"For a like reason we feel a difficulty in mounting, and pass not without a kind of reluctance from the inferior to that which is situated above it; as if our ideas acquired a kind of gravity from their objects."
— Hume, David (1711-1776)
Author
Work Title
Place of Publication
London
Publisher
Printed for John Noon
Date
January 1739
Metaphor
"For a like reason we feel a difficulty in mounting, and pass not without a kind of reluctance from the inferior to that which is situated above it; as if our ideas acquired a kind of gravity from their objects."
Metaphor in Context
'Tis evident to common sense, as well as philosophy, that there is no natural nor essential difference betwixt high and low, and that this distinction arises only from the gravitation of matter, which produces a motion from the one to the other. The very same direction, which in this part of the globe is called ascent, is denominated descent in our antipodes; which can proceed from nothing but the contrary tendency of bodies. Now it is certain that the tendency of bodies, continually operating upon our senses, must produce, from custom, a like tendency in the fancy; and that when we consider any object situated in an ascent, the idea of its weight gives us a propensity to transport it from the place in which it is situated to the place immediately below it, and so on till we come to the ground, which equally stops the body and our imagination. For a like reason we feel a difficulty in mounting, and pass not without a kind of reluctance from the inferior to that which is situated above it; as if our ideas acquired a kind of gravity from their objects. As a proof of this, do we not find that the facility, which is so much studied in music and poetry, is called the fall or cadency of the harmony or period; the idea of facility communicating to us that of descent, in the same manner as descent produces a facility?
(II.iii.8.8, p. 278)
(II.iii.8.8, p. 278)
Categories
Provenance
Searching at Past Masters
Citation
Published anonymously with vols. I and II appearing in January in 1739 and vol. III appearing in November of 1740. Only 1 entry in the ESTC (1740).
David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature. Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects. 3 vols. (London: Printed for John Noon, 1739; Thomas Longman, 1740). <Link to ESTC><Link to ECCO><Link to ECCO-TCP><Link to OLL>
Reading David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, eds. D. F. and M. J. Norton (Oxford: OUP, 2000). Searching in Past Masters and OLL editions.
David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature. Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects. 3 vols. (London: Printed for John Noon, 1739; Thomas Longman, 1740). <Link to ESTC><Link to ECCO><Link to ECCO-TCP><Link to OLL>
Reading David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, eds. D. F. and M. J. Norton (Oxford: OUP, 2000). Searching in Past Masters and OLL editions.
Date of Entry
03/07/2011
