work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
6499,"",Brought to my notice by Patrick Abatiell,2009-03-16 00:00:00 UTC,"
SATURDAY 26 FEBRUARY. Last night Dempster came to me between ten and eleven and sat till one. He is really a most agreeable man: has fine sense, sweet dispositions, and the true manners of a gentleman. His sceptical notions give him a freedom and ease which in a companion is very pleasing, although to a man whose mind is possessed with serious thoughts of futurity, it is rather hurting to find them considered so lightly. He said he intended to write a treatise on the causes of happiness and misery. He considered the mind of man like a room, which is either made agreeable or the reverse by the pictures with which it is adorned. External circumstances are nothing to the purpose. Our great point is to have pleasing pictures in the inside. To illustrate this: we behold a man of quality in all the affluence of life. We are apt to imagined this man happy. We are apt to imagine that his gallery is hung with the most delightful paintings. But could we look into it, we should in all probability behold portraits of care, discontent, envy, languor, and distraction. When we see a beggar, how miserable do we think him! But let us examine his pictures. We will probably find merriment, hope, a keen stomach, a hearty meal, true friendship, the newspaper, and a pot of porter. The great art is to have an agreeable collection and to preserve them well.
This is really an ingenious and lively fancy. We gave some examples. Lord Elibank has just a cabinet of curiosities, which are well ranged and of which he has an exact catalogue. Macpherson has some bold portraits and wild landscapes. Lord Eglinton has had a variety of pieces, but they have been mostly slightly painted and are fading, so that his most frequent picture is Regret. The [End Page 203] mind of a young man (his gallery I mean) is often furnished different ways. According to the scenes he is placed in, so are his pictures. They disappear, and he gets a new set in a moment. But as he grows up, he gets some substantial pieces which he always preserves, although he may alter his smaller paintings in a moment. I said that he whose pictures shifted too often, like the glaiks, was too light-headed, and so in Scotland, he is called glaiked, an expression perfectly of a piece with his system.
(pp. 203-4)
",,17293,"REVISIT. INTEREST. USE. FASCINATING metaphor worked out in two paragraphs. Reminiscent of Crambe's theory?
I've included thrice: Room, Pictures, Cabinet
","""Lord Elibank has just a cabinet of curiosities [in his mind], which are well ranged and of which he has an exact catalogue.""",Rooms,2013-06-26 19:09:53 UTC,February
6499,"",Brought to my notice by Patrick Abatiell,2009-03-16 00:00:00 UTC,"SATURDAY 26 FEBRUARY. Last night Dempster came to me between ten and eleven and sat till one. He is really a most agreeable man: has fine sense, sweet dispositions, and the true manners of a gentleman. His sceptical notions give him a freedom and ease which in a companion is very pleasing, although to a man whose mind is possessed with serious thoughts of futurity, it is rather hurting to find them considered so lightly. He said he intended to write a treatise on the causes of happiness and misery. He considered the mind of man like a room, which is either made agreeable or the reverse by the pictures with which it is adorned. External circumstances are nothing to the purpose. Our great point is to have pleasing pictures in the inside. To illustrate this: we behold a man of quality in all the affluence of life. We are apt to imagined this man happy. We are apt to imagine that his gallery is hung with the most delightful paintings. But could we look into it, we should in all probability behold portraits of care, discontent, envy, languor, and distraction. When we see a beggar, how miserable do we think him! But let us examine his pictures. We will probably find merriment, hope, a keen stomach, a hearty meal, true friendship, the newspaper, and a pot of porter. The great art is to have an agreeable collection adn to preserve them well.
This is really an ingenious and lively fancy. We gave some examples. Lord Elibank has just a cabinet of curiosities, which are well ranged and of which he has an exact catalogue. Macpherson has some bold portraits and wild landscapes. Lord Eglinton has had a variety of pieces, but they have been mostly slightly painted and are fading, so that his most frequent picture is Regret. The [End Page 203] mind of a young man (his gallery I mean) is often furnished different ways. According to the scenes he is placed in, so are his pictures. They disappear, and he gets a new set in a moment. But as he grows up, he gets some substantial pieces which he always preserves, although he may alter his smaller paintings in a moment. I said that he whose pictures shifted too often, like the glaiks, was too light-headed, and so in Scotland, he is called glaiked, an expression perfectly of a piece with his system.
