Anonymous

Berkeley Hall: or, the Pupil of Experience. A Novel

London

Printed for J. Tindal

1796

"He guarded my mind from imbibing any religious principles at all, under the notion of preserving it to maturity, like a rasa tabula, free from all prejudices."

My name is Brecknock; and I am the eldest son of a wealthy farmer in Galloway. I was naturally of a fierce and ungovernable disposition, which my father unfortunately fostered, instead of checking, by a misguided education. He had imbibed some newfangled opinions of certain French philosophers, and proposed to train me up in a manner directly opposite to that of our ancestors. He not only prevented my being educated in the religion of the country, but taught me, by his example, to ridicule it. He guarded my mind from imbibing any religious principles at all, under the notion of preserving it to maturity, like a rasa tabula, free from all prejudices. In consequence of this, I greedily embraced every licentious opinion, and was, with warm passions, exposed to temptations and the corruption of bad example, without any principles of reason, morality, or religion, to counteract them; but rather with a bias in their favour. I was not restrained in any whim or caprice, nor subject to any coercion or penalty, for fear of breaking my spirit, and destroying the energies of my freeborn mind.
(III.ii, pp. 13-4)

Writing::Tabula Rasa

Searching "tabula rasa" in ECCO

Only 1 entry in ESTC (1796).

Berkeley Hall: or, the Pupil of Experience. A Novel. In Three Volumes. 3 vols. (London: Printed for J. Tindal, Great Portland Street, Oxford Street, 1796). <Link to ESTC>

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10/14/2006