"If we can direct the lights we derive from such exalted speculations, upon the humbler field of the imagination, whilst we investigate the springs and trace the course of our passions, we may not only communicate to the taste a sort of philosophical solidity, but we may reflect back on severer sciences some of the graces and elegancies of taste, without which the greatest proficiency in those sciences will always have the appearance of something illiberal"
— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)
Author
Place of Publication
London
Publisher
Printed for R. and J. Dodsley
Date
1757
Metaphor
"If we can direct the lights we derive from such exalted speculations, upon the humbler field of the imagination, whilst we investigate the springs and trace the course of our passions, we may not only communicate to the taste a sort of philosophical solidity, but we may reflect back on severer sciences some of the graces and elegancies of taste, without which the greatest proficiency in those sciences will always have the appearance of something illiberal"
Metaphor in Context
To conclude; whatever progress may be made towards the discovery of truth in this matter, I do not repent the pains I have taken in it. The use of such enquiries may be very considerable. Whatever turns the soul inward upon itself, tends to concenter forces, and to fit it for greater and stronger flights of science. By looking into physical causes our minds are opened and enlarged; and in this pursuit whether we take or whether we lose our game, the chace is certainly of service. Cicero, true as he was to the Academic philosophy, and consequently led to reject the certainty of physical as of every other kind of knowledge, yet freely confesses its great importance to the human understanding: "Est animorum ingeniorumque nostrorum naturale quoddam quasi pabulum consideratio contemplatioque naturae." If we can direct the lights we derive from such exalted speculations, upon the humbler field of the imagination, whilst we investigate the springs and trace the course of our passions, we may not only communicate to the taste a sort of philosophical solidity, but we may reflect back on severer sciences some of the graces and elegancies of taste, without which the greatest proficiency in those sciences will always have the appearance of something illiberal.
(pp. 55-6)
(pp. 55-6)
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
18 entries in the ESTC (1757, 1759, 1761, 1764, 1765, 1766, 1767, 1770, 1771, 1772, 1773, 1776, 1782, 1787, 1792, 1793, 1796, 1798).
See (London: Printed for R. and J. Dodsley, 1757). <Link to ESTC><Link to ECCO-TCP>
Text from Edmund Burke, On the Sublime and Beautiful. Vol. XXIV, Part 2. The Harvard Classics. New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1909–14; Bartleby.com, 2001.
Reading Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful and Other Pre-Revolutionary Writings, ed. David Wommersly (London: Penguin Classics, 1998).
See (London: Printed for R. and J. Dodsley, 1757). <Link to ESTC><Link to ECCO-TCP>
Text from Edmund Burke, On the Sublime and Beautiful. Vol. XXIV, Part 2. The Harvard Classics. New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1909–14; Bartleby.com, 2001.
Reading Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful and Other Pre-Revolutionary Writings, ed. David Wommersly (London: Penguin Classics, 1998).
Date of Entry
10/09/2005
Date of Review
09/23/2007
