"But yet so difficult is the intellectual commerce, so narrow the intellectual fund, that the wisest men are frequently obliged to employ their money like counters, and their counters like money, in one case, however, without loss, in the other without fraud. We may be said to do the first, that is, to employ our money like counters, when we employ ideas of one kind to mark and suggest ideas of another. We employ, as it were, in this case, good and current money of one species, to compute and fix the sum payable in another: and thus guineas may stand in the place of shillings, or shillings serve to represent guineas."
— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)
Place of Publication
London
Date
1754
Metaphor
"But yet so difficult is the intellectual commerce, so narrow the intellectual fund, that the wisest men are frequently obliged to employ their money like counters, and their counters like money, in one case, however, without loss, in the other without fraud. We may be said to do the first, that is, to employ our money like counters, when we employ ideas of one kind to mark and suggest ideas of another. We employ, as it were, in this case, good and current money of one species, to compute and fix the sum payable in another: and thus guineas may stand in the place of shillings, or shillings serve to represent guineas."
Metaphor in Context
Another example of the same kind it may be proper to consider. Hobbes says somewhere, that words are the counters of wise men, and the money of fools. The observation is just, and the expression happy. Ideas and notions are the money of wise men, and they pay with these; whilst they mark and compute, with words, the money of fools. But yet so difficult is the intellectual commerce, so narrow the intellectual fund, that the wisest men are frequently obliged to employ their money like counters, and their counters like money, in one case, however, without loss, in the other without fraud. We may be said to do the first, that is, to employ our money like counters, when we employ ideas of one kind to mark and suggest ideas of another. We employ, as it were, in this case, good and current money of one species, to compute and fix the sum payable in another: and thus guineas may stand in the place of shillings, or shillings serve to represent guineas. This happens whenever we make use of figures, and figures are so interwoven into language, that they make up a great part of our discourse, and a greater than is commonly apprehended.
(Essay I, ยง5; vol. iii, p. 444)
(Essay I, ยง5; vol. iii, p. 444)
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
