"The painted vales of imagination are deserted, and our intellectual activity is exercised in winding through the labyrinths of fallacy, and toiling with firm and cautious steps up the narrow tracks of demonstration."
— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Author
Work Title
Date
August 27, 1751
Metaphor
"The painted vales of imagination are deserted, and our intellectual activity is exercised in winding through the labyrinths of fallacy, and toiling with firm and cautious steps up the narrow tracks of demonstration."
Metaphor in Context
Now commences the reign of judgment or reason; we begin to find little pleasure, but in comparing arguments, stating propositions, disentangling perplexities, clearing ambiguities, and deducing consequences. The painted vales of imagination are deserted, and our intellectual activity is exercised in winding through the labyrinths of fallacy, and toiling with firm and cautious steps up the narrow tracks of demonstration. Whatever may lull vigilance, or mislead attention, is contemptuously rejected, and every disguise in which error may be concealed, is carefully observed, till by degrees a certain number of incontestable or unsuspected propositions are established, and at last concatenated into arguments, or compacted into systems.
Provenance
Reading at The Yale Digital Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson.
Citation
Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, vol. 5 of The Works of Samuel Johnson, eds. W. J. Bate and Albrecht B. Strauss (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1969). <Link to www.yalejohnson.com>
Date of Entry
04/19/2018
