work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
6270,"","Searching ""mind"" at Electronic Text Center at UVA Library",2005-08-11 00:00:00 UTC,"There are a multitude of causes that will produce a miscarriage of this sort, where the richest soil, impregnated with the choicest seeds of learning and observation, shall entirely fail to present us with such a crop as might rationally have been anticipated. Many such men waste their lives in indolence and irresolution. They attempt many things, sketch out plans, which, if properly filled up, might illustrate the literature of a nation, and extend the empire of the human mind, but which yet they desert as soon as begun, affording us the promise of a beautiful day, that, ere it is noon, is enveloped in darkest tempests and the clouds of midnight. They skim away from one flower in the parterre of literature to another, like the bee, without, like the bee, gathering sweetness from each, to increase the public stock, and enrich the magazine of thought. The cause of this phenomenon is an unsteadiness, ever seduced by the newness of appearances, and never settling with firmness and determination upon what had been chosen.
(p. 62)",,16601,"","""They skim away from one flower in the parterre of literature to another, like the bee, without, like the bee, gathering sweetness from each, to increase the public stock, and enrich the magazine of thought.""","",2009-09-14 19:47:24 UTC,Essay III. Of Intellectual Abortion
6270,Enlightenment,"Searching ""mind"" at Electronic Text Center at UVA Library",2005-08-11 00:00:00 UTC,"The man who merely wanders through the fields of knowledge in search of its gayest flowers and of whatever will afford him the most enviable amusement,
[page 65] will necessarily return home at night with a very slender collection. He that shall apply himself with self-denial and an unshrinking resolution to the improvement of his mind, will unquestionably be found more fortunate in the end. He is not deterred by the gulphs that yawn beneath his feet, or the mountains that may oppose themselves to his progress. He knows that the adventurer of timid mind, and that is infirm of purpose, will never make himself master of those points which it would be most honourable to him to subdue. But he who undertakes to commit to writing the result of his researches, and to communicate his discoveries to mankind, is the genuine hero. Till he enters on this task, every thing is laid up in his memory in a certain confusion. He thinks he possesses a thing whole; but, when he brings it to the test, he is surprised to find how much he was deceived. He that would digest his thoughts and his principles into a regular system, is compelled in the first place to regard them in all their clearness and perspicuity, and in the next place to select the fittest words by which they may be communicated to others. It is through the instrumentality of words that we are taught to think accurately and severely for ourselves; they are part and parcel of all our propositions and theories. It is therefore in this way that a preceptor, by undertaking to enlighten the mind of his pupil, enlightens his own. He becomes twice the man in the sequel, that he was when he entered [page 66] on his task. We admire the amateur student in his public essays, as we admire a jackdaw or a parrot: he does considerably more than could have been expected from him.
(pp. 64-6)",,16602,"","""It is therefore in this way that a preceptor, by undertaking to enlighten the mind of his pupil, enlightens his own.""","",2009-09-14 19:47:24 UTC,Essay III. Of Intellectual Abortion
6270,"","Searching ""mind"" at Electronic Text Center at UVA Library",2005-08-11 00:00:00 UTC,"Yet there were things that Shakespear could not do. He could not make a hero. Familiar as he was with the evanescent touches of mind en dishabille, [page 70] and in its innermost feelings, he could not sustain the tone of a character, penetrated with a divine enthusiasm, or fervently devoted to a generous cause, though this is truly within the compass of our nature, and is more than any other worthy to be delineated. He could conceive such sentiments, for there are such in his personage of Brutus; but he could not fill out and perfect what he has thus sketched. He seems even to have had a propensity to bring the mountain and the hill to a level with the plain. Cæsar is spiritless, and Cicero is ridiculous, in his hands. He appears to have written his Troilus and Cressida partly with a view to degrade, and hold up to contempt, the heroes of Homer; and he has even disfigured the pure, heroic affection which the Greek poet has painted as existing between Achilles and Patroclus with the most odious imputations.",2008-02-02,16603,"","""Familiar as [Shakespeare] was with the evanescent touches of mind en dishabille, and in its innermost feelings, he could not sustain the tone of a character, penetrated with a divine enthusiasm, or fervently devoted to a generous cause, though this is truly within the compass of our nature.""","",2009-09-14 19:47:24 UTC,Essay III. Of Intellectual Abortion
6270,Enlightenment,"Searching ""mind"" at Electronic Text Center at UVA Library",2005-08-11 00:00:00 UTC," It has been a vulgar error to imagine, that the mind of man, so far as relates to its active and inventive powers, was sunk into a profound sleep, from which it gradually recovered itself at the period [page 79] when Constantinople was taken by the Turks, and the books and the teachers of the ancient Greek language were dispersed through Europe. The epoch from which modern invention took its rise, commenced much earlier. The feudal system, one of the most interesting contrivances of man in society, was introduced in the ninth century; and chivalry, the offspring of that system, an institution to which we are mainly indebted for refinement of sentiment, and humane and generous demeanour, in the eleventh. Out of these grew the originality and the poetry of romance.
