"Has he been at work all night without being conscious of it. Have other spirits been making impressions on his sensorium. Are there faculties in the mind quite separate one from another, which, like the eyes of Argus, may some of them be awake while others are asleep, and is the great faculty of consciousness not perpetually essential to many mental operations?"
— Boswell, James (1740-1795)
Author
Work Title
Date
April, 1783
Metaphor
"Has he been at work all night without being conscious of it. Have other spirits been making impressions on his sensorium. Are there faculties in the mind quite separate one from another, which, like the eyes of Argus, may some of them be awake while others are asleep, and is the great faculty of consciousness not perpetually essential to many mental operations?"
Metaphor in Context
How is it that ideas ripen in the mind, so that a man shall go to bed with a very imperfect possession of what he has laboured to get by heart, and shall awake in the morning able to repeat it with distinctness and facility? Has he been at work all night without being conscious of it. Have other spirits been making impressions on his sensorium. Are there faculties in the mind quite separate one from another, which, like the eyes of Argus, may some of them be awake while others are asleep, and is the great faculty of consciousness not perpetually essential to many mental operations?
(p. 158 in London Magazine)
(p. 158 in London Magazine)
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
The Hypochondriack, No. 67 (April, 1783). See also The London Magazine, or Gentleman's Monthly Intelligencer
<Link to Google Books>
See also James Boswell, The Hypochondriack, ed. Margery Bailey, 2 vols. (Stanford UP, 1928).
See also James Boswell, The Hypochondriack, ed. Margery Bailey, 2 vols. (Stanford UP, 1928).
Date of Entry
07/09/2013
