text,updated_at,metaphor,created_at,context,theme,reviewed_on,dictionary,comments,provenance,id,work_id
"In Germany, everything is forcibly suppressed; a real anarchy of the mind, the reign of stupidity itself, prevails there, and Zurich obeys orders from Berlin. It therefore becomes increasingly obvious that a new rallying point must be sought for truly thinking and independent minds. I am convinced that our plan would answer a real need, and after all it must be possible for real needs to be fulfilled in reality. Hence I have no doubt about the enterprise, if it is undertaken seriously.",2009-09-14 19:50:18 UTC,"""In Germany, everything is forcibly suppressed; a real anarchy of the mind, the reign of stupidity itself, prevails there, and Zurich obeys orders from Berlin.""",2009-07-28 00:00:00 UTC,"","",,"","",Reading,17475,6577
"By contrast, Epicurus' theory of the celestial bodies and the processes connected with them, or his theory of meteors (in this one term he includes it all), stands in opposition not only to Democritus, but to the opinion of Greek philosophy as a whole. Worship of the celestial bodies is a cult practised by all Greek philosophers. The system of the celestial bodies is the first naive and nature-determined existence of true reason [Vernunft]. The same position is taken by Greek self-consciousness in the domain of the mind [Geist]. It is the solar system of the mind. The Greek philosophers therefore worshipped their own mind in the celestial bodies.",2009-09-14 19:50:19 UTC,"""It is the solar system of the mind.""",2009-07-28 00:00:00 UTC,"Part II, Chap. 5, The Meteors","",,"","","Searching ""mind"" at www.marxists.org",17476,6578
"Logic -- mind's coin of the realm, the speculative or mental value of man and nature -- its essence which has grown totally indifferent to all real determinateness, and hence unreal -- is alienated thinking, and therefore thinking which abstracts from nature and from real man: abstract thinking.",2009-09-14 19:50:19 UTC,"""Logic -- mind's coin of the realm, the speculative or mental value of man and nature -- its essence which has grown totally indifferent to all real determinateness, and hence unreal -- is alienated thinking, and therefore thinking which abstracts from nature and from real man: abstract thinking.""",2009-07-28 00:00:00 UTC,Critique of Hegel's Philosophy in General,"",,"","","Searching ""mind"" at www.marxists.org",17477,6579
But I want to go down to the Rhine and listen to what the waves gleaming in the sunset tell Siegfried's mother earth about his grave in Worms and about the sunken hoard. Perhaps a friendly Morgan le Fay will make Siegfried's castle rise again for me or show my mind's eye what heroic deeds are reserved for his sons of the nineteenth century.,2009-09-14 19:50:20 UTC,"""Perhaps a friendly Morgan le Fay will make Siegfried's castle rise again for me or show my mind's eye what heroic deeds are reserved for his sons of the nineteenth century.""",2009-07-28 00:00:00 UTC,"",Mind's Eye,,"","","Searching ""mind"" at www.marxists.org",17484,6585
"[September] 18th Cur me poematibus exanimas tuis, [Why do you torture me with your poems?] you will be shouting. But I am going to torture you still more with them or rather because of them. Guilelmus [Wilhelm Graeber] has still got an exercise book of my verse, just as I wrote it. I'm now asking for this exercise book back and you can send it in the following way: you can cut out all the blank paper and you can then enclose a few sheets with every letter you write: it won't increase the postage. If need be you can also add one or two bits of reading matter if you pack it cunningly and press the letter well, for instance, laying it for a night between a couple of dictionaries before you send it, so they won't notice anything. — See that Blank gets the sheet I've enclosed for him. I am getting a terribly extensive correspondence, with you in Berlin, with Wurm in Bonn, and similarly with Barmen and Elberfeld. But if I didn't have it, how would I kill the endless time I have to spend at the office without being allowed to read? The day before yesterday I spent with the Old Man, [Heinrich Leupold] id est principalis -- his wife is called the Old Woman [Altsche] (the elk, alce in Italian, pronounced just like that) -- in the country where his family lives, and I enjoyed it very much. The Old Man is an excellent fellow, he always scolds his boys in Polish. You Ledshiaks, you Kashubs, he shouts. On the way back I tried to give a philistine who was also there some idea of the beauty of Low German, but saw it was impossible. A philistine like that is really an unhappy soul yet over-happy nonetheless in his stupidity, which he regards as the greatest wisdom. I went to the theatre the other evening. They were playing Hamlet, but in a quite horrifying manner. So I would rather say nothing at all about it. — It's good that you are going to Berlin. There will be more art there than you are likely to get at any other university except Munich; the poetry of nature, on the other hand, is lacking -- sand, sand, sand! It is far better