work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
5590,Blank Slate,"Searching ""like white paper"" in ECCO",2005-10-26 00:00:00 UTC,"The moment in which the faculty of memory begins to unfold itself, the man begins to exist as a moral being. Not long posterior to this, is the commencement of prescience and foresight. Rousseau has told us, in his animated language, that if a child could escape a whipping, or obtain a paper of sweetmeats, by promising to throw himself out at window tomorrow, the promise would instantly [end page 46] be made. Nothing is more contrary to experience than this. It is true, death, or any such evils, of which he has no clear conception, do not strongly affect him in prospect. But by the view of that which is palpable and striking, he is as much influenced as any man, however extensive his knowledge, however large his experience. It is only by seizing upon the activity and earnestness incident to youthful pursuits, and totally banishing the idea of what is future, that we can destroy its influence. Their minds, like a sheet of white paper, are susceptible to every impression. Their brain, uncrouded with a thousand traces, is a cause, that every impression they receive is strong and durable.
(pp. 46-7)",,14950,"","Children's ""minds, like a sheet of white paper, are susceptible to every impression""",Writing,2009-09-14 19:42:22 UTC,""
5775,"",Reading,2009-09-14 19:43:33 UTC,"[...] Like the lightning's flash are many recollections; one idea assimilating and explaining another, with astonishing rapidity. I do not now allude to taht quick perception of truth, which is so intuitive that it baffles research, and makes us at a loss to determine whether it is reminiscence or ratiocination, lost sight of in its celerity, that opens the dark cloud. Over those instantaneous associations we have little power; for when the mind is once enlarged by excursive flights, or profound reflection, the raw materials will, in some degree, arrange themselves. The understanding, it is true, may keep us from going out of drawing when we group our thoughts, or transcribe from the imagination and warm sketches of fancy; but the animal spirits, the individual character, give the colouring. Over this subtile electric fluid, how little power do we possess, and over it how little power can reason obtain. These fine intractable spirits appear to be the essence of genius, and beaming its eagle eye, produce in the most eminent degree the happy energy of associating thoughts that surprise, delight, and instruct. These are the glowing minds that concentrate pictures for their fellow creatures; forcing them to view with interest the objects reflected from the impassioned imagination, which they passed over in nature.
(p. 113-114)",,15402,"","""The understanding, it is true, may keep us from going out of drawing when we group our thoughts, or transcribe from the imagination and warm sketches of fancy; but the animal spirits, the individual character, give the colouring.""","",2012-01-23 16:57:32 UTC,Chapter VI
5775,Blank Slate,Reading,2009-09-14 19:43:35 UTC,"Yet, when I exclaim against novels, I mean when contrasted with those works which exercise the understanding and regulate the imagination. For any kind of reading, I think better than leaving a blank still blank, because the mind must receive a degree of enlargement and obtain a little strength by a slight exertion of its thinking powers; besides, even the productions that are only addressed to the imagination, raise the reader a little above the gross gratification of appetites, to which the mind has not given a shade of delicacy.
(p. 191; cf. p. 427 in 1792 ed.)",2003-10-23,15416,"","""For any kind of reading, I think better than leaving a blank still blank, because the mind must receive a degree of enlargement and obtain a little strength by a slight exertion of its thinking powers.""",Writing,2014-10-05 16:34:02 UTC,""
5868,Blank Slate,"Searching ""tabula rasa"" in ECCO",2006-10-14 00:00:00 UTC,"You come, the successor of a Viceroy, whose name may serve as a date in the margin of Irish history, but will never once be noticed in its page. Public, without being known; little heard of, though often seen; he sat at the council board a listless automaton, or galloped through the city, the terror of old women, and the envy of school-boys. When made Master of the Horse, he has fulfilled his destiny, and arrived at that point of animal perfection, for which alone nature and education had designed him. Yet, my Lord, you will perhaps experience with one or two of you predecessors, that the best qualifications for a continuance in the Lieutenancy of Ireland are those of a negative kind. A soft sponginess of character that will easily acquire any hue, or any stain; a tabula rasa of intellect; a spirit invulnerable to insult; that (for example) after vain endeavors to disunite and discourage the Catholics of Ireland, could condescend to [end page 2] truck and chaffer, for the official transmission of their address; and then submit to be passed by with a contemptuous neglect, equally degrading to the honour of the man, and the dignity of the station:--such are the qualities best suited to complete the lustrum of an Irish Lord Lieutenancy.