(pp. 203-4)
",,17294,"REVIST. INTEREST. USE. FASCINATING metaphor worked out in two paragraphs. Reminiscent of Crambe's theory?
I've included thrice: Room, Pictures, Cabinet
","""He considered the mind of man like a room, which is either made agreeable or the reverse by the pictures with which it is adorned.""",Rooms,2011-03-24 19:55:25 UTC,February
7267,"",Reading a draft of Dorothy Couchman's dissertation,2012-06-28 18:16:05 UTC,"If I may be allowed to conjecture what is the nature of that mysterious power by which a player really is the character which he represents, my notion is, that he must have a kind of double feeling. He must assume in a strong degree the character which he represents, while he at the same time retains the consciousness of his own character. The feelings and passions of the character which he represents, must take full possession as it were of the antichamber of his mind, while his own character remains in the innermost recess. This is experienced in some measure by the barrister who enters warmly into the cause of his client, while at the same time, when he examines himself coolly, he knows that he is much in the wrong, and does not even wish to prevail. But during the time of his pleading, the genuine colour of his mind is laid over with a temporary glaring varnish, which flies off instantaneously when he has finished his harangue. The double feeling which I have mentioned is experienced by many men in the common intercourse of life. Were nothing but the real character to appear, society would not be half so safe and agreeable as we find it. Did we discover to our companions what we really think of them, frequent quarrels would ensue; and did we not express more regard for them than we really feel, the pleasure of social intercourse would be very contracted. It being necessary then in the intercourse of life to have such appearances, and dissimulation being to most people irksome and fatiguing, we insensibly, for our own ease, adopt feelings suitable to every occasion, and so, like players, are to a certain degree a different character from our own. It is needless to mention many instances of this; every man's experience must have furnished him with a variety of instances, which will readily occur to him. He will recollect instances in every funeral that he has attended—every birth-day entertainment at which he has been a guest—every country seat, the beauties of which have been shewn him by its master--every party of pleasure in which he has shared---In short, he can hardly recollect a scene of social life, where he has not been conscious more or less, of having been obliged to work himself into a state of feeling, which he would not naturally have had.
(pp. 469-70)",2012-06-28,19808,"","""The feelings and passions of the character which he represents, must take full possession as it were of the antichamber of his mind, while his own character remains in the innermost recess.""",Rooms,2012-06-28 18:16:48 UTC,Essay II
7513,"","Reading Ann Jessie van Sant's Sensibility and the Novel (Cambridge UP, 1993), p. 60.",2013-07-09 03:05:47 UTC,"I am not unacquainted with the reasonings of materialists, that the whole of man is composed of one substance. But whoever can really bring himself to believe, that the consciousness of power is an attribute of matter, is, I am pretty certain, not composed of the same substance that I am; for I have an immediate impression of that proposition being as impossible to believe, as that my eyes are shut when I feel they are wide open, and perceive by them a number and diversity of objects. To reason or even fancy, concerning what we do not see, from what we have seen, is pleasing to the mind. And my similitude between a watch in its case, and the soul in its material frame, will, I persuade myself, be agreeable to all my readers, whose dispositions are mild, and like better to be pleased with what they read, than to attack it. An antient philosopher indeed, full of real or pretended honesty, declared it to be his wish that there were a window in his breast that every body might see the integrity and purity of his thoughts. It would be truly be very pretty and amusing if our bodies were transparent, so that we could see one anothers sentiments and passions working as we see bees in a glass-hive.
