"When two objects have frequently been seen together, the imagination acquires a habit of passing easily from the one to the other."
— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)
Author
Work Title
Place of Publication
London and Edinburgh
Publisher
Printed for A. Millar, A. Kincaid, and J. Bell
Date
1759
Metaphor
"When two objects have frequently been seen together, the imagination acquires a habit of passing easily from the one to the other."
Metaphor in Context
When two objects have frequently been seen together, the imagination acquires a habit of passing easily from the one to the other. If the first appears we lay our account that the second is to follow. Of their own accord they put us in mind of one another, and the attention glides easily along them. Tho' independent of custom, there should be no real beauty in their union, yet when custom has thus connected them together, we feel an impropriety in their separation. The one we think is aukward when it appears without its usual companion. We miss something which we expected to find, and the habitual arangement of our ideas is disturbed by the disappointment. A suit of cloaths, for example, seems to want something if they are without the most insignificant ornament which usually accompanies them, and we find a meanness or aukwardness in the absence even of a haunch button. When there is any natural propriety in the union, custom increases our sense of it, and makes a different arangement appear still more disagreeable than it would otherwise seem to be. Those who have been accustomed to see things in a good taste are more disgusted by whatever is clumsy or aukward. Where the conjunction is improper, custom either diminishes or takes away altogether our sense of the impropriety. Those who have been accustomed to slovenly disorder lose all sense of neatness or elegance. The modes of furniture or dress which seem ridiculous to strangers give no offence to the people who are used to them.
(pp. 371-3; cf. p. 194 in Liberty Fund ed.)
(pp. 371-3; cf. p. 194 in Liberty Fund ed.)
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
10 entries in the ESTC (1759, 1761, 1764, 1767, 1774, 1777, 1781, 1790, 1792, 1793, 1797). A revised title with a complicated textual history.
See The Theory of Moral Sentiments: By Adam Smith (London: Printed for A. Millar; and A. Kincaid and J. Bell, in Edinburgh, 1759). <Link to ESTC><Link to ECCO-TCP>
Reading Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. D.D. Raphael and A.L. Macfie (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1984).
See The Theory of Moral Sentiments: By Adam Smith (London: Printed for A. Millar; and A. Kincaid and J. Bell, in Edinburgh, 1759). <Link to ESTC><Link to ECCO-TCP>
Reading Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. D.D. Raphael and A.L. Macfie (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1984).
Date of Entry
06/19/2014
