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"To which Purpose they have ingeniously contrived and set up an Active Understanding, like a Smith or Carpenter, with his Shop or Forge in the Brain, furnished with all necessary Tools and Instruments for such a Work."

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

Author

Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

Work Title

A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality

Place of Publication

London

Publisher

Printed for James and John Knapton

Date

1731

Metaphor

"To which Purpose they have ingeniously contrived and set up an Active Understanding, like a Smith or Carpenter, with his Shop or Forge in the Brain, furnished with all necessary Tools and Instruments for such a Work."

Metaphor in Context

14. Wherefore here is a Double Errour committed by Vulgar Philosophers; First, That they make the Sensible Ideas and Phantasms to be totally impressed from without in a gross corporeal Manner upon the Soul, as It were upon a dead Thing; and, Secondly, That then they suppose the Intelligible Ideas, the Abstract and Universal Notions of the Mind, to be made out of these Sensible Ideas and Phantasms thus impressed from without in a Corporeal Manner likewise by Abstraction or Separation of the Individuating Circumstances, as it were by the hewing off certain Chips from them, or by hammering, beating or anvelling of them out into thin Intelligible Ideas; as if Solid and Massy Gold should be beaten out into thin Leaf-Gold. To which Purpose they have ingeniously contrived and set up an Active Understanding, like a Smith or Carpenter, with his Shop or Forge in the Brain, furnished with all necessary Tools and Instruments for such a Work. Where I would only demand of these Philosophers, Whether this their so expert Smith or Architect, the Active Understanding, when he goes about his Work, doth know what he is to do with these Phantasms before-hand, what he is to make of them, and unto what Shape to bring them? If he do not, he must needs be a bungling Workman; but if he do, he is prevented in his Design and Undertaking, his Work being done already to his Hand; for he must needs have the Intelligible Idea of that which he knows or Understands already within himself; and therefore now to what Purpose should he use his Tools, and go about to hew and hammer and anvil out these Phantasms into thin and subtle Intelligible Ideas, meerly to make that which he hath already, and which was Native and Domestick to him?
(IV.iii.14, pp. 219-221)