updated_at,id,text,theme,metaphor,work_id,reviewed_on,provenance,created_at,comments,context,dictionary
2010-06-29 03:46:46 UTC,17904,"The truth is, that useful knowledge cannot be obtained without labour, that attention long continued is laborious, but that without this labour nothing excellent can be accomplished. Excite a child to attend in earnest for a short time, his mind will be less fatigued, and his understanding will be more improved, than if he had exerted but half the energy twice as long: the degree of pain which he may have felt will be amply and properly compensated by his success; this will not be an arbitrary variable reward, but one within his own power, and that can be ascertained by his own feelings. Here no deceit is practised, no illusion; the same course of conduct may be regularly pursued through the whole of his education, and his confidence in his tutor will be progressively increased. On the contrary, if, to entice him to enter the paths of knowledge, we strew them with flowers, how will he feel when he must force his way through thorns and briars?
(Vol. I, p. 54)","","""On the contrary, if, to entice him to enter the paths of knowledge, we strew them with flowers, how will he feel when he must force his way through thorns and briars?""",6729,,Contributed by PC Fleming,2010-06-25 12:24:54 UTC,"","Vol. I, Chapter 2, ""Tasks""",""
2014-04-16 16:12:51 UTC,17905,"Rousseau declaims with eloquence, and often with justice, against what he calls knowledge of words. Words without correspondent ideas are worse than useless, they are counterfeit coin, which imposes upon the ignorant and unwary; but words, which really represent ideas, are not only of current use, but of sterling value; they not only shew our present store, but they increase our wealth by keeping it in continual circulation; both the principal and the interest increase together. The importance of signs and words in our reasonings has been eloquently explained, since the time of Condillac, by Stewart. We must use the ideas of these excellent writers, because they are just and applicable to the art of education; but whilst we use, it is with proper acknowledgments that we borrow, what we shall never be able to return.
(Vol I, p. 64)","","""Words without correspondent ideas are worse than useless, they are counterfeit coin, which imposes upon the ignorant and unwary; but words, which really represent ideas, are not only of current use, but of sterling value; they not only shew our present store, but they increase our wealth by keeping it in continual circulation; both the principal and the interest increase together.""",6729,,Contributed by PC Fleming,2010-06-25 12:32:39 UTC,"Ed by AER? -- text didn't match in MS, but it's good here. BMP checked CONFIRMED in ECCO.","Vol I, Chapter 2, ""Tasks""",Coinage
2010-06-29 03:26:12 UTC,17906,"It is impossible to explain this subject so as to be of use, without descending to minute particulars. When a mother says to her little daughter, as she places on the table before her a bunch of ripe cherries, ""Tell me, my dear, "" how many cherries are there, and I will give €' them to you?""--the child's attention is fixed instantly; there is a sufficient motive; not a motive which excites any violent passions, but which raises just such a degree of hope as is necessary to produce attention. The little girl, if she knows from experience that her mother's promise will be kept, and that her own patience is likely to succeed, counts the cherries carefully, has her reward, and upon the next similar trial she will from this success be still more disposed to exert her attention. The pleasure [end page 86] of eating cherries, associated with the pleasure of success, will balance the pain of a few moments prolonged application, and by degrees the cherries may be withdrawn, and the association of pleasure will remain. Objects or thoughts, that have been associated with pleasure, retain the power of pleasing; as the needle touched by the loadstone acquires polarity, and retains it long after the loadstone is withdrawn.
(Vol. I, pp. 86-7)","","""Objects or thoughts, that have been associated with pleasure, retain the power of pleasing; as the needle touched by the loadstone acquires polarity, and retains it long after the loadstone is withdrawn.""",6729,,Contributed by PC Fleming,2010-06-25 12:34:59 UTC,"","From chapter 3, ""On Attention""",Metal
2010-06-29 03:16:58 UTC,17907,"Children are more easily attached than courtiers, and full as easily rewarded. When once this generous desire of affection and esteem is raised in the mind, their exertions seem to be universal, and spontaneous: children are then no longer like machines, which require to be wound up regularly to perform certain revolutions; they are animated with a living principle, which directs all that it inspires.
