"At our Birth the Imagination is intirely a Tabula Rasa or perfect Blank, without any other Materials either for a Simple View or any Other Operation of the Intellect"
— Browne, Peter (d. 1735)
Author
Place of Publication
London
Publisher
Printed [by James Bettenham] for William Inny
Date
1728
Metaphor
"At our Birth the Imagination is intirely a Tabula Rasa or perfect Blank, without any other Materials either for a Simple View or any Other Operation of the Intellect"
Metaphor in Context
At our Birth the Imagination is intirely a Tabula Rasa or perfect Blank, without any other Materials either for a Simple View or any Other [end page 382] Operation of the Intellect. We are not furnished with any Innate Ideas of things material or immaterial; nor are we endued with a Faculty or Disposition of forming Purely Intellectual Ideas or Conceptions independent of Sensation: Much less has the human Soul a Power of raising up to itself Ideas out of Nothing, which is a kind of Creation; or of attaining any First Principles exclusive of all Illation or consequential Deduction from Ideas of Material Objects; without which the Mind of Man, during its Union with the Body, could never have arrived to a Consciousness of its own Operations or Existence.
(pp. 382-3)
(pp. 382-3)
Categories
Provenance
Searching "tabula rasa" in ECCO
Citation
3 entries in ESTC (1728, 1729, 1736).
Peter Browne, The Procedure, Extent, and Limits of Human Understanding (London: Printed for William Inny, 1728). <Link to ESTC><Link to Internet Archive>
Peter Browne, The Procedure, Extent, and Limits of Human Understanding (London: Printed for William Inny, 1728). <Link to ESTC><Link to Internet Archive>
Theme
Blank Slate
Date of Entry
10/08/2006
