"Words, languages, laws, sciences, and the liberal arts were introduced in time, and by them the rough diamond of our understanding was polished."
— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)
Work Title
Date
1748, 1749
Metaphor
"Words, languages, laws, sciences, and the liberal arts were introduced in time, and by them the rough diamond of our understanding was polished."
Metaphor in Context
Words, languages, laws, sciences, and the liberal arts were introduced in time, and by them the rough diamond of our understanding was polished. Man has been broke and trained up, like any other animal; and he has learned to be an author, as well as to be a porter. Geometricians have contrived to make the most difficult demonstrations and calculations, just as a monkey to put on, or take off his little hat, or jump upon his tractable dog. All was done by signs; each species comprehended what it could, and thus it was that men acquired symbolical knowledge, which still retains this name amongst German philosophers.
(p. 24)
(p. 24)
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
4 entries in the ESTC. Published anonymously, translated into English in 1749 with printings in 1750 and 1752.
Text from Man a Machine. Translated from the French of the Marquiss D'Argens. (London: Printed for W. Owen, 1749). <Link to ECCO>
Reading Man a Machine and Man a Plant, trans. Richard A. Watson and Maya Rybalka (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994). Translation based on version from La Mettrie's Oeuvres philosophiques (Berlin: 1751).
Text from Man a Machine. Translated from the French of the Marquiss D'Argens. (London: Printed for W. Owen, 1749). <Link to ECCO>
Reading Man a Machine and Man a Plant, trans. Richard A. Watson and Maya Rybalka (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994). Translation based on version from La Mettrie's Oeuvres philosophiques (Berlin: 1751).
Date of Entry
07/16/2013
