work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
5630,"",C18 Listserv: Joel S. Berson (3/16/2005),2005-03-17 00:00:00 UTC,"Paris, August 19, 1785. To Peter Carr.
[advice to a young man--probably just beginning college at William and Mary--on how to conduct himself morally and ethically, what to learn and read, and what other good habits to develop.]
""Give about two of them [hours] every day to exercise; for health must not be sacrificed to learning. ... Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body, and stamp no character on the mind. ... Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very far. The Europeans value themselves on having subdued the horse to the uses of man; but I doubt whether we have not lost more than we have gained, by the use of this animal. No one has occasioned so much the degeneracy of the human body.",2009-01-20,15057,"","""Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body, and stamp no character on the mind.""","",2009-09-14 19:42:39 UTC,""
6475,"",Reading,2009-01-21 00:00:00 UTC,"Monticello, March 14, 1820. Dear Sir, A continuation of poor health makes me an irregular correspondent. I am, therefore, your debtor for the two letters of January 20th and February 21st. It was after you left Europe that Dugald Stewart, concerning whom you inquire, and Lord Dare, second son of the Marquis of Lansdowne, came to Paris. They brought me a letter from Lord Wycombe, whom you knew. I became immediately intimate with Stewart, calling mutually on each other and almost daily, during their stay at Paris, which was of some months. Lord Dare was a young man of imagination, with occasional flashes indicating deep penetration, but of much caprice, and little judgment. He has been long dead, and the family title is now, I believe, in the third son, who has shown in Parliament talents of a superior order. Stewart is a great man, and among the most honest living. I have heard nothing of his dying at top, as you suppose. Mr. Ticknor, however, can give you the best information on that subject, as he must have heard particularly of him when in Edinburgh, although I believe he did not see him. I have understood he was then in London superintending the publication of a new work. I consider him and Tracy as the ablest metaphysicians living; by which I mean investigators of the thinking faculty of man. Stewart seems to have given its natural history from facts and observations; Tracy its modes of action and deduction, which he calls Logic and Ideology; and Cabanis, in his Physique et Morale de l'Homme, has investigated anatomically, and most ingeniously, the particular organs in the human structure which may most probably exercise that faculty. And they ask why may not the mode of action called thought, have been given to a material organ of peculiar structure, as that of magnetism is to the needle, or of elasticity to the spring by a particular manipulation of the steel. They observe that on ignition of the needle or spring, their magnetism and elasticity cease. So on dissolution of the material organ by death, its action of thought may cease also, and that nobody supposes that the magnetism or elasticity retire to hold a substantive and distinct existence. These were qualities only of particular conformations of matter; change the conformation, and its qualities change also. Mr. Locke, you know, and other materialists, have charged with blasphemy the spiritualists who have denied the Creator the power of endowing certain forms of matter with the faculty of thought. These, however, are speculations and subtleties in which, for my own part, I have little indulged myself. When I meet with a proposition beyond finite comprehension, I abandon it as I do a weight which human strength cannot lift, and I think ignorance, in these cases, is truly the softest pillow on which I can lay my head. Were it necessary, however, to form an opinion, I confess I should, with Mr. Locke, prefer swallowing one incomprehensibility rather than two. It requires one effort only to admit the single incomprehensibility of matter endowed with thought, and two to believe, first that of an existence called spirit, of which we have neither evidence nor idea, and then secondly how that spirit, which has neither extension nor solidity, can put material organs into motion. These are things which you and I may perhaps know ere long. We have so lived as to fear neither horn of the dilemma. We have, willingly, done injury to no man; and have done for our country the good which has fallen in our way, so far as commensurate with the faculties given us. That we have not done more than we could, cannot be imputed to us as a crime before any tribunal. I look, therefore, to the crisis, as I am sure you also do, as one ""qui summum nec metuit diem nec optat."" In the meantime be our last as cordial as were our first affections.",,17213,"","""When I meet with a proposition beyond finite comprehension, I abandon it as I do a weight which human strength cannot lift, and I think ignorance, in these cases, is truly the softest pillow on which I can lay my head.""","",2009-09-14 19:49:25 UTC,""
6757,"",Reading,2010-09-26 20:25:40 UTC,"... I am glad you take any pleasure in my poor Poem; -- which I would willingly take the trouble to unwrite, if possible, did I care so much as I have done about Reputation. I received a copy of the Cenci, as from yourself from Hunt. There is only one part of it I am judge of; the Poetry, and dramatic effect, which by many spirits now a days is considered the mammon. A modern work it is said must have a purpose, which may be the God--an artist must serve Mammon--he must have ""self concentration"" selfishness perhaps. You I am sure will forgive me for sincerely remarking that you might curb your magnanimity and be more of an artist, and ""load every rift"" of your subject with ore. The thought of such discipline must fall like cold chains upon you, who perhaps never sat with your wings furl'd for six Months together. And is not this extraordina[r]y talk for the writer of Endymion? whose mind was like a pack of scattered cards--I am pick'd up and sorted to a pip. My Imagination is a Monastery and I am its Monk--you must explain my metapcs to yourself. I am in expectation of Prometheus every day. Could I have my own wish for its interest effected you would have it still in manuscript--or be but now putting an end to the second act. I remember you advising me not to publish my first-blights, on Hampstead heath--I am returning advice upon your hands. Most of the Poems in the volume I send you have been written above two years, and would never have been publish'd but from a hope of gain; so you see I am inclined to take your advice now. I must exp[r]ess once more my deep sense of your kindness, adding my sincere thanks and respects for Mrs. Shelley.
(pp. 389-90)
",,17987,"","""And is not this extraordina[r]y talk for the writer of Endymion? whose mind was like a pack of scattered cards--I am pick'd up and sorted to a pip.""","",2010-09-26 20:25:40 UTC,""