here. The roads outside the town are mostly very interesting and very charming with their groups of various trees. But the mountains, the mountains, that's what you miss. What is also lacking in Berlin is the poetry of student life, which is at its best in Bonn, and to which the wandering about in the poetic surroundings contributes not a little. Well, you too will be going to Bonn one day. My dear Wilhelm, I would madly love to answer your witty letter with one equally witty, if it were not for the fact that I don't feel at all witty and especially at the moment I am lacking precisely in that desire which one cannot give oneself and without which everything is forced. But I feel as if for me the end were near, as if my head no longer held a single idea, as if my life were being stolen away. The tree of my mind of its leaves is stripped, my witticisms too fine are clipped, the kernel out of the shell has been nipped. And my Mahamas hardly merit the name, while yours robbed Rückert of all his fame; those here written with gout are smitten, they limp, they totter, fall, nay, have fallen to the bottom of the pit of oblivion, not climbed the peaks of readers' opinion. Oh doom, here I sit in my room, and even if I hammered my head sore, only water would come out with a roar. That helps not a louse, it does not bring wit into the house. When I went to bed last night I banged my head and it sounded just like when you knock against a bucket of water and the water splashes against the other side. I had to laugh at the way my nose was properly rubbed in the truth. Yes, water, water! My room is full of spooks. Last night I heard a death-watch beetle in the wall. In the alley near me there is a noise of ducks, cats, dogs, hussies and people. And incidentally I expect a letter from you just as long if not longer than this one, et id post notas -- let there be no mistake about it.",2009-09-14 19:50:20 UTC,"""The tree of my mind of its leaves is stripped, my witticisms too fine are clipped, the kernel out of the shell has been nipped.""",2009-07-28 00:00:00 UTC,"","",,"","","Searching ""mind"" at www.marxists.org",17485,6586
"When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process. It is the same as the pupil, in learning to write, following with his pen the lines that have been pencilled by the teacher. Accordingly, in reading, the work of thinking is, for the greater part, done for us. This is why we are consciously relieved when we turn to reading after being occupied with our own thoughts. But, in reading, our head is, however, really only the arena of some one else’s thoughts. And so it happens that the person who reads a great deal—that is to say, almost the whole day, and recreates himself by spending the intervals in thoughtless diversion, gradually loses the ability to think for himself; just as a man who is always riding at last forgets how to walk. Such, however, is the case with many men of learning: they have read themselves stupid. For to read in every spare moment, and to read constantly, is more paralysing to the mind than constant manual work, which, at any rate, allows one to follow one’s own thoughts. Just as a spring, through the continual pressure of a foreign body, at last loses its elasticity, so does the mind if it has another person’s thoughts continually forced upon it. And just as one spoils the stomach by overfeeding and thereby impairs the whole body, so can one overload and choke the mind by giving it too much nourishment. For the more one reads the fewer are the traces left of what one has read; the mind is like a tablet that has been written over and over. Hence it is impossible to reflect; and it is only by reflection that one can assimilate what one has read if one reads straight ahead without pondering over it later, what has been read does not take root, but is for the most part lost. Indeed, it is the same with mental as with bodily food: scarcely the fifth part of what a man takes is assimilated; the remainder passes off in evaporation, respiration, and the like.",2009-11-20 20:46:12 UTC,"When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process. It is the same as the pupil, in learning to write, following with his pen the lines that have been pencilled by the teacher.""",2009-11-20 20:46:12 UTC,"",Reading,,"","","Reading Benjamin Bennett's The Dark Side of LIteracy: Literature and Learning Not to Read. Fordham Univ Press, 2008. p. 2. <Link to Google Books>",17511,6601
