"Upon the whole, then, our organs of sense and our limbs are certainly instruments which the living persons, ourselves, make use of to perceive and move with: there is not any probability that they are any more; nor consequently, that we have any other kind of relation to them, that what we may have to any other foreign matter formed into instruments of perception and motion, suppose into a microscope of a staff; I say, any other kind of relation, for I am not speaking of the degree of it: nor consequently, is there any probability, that the alienation or dissolution of these instruments is the destruction of the perceiving and moving agent."
— Butler, Joseph (1692-1752)
Author
Work Title
Place of Publication
London
Publisher
Printed for James, John and Paul Knapton
Date
1736
Metaphor
"Upon the whole, then, our organs of sense and our limbs are certainly instruments which the living persons, ourselves, make use of to perceive and move with: there is not any probability that they are any more; nor consequently, that we have any other kind of relation to them, that what we may have to any other foreign matter formed into instruments of perception and motion, suppose into a microscope of a staff; I say, any other kind of relation, for I am not speaking of the degree of it: nor consequently, is there any probability, that the alienation or dissolution of these instruments is the destruction of the perceiving and moving agent."
Metaphor in Context
[14] Thus, a man determines that he will look at such an object through a microscope; or, being lame suppose, that he will walk to such a place with a staff a week hence. His eyes and his feet no more determine in these cases, than the microscope and staff. Nor is there any ground to think they any more put the determination in the practice, or that his eyes are the seers, or his feet the movers, in any other sense than as the microscope and the staff are. Upon the whole, then, our organs of sense and our limbs are certainly instruments which the living persons, ourselves, make use of to perceive and move with: there is not any probability that they are any more; nor consequently, that we have any other kind of relation to them, that what we may have to any other foreign matter formed into instruments of perception and motion, suppose into a microscope of a staff; I say, any other kind of relation, for I am not speaking of the degree of it: nor consequently, is there any probability, that the alienation or dissolution of these instruments is the destruction of the perceiving and moving agent.
(pp. 161-3)
(pp. 161-3)
Provenance
Reading Martin's and Barresi's Naturalization of the Soul , p. 77
Citation
20 entries in ESTC (1736, 1740, 1750, 1754, 1764, 1765, 1771, 1775, 1785, 1788, 1791, 1793, 1796).
The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature (London: Printed for James, John and Paul Knapton, 1736). <Link to ESTC>
Text from The Works of Bishop Butler, ed. David E. White (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2006).
The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature (London: Printed for James, John and Paul Knapton, 1736). <Link to ESTC>
Text from The Works of Bishop Butler, ed. David E. White (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2006).
Date of Entry
10/25/2004