(Vol. I, p. 90)","","""When once this generous desire of affection and esteem is raised in the mind, their exertions seem to be universal, and spontaneous: children are then no longer like machines, which require to be wound up regularly to perform certain revolutions; they are animated with a living principle, which directs all that it inspires.""",6729,2010-06-28,Contributed by PC Fleming,2010-06-25 12:36:51 UTC,"Ed. PCF. More context provided from GoogleBooks edition of 1811, checked against ECCO pagination.","Vol I, Chapter 3, ""On Attention""",""
2010-06-29 03:08:29 UTC,17908,"""I desire you to judge of me, not by what I was, but by what I am,"" said a philosopher when he was reproached for some of his past transgressions. If the interval between an offence and its punishment be long, it is possible that during this interval a complete change may be made in the views and habits of the offender; such a change as shall absolutely preclude all probability of his repeating his offence. His punishment must then be purely for the sake of example to others. He suffers pain at the time, perhaps, when he is in the best social dispositions possible; and thus we punish the present good man for the faults of the former offender. We readily excuse the violence which a man in a passion may have committed, when upon his return to his sober senses he expresses contrition and surprise at his own excesses; he assures us, and we believe him, that he is now a perfectly different person. If we do not feel any material ill consequences from his late anger, we are willing, and even desirous, that the passionate man should not in his sober state be punished for his madness; all that we can desire is, to have some security against his falling into any fresh fit of anger: could his habits of temper be instantly changed, and could we have a moral certainty that his phrenzy [end page 237] would never more do us any injury, would it not be malevolent and unjust to punish him for his old insanity? If we think and act upon these principles with respect to men, how much more indulgent should we be to children? Indulgence is perhaps an improper word: but in other words, how careful should we be never to chain children to their dead faults!* Children during their education must be in a continual state of progression; they are not the same to-day that they were yesterday; they have little reflection, their consciousness of the present occupies them, and it would be extremely difficult from day to day, or from hour to hour, to identify their minds. Far from wishing that they should distinctly remember all their past thoughts, and that they should value themselves upon their continuing the same, we must frequently desire that they should forget their former errors, and absolutely change their manner of thinking. They should feel no interest in adhering to former bad habits or false opinions; therefore their pride should not be roused to defend these by our making them a part of their standing character. The character of children is to be formed; we should never speak of it as positively fixed. Man has been defined to be a bundle of habits; till the bundle is made up we may continually increase or diminish it. Children who are zealous in defence of their own perfections, are of all others most likely to become stationary in their intellectual progress, and disingenuous in their temper. It would be in vain to repeat to them this sensible and elegant observation, ""To confess that you have been in the wrong, is only saying in other words, that you are wiser to-day than you were yesterday."" This remark will rather pique than comfort the pride of those, who are anxious to [end page 238] prove that they have been equally wise and immaculate in every day of their existence.
(pp. 237-9)
*Mezentius. VIRGIL.","","""Man has been defined to be a bundle of habits; till the bundle is made up we may continually increase or diminish it.""",6729,2010-06-28,Contributed by PC Fleming.,2010-06-25 12:40:35 UTC,"ed. PCF. BMP added text, filling out context from Google, checking against pagination in ECCO.","Vol. I, Chapter 9, ""On Rewards and Punishments""",""
2010-06-29 13:50:37 UTC,17909,"Some people imagine, that the memory resembles a storehouse, in which we should early lay up facts; and they assert, that, however useless these may appear at the time when they are layed up, they will afterwards be ready for service at our summons. One allusion may be fairly answered by another, since it is impossible to oppose allusion by reasoning. In accumulating facts, as in amassing riches, people often begin by believing that they value wealth only for the use they shall make of it; but if often happens, that during the course of their labours they learn habitually to set a value upon the coin itself, and they grow avaricious of that which they are sensible has little intrinsic value. Young people who have accumulated a vast number of facts, and names, and dates, perhaps intended originally to make some good use of their treasure; but they frequently forget their laudable intentions, and conclude by contenting themselves with the display of their nominal wealth. Pedants and misers forget the real use of wealth and knowledge, and they accumulate without rendering what they acquire useful to themselves or to others
(Vol. I, pp. 345-6)","","""Some people imagine, that the memory resembles a storehouse, in which we should early lay up facts; and they assert, that, however useless these may appear at the time when they are layed up, they will afterwards be ready for service at our summons.""",6729,,Contributed by PC Fleming,2010-06-29 13:50:37 UTC,"","Vol. I, chapter 12, ""Books""",""
