work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
5893,Blank Slate,"Searching ""tabula rasa"" in ECCO",2006-10-14 00:00:00 UTC,"My name is Brecknock; and I am the eldest son of a wealthy farmer in Galloway. I was naturally of a fierce and ungovernable disposition, which my father unfortunately fostered, instead of checking, by a misguided education. He had imbibed some newfangled opinions of certain French philosophers, and proposed to train me up in a manner directly opposite to that of our ancestors. He not only prevented my being educated in the religion of the country, but taught me, by his example, to ridicule it. He guarded my mind from imbibing any religious principles at all, under the notion of preserving it to maturity, like a rasa tabula, free from all prejudices. In consequence of this, I greedily embraced every licentious opinion, and was, with warm passions, exposed to temptations and the corruption of bad example, without any principles of reason, morality, or religion, to counteract them; but rather with a bias in their favour. I was not restrained in any whim or caprice, nor subject to any coercion or penalty, for fear of breaking my spirit, and destroying the energies of my freeborn mind.
(III.ii, pp. 13-4)",,15647,"","""He guarded my mind from imbibing any religious principles at all, under the notion of preserving it to maturity, like a rasa tabula, free from all prejudices.""",Writing,2014-03-08 20:33:27 UTC,"Chap. II. History of the Misanthrope, Or Recluse of the Forest."
5902,Blank Slate,"Searching ""like white paper"" in ECCO",2005-10-26 00:00:00 UTC,"Hum! (here an awkward, indecorous gesticulation of his upset three legged table, o'erburthened with books, and covered the ground with his little learning:--He collected the scattered fragments of his knowledge, and continued his monologue. ""You are juvenile, and like unto a white sheet of paper, on which vice or righteousness may be impressed:"" Here he committed a plagiary; these were old Dacres' own words: Parabole cast an interrogative look on the young man, to [end page 37] discover whether his ideas passed for genuine, and again recommenced: ""In this great university, we have not been able to expel vice and frivolity. Gentlemen there are, who vie with each other in the nugatory amusements of rowing, sailing, fishing, shooting, banqueting, or what is more immund and incongruous""--""What's that, Mr. Parabole?"" said Dacres, purposely to ridiculize him: ""Why, why, why, ob, sub, per, con,"" (he could not find an eloquent, erudite term) ""pshaw, why, following concubines."" Something had ruffled him,--he was agitated,--his nerves were hurt,--he quoted scripture,--and cut his corn to the quick,--ouf!--was it an avenging spirit?
(pp. 37-8)",,15669,"","""You are juvenile, and like unto a white sheet of paper, on which vice or righteousness may be impressed.""",Writing,2009-09-14 19:44:17 UTC,Vol I.
7307,Blank Slate,"Reading Christopher Flint's The Appearance of Print in Eighteenth-Century Fiction (Cambridge UP, 2011), 81.",2012-07-29 17:02:57 UTC,"The situation of the places of our birth, the climate and temperature of the air, the circumstances of our parents, their humours and dispositions; but more especially their method of treating us in our infant years, I am persuaded give bias to our manners and actions, through the whole course of our lives. Our minds are like blank paper, as a great philosopher has observed, and the first impressions they receive are generally the most permanent and powerful. What is commonly and vulgarly called our natural temper is only what we acquire, after our births, from the example of those from whom we receive our institution, or upon whom we depend. And agreeable to this, the mild conduct of my parents, and the engaging tenderness of their behaviour to every body, certainly fixed that good humour and complacency in my soul, that no succeeding misfortune had ever the power to efface. My disposition, as the reader will have frequent occasion to observe, was serious, but not unpliant, was gentle, but not slavish. My countenance was open, and my spirit intrepid. But as my designs were not lost in the clouds of gaiety, so neither did they render my vain, conceited, and pedantic. [...]
(I.ii, p. 9-10)",,19906,"","""Our minds are like blank paper, as a great philosopher has observed, and the first impressions they receive are generally the most permanent and powerful.""",Writing,2012-07-29 17:17:46 UTC,"Volume I, Chapter ii"