Paine, Thomas (1737-1809)

The Rights of Man: Being an answer to Mr. Burke's attack on the French revolution.

London

Printed for J. S. Jordan

February 1791

"The mind, in discovering truth, acts in the same manner as it acts through the eye in discovering objects; when once any object has been seen, it is impossible to put the mind back to the same condition it was in before it saw it."

The opinions of men with respect to government are changing fast in all countries. The revolutions of America and France have thrown a beam of light over the world, which reaches into man. The enormous expense of governments has provoked people to think, by making them feel; and when once the veil begins to rend, it admits not of repair. Ignorance is of a peculiar nature: once dispelled, it is impossible to re-establish it. It is not originally a thing of itself, but is only the absence of knowledge; and though man may be kept ignorant, he cannot be made ignorant. The mind, in discovering truth, acts in the same manner as it acts through the eye in discovering objects; when once any object has been seen, it is impossible to put the mind back to the same condition it was in before it saw it. Those who talk of a counter-revolution in France, show how little they understand of man. There does not exist in the compass of language an arrangement of words to express so much as the means of effecting a counter-revolution. The means must be an obliteration of knowledge; and it has never yet been discovered how to make man unknow his knowledge, or unthink his thoughts.
(p. 244)

Body::Eye

Reading

At least 45 entries in the ESTC (1791, 1792, 1793, 1795).

See The Thomas Paine Reader, ed. Michael Foot and Isaac Kramnick (New York: Penguin Books, 1987). <Link to 1791 edition in ECCO><Link to 7th edition in Google Books>

05/19/2011