"But when they are recalled with difficulty, and dragged back slowly, as it were, and by pieces and parcels into the mind, it is no wonder if they receive much greater alteration."
— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)
Place of Publication
London
Date
1754
Metaphor
"But when they are recalled with difficulty, and dragged back slowly, as it were, and by pieces and parcels into the mind, it is no wonder if they receive much greater alteration."
Metaphor in Context
Just so any operation or affection of the mind, which has been long unperceived, will appear the same it used to appear to our inward sense, when it is perceived a-new by reflection. But when we are forced to recall our complex ideas, the case is not the same, at least when they are such as are not in common use. Those of mixed modes and relations, for instance, that philosophers sometimes employ, and to which the mind scarce ever adverts on other occasions, may well receive some alteration even when they are recalled readily, though this alteration is the less perceptible, perhaps, on account of that very readiness with which they are recalled. But when they are recalled with difficulty, and dragged back slowly, as it were, and by pieces and parcels into the mind, it is no wonder if they receive much greater alteration. They are then in some sort recompounded, and though this may be for the better as well as for the worse, yet still they vary, and every variation of them begets some uncertainty and confusion in our reasoning. Thus it must be, when besides our simple ideas, such numberless collections of simple and complex ideas, and such numberless combinations of all these into notions, are to be held together and to be preserved in their order by so weak a mental faculty as that of retention.
(Essay I, ยง4; vol. iii, p. 419)
(Essay I, ยง4; vol. iii, p. 419)
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
At least 5 entries in ESTC (1754, 1777, 1793).
See "Letters or Essays Addressed to Alexander Pope, Esq." in the third volume of David Mallet's The Works of the Late Right Honorable Henry St. John, Lord Viscount Bolingbroke, 5 vols. (London : [s.n.], Printed in the Year 1754). <Link to ESTC><Link to ESTC>
Text from the third volume of The Works of the Late Right Honorable Henry St. John, Lord Viscount Bolingbroke, 5 vols. (Dublin: Printed by P. Byrne: 1793). <Link to Google Books>
Reading also in the 1967 reprint of The Works of Lord Bolingbroke, 4 vols. (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1844).
See "Letters or Essays Addressed to Alexander Pope, Esq." in the third volume of David Mallet's The Works of the Late Right Honorable Henry St. John, Lord Viscount Bolingbroke, 5 vols. (London : [s.n.], Printed in the Year 1754). <Link to ESTC><Link to ESTC>
Text from the third volume of The Works of the Late Right Honorable Henry St. John, Lord Viscount Bolingbroke, 5 vols. (Dublin: Printed by P. Byrne: 1793). <Link to Google Books>
Reading also in the 1967 reprint of The Works of Lord Bolingbroke, 4 vols. (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1844).
Date of Entry
03/14/2014
