"Intellect, the artificer, works lamely without his proper instrument, sense; which is the case when he works on moral ideas."
— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)
Place of Publication
London
Date
1754
Metaphor
"Intellect, the artificer, works lamely without his proper instrument, sense; which is the case when he works on moral ideas."
Metaphor in Context
But that the precise meaning of moral words can be so fixed and maintained, that the congruity or incongruity of the ideas and notions they stand for shall be always discerned, clearly and uniformly, I do not believe. Definitions, therefore, consisting of words, they cannot answer Mr. Locke's purpose, as it would not be hard to shew in the very instances he brings. Intellect, the artificer, works lamely without his proper instrument, sense; which is the case when he works on moral ideas. Whenever he can employ this instrument, and as far as it can serve him, which is the case when he works on mathematical ideas, he works securely. I apprehend, therefore, that to expect a new method would be ever found, of preserving as steadily and invariably our moral ideas and notions, as we preserve those that are mathematical, is not very different from expecting that a method should be found, sometime or other, of rendering things, that are not objects of sight by nature, visible by art. Ideas and notions of virtue and vice, very clearly defined, have been often confounded by schoolmen and casuists, in the most flagrant cases. They are so still by them and others in most discourses, and in all disputes about political or moral affairs. But no mathematician ever confounded the idea of any triangle with that of a square, nor that of a square with that of a circle.
(Essay I, ยง4; vol. iii, pp. 429-30)
(Essay I, ยง4; vol. iii, pp. 429-30)
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