(I, p. 143 in SUP edition)",,21540,"","""An antient philosopher indeed, full of real or pretended honesty, declared it to be his wish that there were a window in his breast that every body might see the integrity and purity of his thoughts. It would be truly be very pretty and amusing if our bodies were transparent, so that we could see one anothers sentiments and passions working as we see bees in a glass-hive.""","Animals, Optics, and Rooms",2013-07-09 03:05:47 UTC,""
7514,"",Reading,2013-07-09 03:11:58 UTC,"The construction of the human mind is a mystery which there seems to be no probability will ever be known in this state of human existence. Of its operations we have many registers, as we have many meteorological journals. But of itself we know no more than of the original substance of the planets. He, ""who spake as never man spake,"" saith of one well-known quality in the natural world, ""The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof; but cannot tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth."" The sound of the mind we hear; but what it is we cannot tell. The music which it utters, its melody, its harmony, its discord, its variety of notes, have been written by Shakespeare with a wonderful degree of perfection, so as to be themselves to every cultivated reader. We have even gamuts and treatises of the grounds of its music--witness a Locke and other metaphysicians. But the instrument is as much concealed from our intelligence, as the spheres of which the delightful music has been fancied by romantic imaginations. Models enough of this unknown instrument have been framed, as portraits have been drawn of personages whom the painters never saw; but such models being ""fabrics of a vision,"" have faded away, and been succeeded by others as vain as images in the clouds, painted with light, melt into air, and are succeeded by other forms as fleeting. How then can we represent, by a sensible image, the mind as a theatre to its own actings? Let us conceive a spacious saloon, in which our thoughts and passions exert themselves, and let its walls be encrusted with mirrour, for the purpose of reflection, in the same manner that rooms in voluptuous oriental countries are said to be finished for the purposes of increasing sensual delight.
(I, pp. 151-3 in SUP edition)",,21543,INTEREST. USE IN ENTRY,"""How then can we represent, by a sensible image, the mind as a theatre to its own actings? Let us conceive a spacious saloon, in which our thoughts and passions exert themselves, and let its walls be encrusted with mirrour, for the purpose of reflection, in the same manner that rooms in voluptuous oriental countries are said to be finished for the purposes of increasing sensual delight.""",Optics and Rooms,2013-07-09 03:11:58 UTC,""
7514,"",Reading.,2013-07-09 03:22:26 UTC,"That the merited applause of mankind is highly valuable, and a great immediate incitement to act well, I certainly agree: and therefore to return to the image of the mind as a theatre, I would not have it close as an amphitheatre; but open to the inspection of the world. But we much consider that valuable as the applause of man is, it cannot come in competition with the approbation of our own conscience. Men may see with erroneous eyes, or with eyes prejudiced by vice. To our conscience therefore we must intimately appeal. Seneca in one of his epigrams has a very striking thought, of the exact interpretation, of which from Latin to English I am not quite sure; but I believe I understand its meaning, Vive tibi nam moriere tibi. ""Live to your own mind, for to your own mind you must die."" For Seneca I have a double reverence; both for his own worth, and because he was the heathen sage whom my grandfather constantly studied, and I do not imagine that a philosopher so serious, meant in this passage to inculcate that a man should live to please himself, for that other people will be of no help to him when he comes to die. Were this the meaning of the precept, Seneca has the most perfect disciples in the Almack school, and the other various genteel clubs in London. In my apprehension he meant to impress his readers with a judicious and solemn reflection, that a man should live so as to be approved by himself; because for that he will most earnestly wish when he comes to die. In short that he should act as Lord Lyttelton beautifully describes Thomson to have written, so as that there was not ""One line which dying he could wish to blot."" I am however very willing that the passage should also be taken in a less solemn sense, in which case it will be found very practically useful. For, if a man were always to have present to his mind, how little the companions of festivity can do for him, or indeed would do for him when he is dead, we should have much less of that weak, and often vicious compliance, by which men of gaiety do what is ridiculous and criminal, not only against their own knowledge, but against their own inclination. Were the grand idea of the theatre of conscience in its full extant, and with all its enjoyments to be constantly in our contemplation, we should not forfeit the higher approbation of ourselves, who are really judges for the paultry, inattentive, and transient plaudits of others.
