents common life, because every one can refer to the originals from whence his ideas were taken""",Metal,2009-09-14 19:41:19 UTC,""
7128,"",Searching in Google Books,2011-11-23 03:39:57 UTC,"What Sculpture is to a Block of Marble, Education is to a human Soul. The Philosopher, the Saint, and the Hero the wise, the good, or the great Man, very often lie hid in a Plebeian, which a proper Education might have disinterred, and have brought to Light.
(57)",,19331,"","""What Sculpture is to a Block of Marble, Education is to a human Soul.""","",2011-11-23 03:39:57 UTC,Youth and Education
7128,"",Searching in Google Books,2011-11-23 03:46:37 UTC,"Education is to the Mind what Cleanliness is to the Body; the Beauties of the one, as well as the other, are blemish'd, if not totally lost by Neglect: And as the richest Diamond cannot shoot forth its Lustre, wanting the Lapidary's Skill; so will the latent Virtues of the noblest Mind be bury'd in Obscurity if not call'd forth by Precept, and the Rules of good Manners. Rochfaucault.
(111)",,19336,"","""And as the richest Diamond cannot shoot forth its Lustre, wanting the Lapidary's Skill; so will the latent Virtues of the noblest Mind be bury'd in Obscurity if not call'd forth by Precept, and the Rules of good Manners.""","",2011-11-23 03:46:37 UTC,Of Education
7259,"","Reading Arthur A. Cash, ""The Sermon in Tristram Shandy."" ELH 31:4 (1964): 414.",2012-06-12 21:37:09 UTC,"I know not whether the remark is to our honour or otherwise, that the lessons of wisdom have never such a power over us, as when they are wrought into the heart, through the ground-work of a story which engages the passions: Is it that we are like iron, and must first be heated before we can be wrought upon? or, Is the heart so in love with deceit, that, where a true report will not reach it, we must cheat it with a fable, in order to come at truth?
(III, pp. 131-2)",,19793,"","""I know not whether the remark is to our honour or otherwise, that the lessons of wisdom have never such a power over us, as when they are wrought into the heart, through the ground-work of a story which engages the passions: Is it that we are like iron, and must first be heated before we can be wrought upon?""",Metal,2012-06-12 21:37:36 UTC,""
7498,"",C-H Lion,2013-07-01 17:17:28 UTC,"The second species of invention we mentioned was that of CHARACTERS. Ordinary Writers, and even those who are possessed of no inconsiderable talents, commonly satisfy themselves, in this branch of composition, with copying the characters which have been drawn by Authors of superior merit, and think they acquit themselves sufficiently, when they produce a just resemblance of the originals they profess to imitate. A moderate degree of praise is no doubt due to successful imitators; but an Author of original Genius will not content himself with a mediocrity of reputation; conscious of the strength of his own talents, he disdains to imitate what perhaps he is qualified to excel. Imitation indeed, of every kind, except that of nature, has a tendency to cramp the inventive powers of the mind, which, if indulged in their excursions, might discover new mines of intellectual ore, that lie hid only from those who are incapable or unwilling to dive into the recesses in which it lies buried. A Writer however, of the kind last mentioned, instead of tracing the footsteps of his predecessors, will allow his imagination to range over the field of Invention, in quest of its materials; and, from the group of figures collected by it, will strike out a character like his own Genius, perfectly Original.
(pp. 130-2)",,21375,"REVIST: recess metaphors, I'm categorizing variously...","""Imitation indeed, of every kind, except that of nature, has a tendency to cramp the inventive powers of the mind, which, if indulged in their excursions, might discover new mines of intellectual ore, that lie hid only from those who are incapable or unwilling to dive into the recesses in which it lies buried.""",Metal,2013-07-01 17:17:28 UTC,""
7498,"",C-H Lion,2013-07-01 18:30:02 UTC,"The first reason we shall assign of ORIGINAL Poetic Genius being most remarkably displayed in an early and uncultivated period of society, arises from the antiquity of the period itself, and from the appearance of novelty in the objects which Genius contemplates. A Poet of real Genius, who lives in a distant uncultivated age, possesses great and peculiar advantages for original composition, by the mere antiquity of the period in which he lives. He is perhaps the first Poet who hath arisen in this infant state of society; by which means he enjoys the undivided empire of Imagination without a rival. The mines of Fancy not having been opened before his time, are left to be digged by him; and the treasures they contain become his own, by a right derived from the first discovery. The whole system of nature, and the whole region of fiction, yet unexplored by others, is subjected to his survey, from which he culls those rich spoils, which adorn his compositions, and render them original. It may be said indeed, in answer to this, and it is true, That the stores of nature are inexhaustible by human imagination, and that her face is ever various and ever new; but it may be replied, That some of her stores are more readily found than others, being less hid from the eye of Fancy, and some of her features more easily hit, because more strongly marked. The first good Poet therefore, possessing those unrifled treasures, and contemplating these unfullied features, could not fail to present us with a draught so striking, as to deserve the name of a complete Original. We may farther observe, that the objects with which he is surrounded, have an appearance of novelty, which, in a more cultivated period, they in a great measure lose; but which, in that we are speaking of, excites an attention, curiosity and surprise, highly favourable to the exertion of Genius, and somewhat resembling that which Milton attributes to our first ancestor:
(pp. 265-7)",,21391,"","""The mines of Fancy not having been opened before his time, are left to be digged by him; and the treasures they contain become his own, by a right derived from the first discovery. The whole system of nature, and the whole region of fiction, yet unexplored by others, is subjected to his survey, from which he culls those rich spoils, which adorn his compositions, and render them original.""",Metal,2013-07-01 18:30:02 UTC,""
7982,"",Searching in ECCO-TCP,2014-07-25 02:41:35 UTC,"I Begin to have doubts whether wisdom be alone sufficient to make us happy. Whether every step we make in refinement is not an inlet into new disquietudes. A mind too vigorous and active, serves only to consume the body to which it is joined, as the richest jewels are soonest found to wear their settings.
(I, p. 152)",,24267,"","""A mind too vigorous and active, serves only to consume the body to which it is joined, as the richest jewels are soonest found to wear their settings.""","",2014-07-25 02:41:35 UTC,LETTER XXXVI. From the same