2010-06-30 19:53:28 UTC,17918,"It is sometimes asserted, that the novelty of a school life, the change of situation, alters the habits, and forms in boys a new character. Habits of eight or nine years standing cannot be instantaneously, perhaps can never be radically destroyed; they will mix themselves imperceptibly with the new ideas which are planted in their minds, and though these may strike the eye by the rapidity of their growth, the others, which have taken a strong root, will not easily be dispossessed of the soil. In this new character, as it is called, there will to a discerning eye appear a strong mixture of the old disposition. The boy, who at home lived with his father’s servants, and was never taught to have any species of literature, will not acquire a taste for it at school, merely by being compelled to learn his lessons; the boy who at home was suffered to be the little tyrant of a family, will, it is true, be forced to submit to superior strength or superior numbers at school; but does it improve the temper to practise alternately the habits of a tyrant and a slave? The lesson which experience usually teaches to the temper of a schoolboy, is, that strength, and power, and cunning, will inevitably govern in society: as to reason, it is out of the question; it would be hissed or laughed out of the company. With respect to social virtues, they are commonly among schoolboys so much mixed with party spirit, that they mislead even the best dispositions. A boy at home, whose pleasures are all immediately connected with the idea of self, will not feel a sudden enlargement of mind from entering a public school. He will, probably, preserve his selfish character in his new society; or, even suppose he catches that of his companions, the progress is not great in moral education from selfishness to spirit of party: the one is a despicable, the other a dangerous principle of action. It has been observed, that what we are at twenty, depends on what we were when we were ten years old. What a young man is at college, depends upon what he was at school; and what he is at school, depends on what he was before he went to school. In his father’s house the first important lessons, those which decide his future abilities and character, must be learned. We have repeated this idea, and placed it in different points of view, in hopes that it will catch and fix the attention. Suppose that parents educated their children well for the first eight or nine years of their lives, and then sent them all to public seminaries, what a difference this must make immediately in public education: the boys would be disposed to improve themselves with all the ardour which the most sanguine preceptor could desire; their tutors would find that there as nothing to be unlearned; no habits of idleness to conquer; no perverse stupidity would provoke them; no capricious contempt of application would appear in pupils of the quickest abilities. The moral education could then be made a part of the preceptor’s care, with some hopes of success; the pupils would all have learned the first necessary moral principles and habits; they would, consequently, be all fit companions for each other; in each others society they would continue to be governed by the same ideas of right and wrong by which they had been governed by the same ideas of right and wrong by which they had been governed all their lives; they would not have any new character to learn; they would improve, by mixing with numbers, in the social virtues, without learning party spirit; and though they would love their companions, they would not therefore combine together to treat their instructors as pedagogues and tyrants. This may be thought an Utopian idea of a school; indeed it is very improbable, that out of the numbers of parents who send their children to large schools, many should suddenly be much moved, by any thing that we can say, to persuade them to take serious trouble in their previous instruction. But much may be effected by gradual attempts: ten well educated boys, sent to a public seminary at nine or ten years old, would, probably, far surpass their competitors in every respect, they would inspire others with so much emulation, would do their parents and preceptors so much credit, that numbers would eagerly inquire into the causes of their superiority; and these boys would, perhaps, do more good by their example, than by their actual acquirements. We do not mean to promise, that a boy judiciously educated shall appear at ten years old a prodigy of learning; far from it: we should not even estimate his capacity, or the chain of his future progress, by the quantity of knowledge stored in his memory, by the number of Latin lines he has got by rote, by his expertness in repeating the rules of his grammar, by his pointing out a number of places readily in a map, or even by his knowing the latitude and longitude of all the capital cities in Europe; these are all useful articles of knowledge ; but they are not the test of a good education. We should rather, if we were to examine a boy of ten years old, for the credit of his parents, produce proofs of his being able to reason accurately, of his quickness in invention, of his habits of industry and application, of his having learned to generalize his ideas, and to apply his observations and his principles: if we found that he had learned all or any of these things, we should be in little pain about grammar, or geography, or even Latin; we should be tolerably certain that he would not long remain deficient in any of these; we should know that he would overtake and surpass a competitor who had only been technically taught, as