"These simple ideas, offered to the mind, the understanding can no more refuse, nor alter, nor blot out, than a mirrour can refuse, alter, or obliterate, the images which the objects produce"

— Locke [from Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language]


Place of Publication
London
Publisher
Printed by W. Strahan [etc.]
Date
1755
Metaphor
"These simple ideas, offered to the mind, the understanding can no more refuse, nor alter, nor blot out, than a mirrour can refuse, alter, or obliterate, the images which the objects produce"
Metaphor in Context
These simple ideas, offered to the mind, the understanding can no more refuse, nor alter, nor blot out, than a mirrour can refuse, alter, or obliterate, the images which the objects produce.
Categories
Provenance
Reading Johnson's and Bailey's dictionaries
Citation
Johnson, Samuel. A Dictionary of the English Language: In Which the Words Are Deduced from Their Originals, and Illustrated in Their Different Significations by Examples from the Best Writers. To Which Are Prefixed, a History of the Language, and an English Grammar. New York,: AMS Press, 1967.
Date of Entry
03/28/2005

The Mind is a Metaphor is authored by Brad Pasanek, Assistant Professor of English, University of Virginia.