"To be moved, like puppets, by appetites and passions, is common to us with the wild beasts, with the most effeminate wretches, Phalaris, and Nero, with atheists, and with traitors to their country."

— Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121-180), Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746), and James Moor (bap. 1712, d. 1779)


Place of Publication
Glasgow
Publisher
Robert Foulis
Date
1742
Metaphor
"To be moved, like puppets, by appetites and passions, is common to us with the wild beasts, with the most effeminate wretches, Phalaris, and Nero, with atheists, and with traitors to their country."
Metaphor in Context
16. The body, the animal soul, the intellectual. To the body belong the senses: to the animal soul, the appetites and passions: to the intellectual, the maxims of life. To have sensible impressions exciting imaginations, is common to us with the cattle. To be moved, like puppets, by appetites and passions, is common to us with the wild beasts, with the most effeminate wretches, Phalaris, and Nero, with atheists, and with traitors to their country. If these things, then, are common to the lowest and most odious characters, this must remain as peculiar to the good man; to have the intellectual part governing and directing him in all the occurring offices of life; to love and embrace all which happens to him by order of providence; to preserve the divinity placed in his breast, pure, undisturbed by a croud of imaginations, and ever calm and well-pleased, and to follow with a graceful reverence the dictates of it as of a God; never speaking against truth, or acting against justice. And, tho' no man believe he thus lived, with simplicity, modesty, and tranquillity; he neither takes this amiss from any one; nor quits the road which leads to the true end of life; at which he ought to arrive pure, calm, ready to part with life, and accommodated to his lot without reluctance.
(III.16)
Provenance
Reading (OLL)
Citation
At least 5 entries in ESTC (1742, 1749, 1752, 1753, 1764).

See The Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. Newly Translated from the Greek: With Notes, and an Account of His Life. (Glasgow: Printed by Robert Foulis; and sold by him at the College; by Mess. Hamilton and Balfour, in Edinburgh; and by Andrew Millar, over against St. Clements Church, London, 1742). <Link to ECCO>

Searching Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, The Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, trans. Francis Hutcheson and James Moor, ed. and with an Introduction by James Moore and Michael Silverthorne (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2008). <Link to OLL>
Date of Entry
06/06/2010

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