certainly as the giant would overtake the panting dwarf, who might have many miles the start of him in the race. We do not mean to say that a boy should not be taught the principles of grammar, and some knowledge of geography, at the same time that his understanding is cultivated in the most enlarged manner: these objects are not incompatible; and we particularly recommend it to parents who intend to send their children to school, early to give them confidence in themselves, by securing the rudiments of literary education ; otherwise their pupils, with a real superiority of understanding, may feel depressed, and may, perhaps, be despised, when they mix at a public school with numbers who will estimate their abilities merely by their proficiency in particular studies” (II, 504-7)","","Habits of eight or nine years standing cannot be instantaneously, perhaps can never be radically destroyed; they will mix themselves imperceptibly with the new ideas which are planted in their minds, and though these may strike the eye by the rapidity of their growth, the others, which have taken a strong root, will not easily be dispossessed of the soil.",6729,,Contributed by PC Fleming,2010-06-30 19:38:38 UTC,REVISIT [needs type and category],"Vol. II, chapter 19, ""On Public and Private Education""",""
2013-06-11 19:19:05 UTC,17919,"In making observations upon subjects which are new to us, we must be content to use our memory unassisted at first by our reason; we must treasure up the ore and rubbish together, because we cannot immediately distinguish them from each other. But the sooner we can separate them the better. In the beginning of all experimental sciences, a number of useless particulars are recorded, because they are not known to be useless; when from comparing these a few general principles are discovered, the memory is immediately relieved, the judgment and inventive faculty have power and liberty to work, and then a rapid progress and great discoveries are made. It is the misfortune, of those who first cultivate new sciences, that their memory is overloaded; but if those who succeed to them submit to the same senseless drudgery, it is not their misfortune, but their fault. Let us look over the history of those who have made discoveries and inventions, we shall perceive, that it has been by rejecting useless ideas that they have first cleared their way to truth. Dr. Priestley’s Histories of Vision and of Electricity are as useful when we consider them as histories of the human mind, as when we read them as histories of science. Dr. P. has published a catalogue of books, from which he gathered his materials. The pains, he tells us, that it cost him to compress and abridge the accounts which ingenious men have given of their own experiments, teach us how much our progress in real knowledge depends upon rejecting all that is superfluous. When Simonides offered to teach Themistocles the art of memory, Themistocles answered, ‘Rather teach me the art of forgetting; for I find that I remember much that I had better forget, and forget’ (consequently) ‘some things which I wish to remember.' (Vol. II, pp. 568-9)","","""In making observations upon subjects which are new to us, we must be content to use our memory unassisted at first by our reason; we must treasure up the ore and rubbish together, because we cannot immediately distinguish them from each other.""",6729,,Contributed by PC Fleming,2010-07-01 14:41:05 UTC,"","Vol. II, chapter 21, ""Memory and Invention""",Metal
2013-10-06 19:13:40 UTC,17935,"Without taking any notice of Mrs. Tattle, or her apprehensive looks, Mr.
Eden explained all he knew of the affair in a few words. ""Your son,""
concluded he, ""will quickly put off his dirty dress—The dress hath not
stained the mind—that is fair and honourable. When he felt himself in
the wrong, he said so; nor was he in haste to conceal his adventure from
his father; this made me think well of both father and son. I speak
plainly, friend, for that is best. But what is become of the other
chimney-sweeper? He will want to go home,"" said Mr. Eden, turning to
Mrs. Theresa. (Vol. II, part 2, pp. 175-6)","","""'Your son,' concluded he, 'will quickly put off his dirty dress—The dress hath not stained the mind—that is fair and honourable.""""",6734,,"Contributed by PC Fleming, searching ""mind.""",2010-07-08 19:54:38 UTC,"","In the tale ""The Mimic.""",""
2011-04-16 04:40:32 UTC,18291,"Words may flatter you, but the countenance never can deceive you; the eyes are the windows of the soul, and through them you are to watch what passes in the inmost recesses of the heart. There, if you discern the slightest ideas of doubt, blame, or displeasure; if you discover the slightest symptoms of revolt, take the alarm instantly. Conquerors must maintain their conquests, and how easily can they do this, who hold a secret correspondence with the minds of the vanquished? Be your own spies then; from the looks, gestures, slightest motions of your enemies, you are to form an alphabet, a language intelligible only to yourselves; yet by which you shall condemn them; always remembering that in sound policy suspicion justifies punishment. In vain, when you accuse your friends of the high treason of blaming you, in vain let them plead their innocence, even of the intention. ""They did not say a word which could be tortured into such a meaning."" No, ""but they looked daggers, though they used none.""
(pp. 37-8)","","""Words may flatter you, but the countenance never can deceive you; the eyes are the windows of the soul, and through them you are to watch what passes in the inmost recesses of the heart.""",6823,,Reading,2011-04-16 04:40:32 UTC,"","",Rooms