Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality

London

Printed for James and John Knapton

1731

"Not that all this was passively stamped upon his Soul by Sense from those Characters; for Sense, as I said before, can perceive nothing here but Inky Scrawls, and the intelligent Reader will many times Correct his Copy, finding Errata's in it."

16. But I shall yet further illustrate this Business, that the Mind may Actively Comprehend more in the outward Objects of Sense, and by occasion of them, than is passively received and impressed from them, by another Instance. Suppose a learned written or printed Volume, held before the Eye of a Brute Creature or illiterate Person; either of them will passively receive all that is impressed upon Sense from those Delineations; to whom there will be nothing but several Scrawls or Lines of Ink drawn upon White Paper. But if a Man that hath inward Anticipations of Learning in him, look upon them, He will immediately have another Comprehension of them than that of Sense, and a strange Scene of Thoughts presently represented to his Mind from them; he will see Heaven, Earth, Sun, Moon and Stars, Comets, Meteors, Elements, in those Inky Delineations; he will read profound Theorems of Philosophy, Geometry, Astronomy in them; learn a great deal of new Knowledge from them that he never understood before, and thereby justly admire the Wisdom of the Composer of them: Not that all this was passively stamped upon his Soul by Sense from those Characters; for Sense, as I said before, can perceive nothing here but Inky Scrawls, and the intelligent Reader will many times Correct his Copy, finding Errata's in it; but because his Mind was before furnished with Certain inward Anticipations, that such Characters signify the Elements of certain Sounds, those Sounds, certain Notions or Cogitations of the Mind; and because he hath an Active Power of Exciting any such Cogitations within himself, he reads in those sensible Delineations, the Passive Stamps or Prints of another Man's Wisdom or Knowledge upon them, and also learns Knowledge and Instruction from them, not as infused into his Mind from those sensible Characters, but by reason of those Hints and Significations thereby Proposed to it, accidentally kindled, awakened and excited in it: For all but the Phantasms of black Inky Strokes and Figures, arises from the Inward Activity of his own Mind: Wherefore this Instance in it self shews, how the Activity of the Mind may Comprehend more in and from sensible Objects, than is passively imprinted by them upon Sense.
(IV.ii.16, pp. 184-6)

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See Ralph Cudworth, A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality (London: James and John Knapton, 1731). <Link to ECCO><Link to Google Books>

01/22/2012