(I, pp. 154-5 in SUP edition)",,21545,"","""That the merited applause of mankind is highly valuable, and a great immediate incitement to act well, I certainly agree: and therefore to return to the image of the mind as a theatre, I would not have it close as an amphitheatre; but open to the inspection of the world.""","",2018-04-16 20:43:45 UTC,""
7514,"",Reading,2013-07-09 03:23:41 UTC,"That the merited applause of mankind is highly valuable, and a great immediate incitement to act well, I certainly agree: and therefore to return to the image of the mind as a theatre, I would not have it close as an amphitheatre; but open to the inspection of the world. But we much consider that valuable as the applause of man is, it cannot come in competition with the approbation of our own conscience. Men may see with erroneous eyes, or with eyes prejudiced by vice. To our conscience therefore we must intimately appeal. Seneca in one of his epigrams has a very striking thought, of the exact interpretation, of which from Latin to English I am not quite sure; but I believe I understand its meaning, Vive tibi nam moriere tibi. ""Live to your own mind, for to your own mind you must die."" For Seneca I have a double reverence; both for his own worth, and because he was the heathen sage whom my grandfather constantly studied, and I do not imagine that a philosopher so serious, meant in this passage to inculcate that a man should live to please himself, for that other people will be of no help to him when he comes to die. Were this the meaning of the precept, Seneca has the most perfect disciples in the Almack school, and the other various genteel clubs in London. In my apprehension he meant to impress his readers with a judicious and solemn reflection, that a man should live so as to be approved by himself; because for that he will most earnestly wish when he comes to die. In short that he should act as Lord Lyttelton beautifully describes Thomson to have written, so as that there was not ""One line which dying he could wish to blot."" I am however very willing that the passage should also be taken in a less solemn sense, in which case it will be found very practically useful. For, if a man were always to have present to his mind, how little the companions of festivity can do for him, or indeed would do for him when he is dead, we should have much less of that weak, and often vicious compliance, by which men of gaiety do what is ridiculous and criminal, not only against their own knowledge, but against their own inclination. Were the grand idea of the theatre of conscience in its full extant, and with all its enjoyments to be constantly in our contemplation, we should not forfeit the higher approbation of ourselves, who are really judges for the paultry, inattentive, and transient plaudits of others.
(I, pp. 154-5 in SUP edition)",,21546,"","""Were the grand idea of the theatre of conscience in its full extant, and with all its enjoyments to be constantly in our contemplation, we should not forfeit the higher approbation of ourselves, who are really judges for the paultry, inattentive, and transient plaudits of others.""","",2013-07-09 03:23:41 UTC,""
7516,"",Reading,2013-07-09 03:30:02 UTC,"While metaphysicks rack the sickly brain,
What Memory is can any man explain?
Can any man with any clearness tell
How is produced what we all know so well?
If human souls are of an essence pure,
How fix ideas in them to endure?
And if material, canst not thou, Monro,
The little cells of our ideas show?
Ah! no. For here we ever, ever find
That all philosophers alike are blind.
",,21548,"","If human souls are of an essence pure, / How fix ideas in them to endure? / And if material, canst not thou, Monro, / The little cells of our ideas show?""",Rooms,2013-07-09 03:30:02 UTC,""
8132,"","Reading Sean Silver, The Mind is a Collection: Case Studies in Eighteenth-Century Thought (Philadelphia: Penn Press, 2015), 275n.",2016-03-11 17:25:05 UTC,"[March 20, 1768] We went at night to the inn on Barnby Moor. We were now jumbled into old acquaintance. I felt myself quite strong, and exulted when I compared my present mind with my mind some years ago. Formerly my mind was quite a lodging-house for all ideas who chose to put up there, so that it was at the mercy of accident, for I had no fixed mind of my own. Now my mind is a house where, though the street rooms and the upper floors are open to strangers, yet there is always a settled family in the back parlour and sleeping-closet behind it; and this family can judge of the ideas which come to lodge. This family! this landlord, let me say, or this landlady, as the mind and the soul are both she. I shall confuse myself with metaphor. Let me then have done with it. Only this more. The ideas--my lodgers--are of all sorts. Some, gentlemen of the law, who pay me a great deal more than others. Divines of all sorts have been with me, and have ever disturbed me. When I first took up house, Presbyterian ministers used to make me melancholy with dreary tones. Methodists next shook my passions. Romish clergy filled me with solemn ideas, and, although their statues and many movable ornaments are gone, yet they drew some pictures upon my walls with such deep strokes that they still remain. They are, indeed, only agreeable ones. I had Deists for a very short while. But they, being sceptics, were perpetually alarming me with thoughts that my walls were made of clay and could not last, so I was glad to get rid of them. I am forced to own that my rooms have been occupied by women of the town, and by some ladies of abandoned manners. But I am resolved that by degrees there shall be only decent people and innocent, gay lodgers.