"When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process. It is the same as the pupil, in learning to write, following with his pen the lines that have been pencilled by the teacher. Accordingly, in reading, the work of thinking is, for the greater part, done for us. This is why we are consciously relieved when we turn to reading after being occupied with our own thoughts. But, in reading, our head is, however, really only the arena of some one else’s thoughts. And so it happens that the person who reads a great deal—that is to say, almost the whole day, and recreates himself by spending the intervals in thoughtless diversion, gradually loses the ability to think for himself; just as a man who is always riding at last forgets how to walk. Such, however, is the case with many men of learning: they have read themselves stupid. For to read in every spare moment, and to read constantly, is more paralysing to the mind than constant manual work, which, at any rate, allows one to follow one’s own thoughts. Just as a spring, through the continual pressure of a foreign body, at last loses its elasticity, so does the mind if it has another person’s thoughts continually forced upon it. And just as one spoils the stomach by overfeeding and thereby impairs the whole body, so can one overload and choke the mind by giving it too much nourishment. For the more one reads the fewer are the traces left of what one has read; the mind is like a tablet that has been written over and over. Hence it is impossible to reflect; and it is only by reflection that one can assimilate what one has read if one reads straight ahead without pondering over it later, what has been read does not take root, but is for the most part lost. Indeed, it is the same with mental as with bodily food: scarcely the fifth part of what a man takes is assimilated; the remainder passes off in evaporation, respiration, and the like.",2009-11-20 20:48:18 UTC,"""But, in reading, our head is, however, really only the arena of some one else’s thoughts.""",2009-11-20 20:48:18 UTC,"","",,"","","Reading Benjamin Bennett's The Dark Side of LIteracy: Literature and Learning Not to Read. Fordham Univ Press, 2008. p. 2. <Link to Google Books>",17512,6601
"When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process. It is the same as the pupil, in learning to write, following with his pen the lines that have been pencilled by the teacher. Accordingly, in reading, the work of thinking is, for the greater part, done for us. This is why we are consciously relieved when we turn to reading after being occupied with our own thoughts. But, in reading, our head is, however, really only the arena of some one else’s thoughts. And so it happens that the person who reads a great deal—that is to say, almost the whole day, and recreates himself by spending the intervals in thoughtless diversion, gradually loses the ability to think for himself; just as a man who is always riding at last forgets how to walk. Such, however, is the case with many men of learning: they have read themselves stupid. For to read in every spare moment, and to read constantly, is more paralysing to the mind than constant manual work, which, at any rate, allows one to follow one’s own thoughts. Just as a spring, through the continual pressure of a foreign body, at last loses its elasticity, so does the mind if it has another person’s thoughts continually forced upon it. And just as one spoils the stomach by overfeeding and thereby impairs the whole body, so can one overload and choke the mind by giving it too much nourishment. For the more one reads the fewer are the traces left of what one has read; the mind is like a tablet that has been written over and over. Hence it is impossible to reflect; and it is only by reflection that one can assimilate what one has read if one reads straight ahead without pondering over it later, what has been read does not take root, but is for the most part lost. Indeed, it is the same with mental as with bodily food: scarcely the fifth part of what a man takes is assimilated; the remainder passes off in evaporation, respiration, and the like.",2009-11-20 20:50:57 UTC,"""And so it happens that the person who reads a great deal—that is to say, almost the whole day, and recreates himself by spending the intervals in thoughtless diversion, gradually loses the ability to think for himself; just as a man who is always riding at last forgets how to walk.""",2009-11-20 20:50:29 UTC,"","",,"","","Reading Benjamin Bennett's The Dark Side of LIteracy: Literature and Learning Not to Read. Fordham Univ Press, 2008. p. 2. <Link to Google Books>",17513,6601
"Luther, we grant, overcame bondage out of devotion by replacing it by bondage out of conviction. He shattered faith in authority because he restored the authority of faith. He turned priests into laymen because he turned laymen into priests. He freed man from outer religiosity because he made religiosity the inner man. He freed the body from chains because he enchained the heart.
(Cf. p. 60 in Tucker ed.)",2013-04-22 18:15:38 UTC,"""He freed the body from chains because he enchained the heart.""",2013-04-22 18:15:16 UTC,"","",,Fetters,"",Reading,20136,7380
"As philosophy finds its material weapon in the proletariat, so the proletariat finds its spiritual weapon in philosophy. And once the lightning of thought has squarely struck this ingenuous soil of the people, the emancipation of the Germans into men will be accomplished.
(Cf. p. 65 in Tucker ed.)",2013-04-22 18:16:13 UTC,"""And once the lightning of thought has squarely struck this ingenuous soil of the people, the emancipation of the Germans into men will be accomplished.""",2013-04-22 18:16:13 UTC,"","",,"","",Reading,20137,7380