(pp. 2-3)",,15607,"•Drennan was a friend of Francis Hutcheson. Irish radical. First to call Ireland the ""emerald isle.""","""A soft sponginess of character that will easily acquire any hue, or any stain; a tabula rasa of intellect; a spirit invulnerable to insult; that (for example) after vain endeavors to disunite and discourage the Catholics of Ireland, could condescend to [end page 2] truck and chaffer, for the official transmission of their address; and then submit to be passed by with a contemptuous neglect, equally degrading to the honour of the man, and the dignity of the station:--such are the qualities best suited to complete the lustrum of an Irish Lord Lieutenancy.""",Writing,2009-09-14 19:44:06 UTC,""
5901,Blank Slate,Reading Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate (11). Full citation found in ECCO.,2005-07-14 00:00:00 UTC,"In young persons it is otherwise. Theirs is the tear, in many instances at least, ""forgot as soon as shed."" Their minds are like a sheet of white paper, which takes any impression that it is proposed to make upon it. Their pleasures are, to a degree, pure and unadulterated. This is a circumstance considerably enviable.
(p. 70)",2005-10-26,15668,"•Pinker actually quotes ""children are a sort of raw material put into our hands [their minds are] like a sheet of white paper."" Is this actually a differenct use of the same metaphor. REVISIT and follow citation. ","""Their [young persons'] minds are like a sheet of white paper, which takes any impression that it is proposed to make upon it.""",Writing,2009-09-14 19:44:17 UTC,Part I. Of the Happiness of Youth
6855,"",Reading,2011-05-19 20:07:58 UTC,"While I am writing this there are accidentally before me some proposals for a declaration of rights by the Marquis de la Fayette (I ask his pardon for using his former address, and do it only for distinction's sake) to the National Assembly, on the 11th of July, 1789, three days before the taking of the Bastille, and I cannot but remark with astonishment how opposite the sources are from which that gentleman and Mr. Burke draw their principles. Instead of referring to musty records and mouldy parchments to prove that the rights of the living are lost, ""renounced and abdicated for ever,"" by those who are now no more, as Mr. Burke has done, M. de la Fayette applies to the living world, and emphatically says: ""Call to mind the sentiments which nature has engraved on the heart of every citizen, and which take a new force when they are solemnly recognised by all:--For a nation to love liberty, it is sufficient that she knows it; and to be free, it is sufficient that she wills it."" How dry, barren, and obscure is the source from which Mr. Burke labours! and how ineffectual, though gay with flowers, are all his declamation and his arguments compared with these clear, concise, and soul-animating sentiments! Few and short as they are, they lead on to a vast field of generous and manly thinking, and do not finish, like Mr. Burke's periods, with music in the ear, and nothing in the heart.
(p. 207)",,18432,"","""Call to mind the sentiments which nature has engraved on the heart of every citizen, and which take a new force when they are solemnly recognised by all.""",Writing,2011-05-19 20:08:06 UTC,Part One
3370,Tabula Rasa,Reading,2011-07-22 13:44:57 UTC,"To assist the imagination, indeed, but by no means in any consistency with the notion of a nervous fluid, it had been conceived that ideas resembled characters drawn upon a tablet; and the language in which we generally speak of ideas, and their affections, is borrowed from this hypothesis. But neither can any such tablet be found in the brain, nor any style, by which to make the characters upon it; and though some of the more simple phænomena of ideas, as their being more or less deeply impressed, their being retained a longer or or a shorter time, being capable of being revived at pleasure, &c. may be pretty well explained by the hypothesis of such a tablet, and characters upon it, it is wholly inadequate to the explanation of other, and very remarkable phænomena of ideas, especially their mutual association. Besides, this hypothesis suggests nothing to explain any of the mental operations respecting ideas.