(pp. 137-8)",,24872,"How did I miss this when I was drafting my book! -- too bad for Rooms.
META-METAPHORICAL","""Formerly my mind was quite a lodging-house for all ideas who chose to put up there, so that it was at the mercy of accident, for I had no fixed mind of my own. Now my mind is a house where, though the street rooms and the upper floors are open to strangers, yet there is always a settled family in the back parlour and sleeping-closet behind it; and this family can judge of the ideas which come to lodge.""",Rooms,2016-03-11 17:25:05 UTC,"March 20, 1768"
8132,"","Reading Sean Silver, The Mind is a Collection: Case Studies in Eighteenth-Century Thought (Philadelphia: Penn Press, 2015), 275n.",2016-03-11 17:30:00 UTC,"[March 20, 1768] We went at night to the inn on Barnby Moor. We were now jumbled into old acquaintance. I felt myself quite strong, and exulted when I compared my present mind with my mind some years ago. Formerly my mind was quite a lodging-house for all ideas who chose to put up there, so that it was at the mercy of accident, for I had no fixed mind of my own. Now my mind is a house where, though the street rooms and the upper floors are open to strangers, yet there is always a settled family in the back parlour and sleeping-closet behind it; and this family can judge of the ideas which come to lodge. This family! this landlord, let me say, or this landlady, as the mind and the soul are both she. I shall confuse myself with metaphor. Let me then have done with it. Only this more. The ideas--my lodgers--are of all sorts. Some, gentlemen of the law, who pay me a great deal more than others. Divines of all sorts have been with me, and have ever disturbed me. When I first took up house, Presbyterian ministers used to make me melancholy with dreary tones. Methodists next shook my passions. Romish clergy filled me with solemn ideas, and, although their statues and many movable ornaments are gone, yet they drew some pictures upon my walls with such deep strokes that they still remain. They are, indeed, only agreeable ones. I had Deists for a very short while. But they, being sceptics, were perpetually alarming me with thoughts that my walls were made of clay and could not last, so I was glad to get rid of them. I am forced to own that my rooms have been occupied by women of the town, and by some ladies of abandoned manners. But I am resolved that by degrees there shall be only decent people and innocent, gay lodgers.
(pp. 137-8)",,24874,"","""Only this more. The ideas--my lodgers--are of all sorts. Some, gentlemen of the law, who pay me a great deal more than others. Divines of all sorts have been with me, and have ever disturbed me. When I first took up house, Presbyterian ministers used to make me melancholy with dreary tones. Methodists next shook my passions. Romish clergy filled me with solemn ideas, and, although their statues and many movable ornaments are gone, yet they drew some pictures upon my walls with such deep strokes that they still remain. They are, indeed, only agreeable ones. I had Deists for a very short while. But they, being sceptics, were perpetually alarming me with thoughts that my walls were made of clay and could not last, so I was glad to get rid of them. I am forced to own that my rooms have been occupied by women of the town, and by some ladies of abandoned manners. But I am resolved that by degrees there shall be only decent people and innocent, gay lodgers.""",Inhabitants,2016-03-11 17:30:00 UTC,""