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"What toil and perseverance, in cultivating the bodily powers, must it require, to qualify the tumbler for those feats of activity, with which he astonishes mankind! [... ]Were we to take equal pains in the improvement of our intellectual and moral nature, which are surely not less susceptible of cultivation, who can tell to what heights of excellence, and of happiness, we might at length arise!

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Author

Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Work Title

Of Memory and Imagination [from Dissertations Moral and Critical]

Place of Publication

London

Publisher

Printed for W. Strahan; and T. Cadell ... and W. Creech

Date

1783

Metaphor

"What toil and perseverance, in cultivating the bodily powers, must it require, to qualify the tumbler for those feats of activity, with which he astonishes mankind! [... ]Were we to take equal pains in the improvement of our intellectual and moral nature, which are surely not less susceptible of cultivation, who can tell to what heights of excellence, and of happiness, we might at length arise!

Metaphor in Context

8. Let us never, by study of any kind, overload the Memory, or overstrain our faculties; for this would bring discouragement, incapacity, and bad health. We ought to begin with easy tasks, and advance by degrees to such as are more difficult. A clergyman, a particular friend of mine, has often told me, that, when he commenced preacher, it was the labour of many days to get his sermon by heart; but that, by long practice, he has now improved his Memory to such a pitch, that he can, by two hours application, if one in his mind so effectually, as to be able to recite it in publick, without the change omission, or transposition, of the smallest word. To me this fact seems extraordinary; for I am certain of its truth: but I learn from it, that, by patience and long practice, much may be done for the improvement of our nature, and that none of our faculties are more improveable than Memory. What toil and perseverance, in cultivating the bodily powers, must it require, to qualify the tumbler for those feats of activity, with which he astonishes mankind! When we first see them, we can hardly [end page 51] believe our eyes: he seems to perform what till now we thought impossible. Were we to take equal pains in the improvement of our intellectual and moral nature, which are surely not less susceptible of cultivation, who can tell to what heights of excellence, and of happiness, we might at length arise!
(III, pp. 51-2)