"The words man or animal, raise in his mind no general idea; but in this case, as in the former, some particular idea of man, which the mind can frame without thinking of Alexander or Henry, rises there, and becomes representative of all men in general: or else several ideas of men, and other animals, rush confusedly into the mind together; that is, so rapidly, that though they are truly successive, yet this succession is imperceptible."
— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)
Place of Publication
London
Date
1754
Metaphor
"The words man or animal, raise in his mind no general idea; but in this case, as in the former, some particular idea of man, which the mind can frame without thinking of Alexander or Henry, rises there, and becomes representative of all men in general: or else several ideas of men, and other animals, rush confusedly into the mind together; that is, so rapidly, that though they are truly successive, yet this succession is imperceptible."
Metaphor in Context
[...] The words man or animal, raise in his mind no general idea; but in this case, as in the former, some particular idea of man, which the mind can frame without thinking of Alexander or Henry, rises there, and becomes representative of all men in general: or else several ideas of men, and other animals, rush confusedly into the mind together; that is, so rapidly, that though they are truly successive, yet this succession is imperceptible. Thus far the art of the mind is carried towards a general knowledge of substances, and custom has authorised it no further. The schools indeed invented, among many other words to which they had no clear nor determinate-ideas annexed, those of humanity and animality. Now if nothing more had been intended by those words than to signify, by one sound, all that we understand when we speak of the apparent natures of men and animals, such as they appear to our senses, I cannot see that they deserved to be rejected, and I shall make no scruple to use them if the occasion os doing so presents itself. But if they are employed by any profound ontosophist, as they were by the schoolmen, who pretended to have such general ideas abstracted from all particulars, ideas of general natures and real essences of substances; they deserve to be rejected as much as the gobleity and fableity of Plato, with which the cynic made himself so merry. Even the general names of simple ideas of sensation can be received, to my apprehension, in no sense but the former: and whiteness, if we assumed that we had such a general idea, abstracted from all particulars, and adequate to the real essence of white, would deserve to be exploded as much as humanity and animality. [...]
(Essay I, ยง5; vol. iii, p. 435)
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
At least 5 entries in ESTC (1754, 1777, 1793).
See "Letters or Essays Addressed to Alexander Pope, Esq." in the third volume of David Mallet's The Works of the Late Right Honorable Henry St. John, Lord Viscount Bolingbroke, 5 vols. (London : [s.n.], Printed in the Year 1754). <Link to ESTC><Link to ESTC>
Text from the third volume of The Works of the Late Right Honorable Henry St. John, Lord Viscount Bolingbroke, 5 vols. (Dublin: Printed by P. Byrne: 1793). <Link to Google Books>
Reading also in the 1967 reprint of The Works of Lord Bolingbroke, 4 vols. (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1844).
See "Letters or Essays Addressed to Alexander Pope, Esq." in the third volume of David Mallet's The Works of the Late Right Honorable Henry St. John, Lord Viscount Bolingbroke, 5 vols. (London : [s.n.], Printed in the Year 1754). <Link to ESTC><Link to ESTC>
Text from the third volume of The Works of the Late Right Honorable Henry St. John, Lord Viscount Bolingbroke, 5 vols. (Dublin: Printed by P. Byrne: 1793). <Link to Google Books>
Reading also in the 1967 reprint of The Works of Lord Bolingbroke, 4 vols. (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1844).
Date of Entry
03/14/2014
