"As the face of nature never produces rain but when it is overcast and disturbed, so human understanding, seated in the brain, must be troubled and overspread by vapours ascending from the lower faculties to water the invention, and render it fruitful."
— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)
Author
Work Title
Place of Publication
London
Publisher
Printed for John Nutt
Date
May 10, 1704
Metaphor
"As the face of nature never produces rain but when it is overcast and disturbed, so human understanding, seated in the brain, must be troubled and overspread by vapours ascending from the lower faculties to water the invention, and render it fruitful."
Metaphor in Context
For the upper region of man is furnished like the middle region of the air; the materials are formed from causes of the widest difference, yet produce at last the same substance and effect. Mists arise from the earth, steams from dunghills, exhalations from the sea, and smoke from fire; yet all clouds are the same in composition as well as consequences, and fumes issuing from a jakes will furnish as comely and as useful a vapour as incense from an altar. Thus far, I suppose, will easily be granted me; and then it will follow that, as the face of nature never produces rain but when it is overcast and disturbed, so human understanding, seated in the brain, must be troubled and overspread by vapours ascending from the lower faculties to water the invention, and render it fruitful. Now, although these vapours (as it hath been already said) are of as various original as those of the skies, yet the crop they produce differs both in kind and degree, merely according to the soil (78).
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
43 entries in the ESTC (1704, 1705, 1710, 1711, 1724, 1726, 1727, 1733, 1734, 1739, 1741, 1742, 1743, 1747, 1750, 1751, 1752, 1753, 1754, 1756, 1760, 1762, 1766, 1768, 1769, 1771, 1772, 1776, 1781, 1784, 1798).
Reading Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub and Other Works, eds. Angus Ross and David Woolley. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). Some text drawn from ebooks@Adelaide.
Note, the textual history is complicated. First published May 10, 1704. The second edition of 1704 and the fifth of 1710 include new material. Ross and Woolley's text is an eclectic one, based on the three authoritative editions.
See A Tale of a Tub. Written for the Universal Improvement of Mankind. To Which Is Added, an Account of a Battel Between the Antient and Modern Books in St. James's Library, 2nd edition, corrected (London: Printed for John Nutt, 1704). <Link to ESTC><Link to ECCO>
Reading Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub and Other Works, eds. Angus Ross and David Woolley. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). Some text drawn from ebooks@Adelaide.
Note, the textual history is complicated. First published May 10, 1704. The second edition of 1704 and the fifth of 1710 include new material. Ross and Woolley's text is an eclectic one, based on the three authoritative editions.
See A Tale of a Tub. Written for the Universal Improvement of Mankind. To Which Is Added, an Account of a Battel Between the Antient and Modern Books in St. James's Library, 2nd edition, corrected (London: Printed for John Nutt, 1704). <Link to ESTC><Link to ECCO>
Date of Entry
10/21/2003
