"Like the soul in the body it [paper credit] actuates all substance, yet it is itself immaterial."
— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)
Author
Work Title
Place of Publication
London
Date
1710, 1797
Metaphor
"Like the soul in the body it [paper credit] actuates all substance, yet it is itself immaterial."
Metaphor in Context
Like the soul in the body it actuates all all substance, yet, it is itself immaterial; it gives motion, yet, itself cannot be said to exist; it creates forms, yet has itself no form; it is neither quantity or quality, it has not whereness, or whenness, site or habit. If I should say it is the essential shadow of something that is not, should I not puzzle the thing rather than explain it, and leave you and myself more in the dark than we were before?
(p. 8)
(p. 8)
Categories
Provenance
Reading Dowling's "Teaching Eighteenth-century Literature in the Pocockian Moment (Or, Flimnap on the Tightrope, Kramnick to the Rescue)" in College English (1987): p. 529.
Citation
3 entries (1710, 1797).
Daniel Defoe, An Essay Upon Public Credit: Being an Enquiry How the Public Credit Comes to Depend Upon the Change of the Ministry, or the Dissolutions of Parliaments; and Whether It Does So or No? (London: Printed for W. Baynes and J. S. Jordan, 1797). <Link to ECCO>
Daniel Defoe, An Essay Upon Public Credit: Being an Enquiry How the Public Credit Comes to Depend Upon the Change of the Ministry, or the Dissolutions of Parliaments; and Whether It Does So or No? (London: Printed for W. Baynes and J. S. Jordan, 1797). <Link to ECCO>
Date of Entry
09/14/2009
Date of Review
06/07/2011