(pp. 78-9)",,16604,"","At a period in history the mind of man may be imagined ""sunk into a profound sleep""","",2009-09-14 19:47:25 UTC,Essay IV. Of the Durability of Human Achievements and Productions
6270,"","Searching ""mind"" at Electronic Text Center at UVA Library",2005-08-11 00:00:00 UTC,"Just expressions of passion and nature are sure, after a little time, to gain public applause, which they maintain for ever. Aristotle and Plato and Epicurus and Descartes may successively yield to each other: but Terence and Virgil maintain an universal, undisputed empire over the minds of men. The abstract philosophy of Cicero has lost its credit: the vehemence of his oratory is still the object of our admiration.""
(p. 72)",,16605,"","""Terence and Virgil maintain an universal, undisputed empire over the minds of men. """,Empire,2009-09-14 19:47:25 UTC,Essay IV. Of the Durability of Human Achievements and Productions
6270,"","Searching ""mind"" at Electronic Text Center at UVA Library",2005-08-11 00:00:00 UTC,"Cowley stands forward as a memorable instance of the inconstancy of fame. He was a most amiable man; and the loveliness of his mind shines out in his productions. He had a truly poetic frame of soul; and he pours out the beautiful feelings that possessed him unreservedly and at large. He was a great sufferer in the Stuart cause, he had been a principal member of the court of the exiled queen; and, when the king was restored, it was a deep sentiment among his followers and friends to admire the verses of Cowley. He was ""the Poet."" The royalist rhymers were set lightly by in comparison with him. Milton, the republican, who, by his collection published during the civil war, had shewn that he was entitled to the highest eminence, was unanimously consigned to oblivion. Cowley died in 1667; and the duke of Buckingham, the author of the Rehearsal, eight years after, set up his tomb in the cemetery of the nation, with an inscription, declaring him to be at once ""the Pindar, the Horace and Virgil of his country, the delight and the glory of his age, which by his death was left a perpetual mourner."" -- Yet -- so capricious is fame -- a century has nearly elapsed, since Pope said,
Who now reads Cowley? If he pleases yet,
His moral pleases, not his pointed wit;
Forgot his epic, nay, Pindaric art,
But still I love the language of his heart. ",,16606,"","Cowley ""was a most amiable man; and the loveliness of his mind shines out in his productions""","",2009-09-14 19:47:25 UTC,Essay IV. Of the Durability of Human Achievements and Productions
6270,"","Searching ""mind"" at Electronic Text Center at UVA Library",2005-08-11 00:00:00 UTC,"Man is in truth a miracle. The human mind is a creature of celestial origin, shut up and confined in a wall of flesh. We feel a kind of proud impatience of the degradation to which we are condemned. We beat ourselves to pieces against the wires of our cage, and long to escape, to shoot through the elements, and be as free to change at [page 100] any instant the place where we dwell, as to change the subject to which our thoughts are applied.
(pp. 99-100)",,16607,•Haven't searched past here (Essay 6 and following remain).,"""The human mind is a creature of celestial origin, shut up and confined in a wall of flesh""","",2009-09-14 19:47:25 UTC,Essay V. Of the Rebelliousness of Man