(viii-ix)",,18961,"",""To assist the imagination, indeed, but by no means in any consistency with the notion of a nervous fluid, it had been conceived that ideas resembled characters drawn upon a tablet; and the language in which we generally speak of ideas, and their affections, is borrowed from this hypothesis.""",Writing,2011-07-22 15:18:25 UTC,Introductory Essays
3370,"",Reading,2011-07-22 13:47:16 UTC,"To assist the imagination, indeed, but by no means in any consistency with the notion of a nervous fluid, it had been conceived that ideas resembled characters drawn upon a tablet; and the language in which we generally speak of ideas, and their affections, is borrowed from this hypothesis. But neither can any such tablet be found in the brain, nor any style, by which to make the characters upon it; and though some of the more simple phænomena of ideas, as their being more or less deeply impressed, their being retained a longer or or a shorter time, being capable of being revived at pleasure, &c. may be pretty well explained by the hypothesis of such a tablet, and characters upon it, it is wholly inadequate to the explanation of other, and very remarkable phænomena of ideas, especially their mutual association. Besides, this hypothesis suggests nothing to explain any of the mental operations respecting ideas.
(viii-ix)",,18962,"","""But neither can any such tablet be found in the brain, nor any style, by which to make the characters upon it; and though some of the more simple phænomena of ideas, as their being more or less deeply impressed, their being retained a longer or or a shorter time, being capable of being revived at pleasure, &c. may be pretty well explained by the hypothesis of such a tablet, and characters upon it, it is wholly inadequate to the explanation of other, and very remarkable phænomena of ideas, especially their mutual association.""",Writing,2011-07-22 15:18:44 UTC,Introductory Essays
3370,"",Reading,2011-07-22 16:02:55 UTC,"To the mere novice in philosophical investigations, it will appear impossible to reduce all the variety of thinking to so simple and uniform a process; but to the same person it would also appear impossible a priori, that all the varieties of language, as spoken by all the nations in the world, mould be expressed by means of a short alphabet. Also those phenomena in nature which depend upon gravity, electricity, &c. are no less various and complex; and the more we know of nature, the more particular facts, and particular laws, we are able to reduce to simple and general laws: insomuch that now it does not appear impossible, but that, ultimately, one great comprehensive law shall be found to govern both the material and intellectual world.
(pp. xxiv-xxv)",,18967,"A different way of thinking about the metaphor of ""characters.""","""To the mere novice in philosophical investigations, it will appear impossible to reduce all the variety of thinking to so simple and uniform a process; but to the same person it would also appear impossible a priori, that all the varieties of language, as spoken by all the nations in the world, mould be expressed by means of a short alphabet.""",Writing,2011-07-22 16:04:07 UTC,Introductory Essays
7542,"",Reading; text from Google Books,2013-07-12 14:59:04 UTC,"You, my dear friend, who have felt the tender attachments of love and friendship, and the painful anxieties which absence occasions, even amidst scenes of variety and pleasure; who understand the value at which tidings from those we love is computed in the arithmetic of the heart; who have heard with almost uncontroulable emotion the postman's rap at the door; have trembling seen the well-known hand which excited sensations that almost deprived you of power to break the seal which seemed the talisman of happiness; you can judge of the feelings of Mons. du F when he received, by means of the same friend who had conveyed his letter, an answer from his wife. But the person who brought the letter to his dungeon, dreading the risk of a discovery, insisted, that, after having read it, he should return it to him immediately. Mons. du F-- pressed the letter to his heart, bathed it with his tears, and implored the indulgence of keeping it at least till the next morning. He was allowed to do so, and read it till every word was imprinted on his memory; and after enjoying the sad luxury of holding it that night on his bosom, was forced the next morning to relinquish his treasure.
(Letter XX, p. 163-4; p. 129 in Broadview ed.)",,21701,"","He was allowed to do so, and read it till every word was imprinted on his memory; and after enjoying the sad luxury of holding it that night on his bosom, was forced the next morning to relinquish his treasure.""",Impressions and Writing,2013-07-12 14:59:04 UTC,""