St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)

Letters or Essays Addressed to Alexander Pope, Esq.

London

1754

"Now the application of this corporeal image to what passes in the mind, or to the action of the mind when we meditate on various subjects, or on many distinct parts of the same subjects and when we communicate these thoughts to one another, sometimes with greater, and sometimes with less agitation and rapidity, is obvious."

The word discourse is derived from a Latin verb, which signifies to run about, and by the motion of our legs, and the agitation of our whole body (for when the word was invented all men believed they had bodies) to traverse many different grounds, or the same ground many different ways. Now the application of this corporeal image to what passes in the mind, or to the action of the mind when we meditate on various subjects, or on many distinct parts of the same subjects and when we communicate these thoughts to one another, sometimes with greater, and sometimes with less agitation and rapidity, is obvious. It answers as nearly as such applications can answer, and there is no danger that this figure should communicate a false idea, or fail to produce that which it is designed to produce. There can be neither equivocation, perplexity, nor disappointment in the use of it.
(Essay I, §5; vol. iii, p. 456; pp. 135-6 in reprint)

Motion::Passing

Reading

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).

03/14/2014