Date: 1732

"You must know, said he, that the mind of man may be fitly compared to a piece of land. What stubbing, ploughing, digging, and harrowing is to the one, that thinking, reflecting, examining is to the other."

— Berkeley, George (1685-1753)

Date: 1732

"Each hath its proper culture; and as land that is suffered to lie waste and wild for a long tract of time will be overspread with brushwood, brambles, thorns, and such vegetables which have neither use nor beauty; even so there will not fail to sprout up in a neglected, uncultivated mind, a grea...

— Berkeley, George (1685-1753)

Date: 1732

"Represent to yourself the man of mind, or human nature in general, that for so many ages had lain obnoxious to the frauds of designing, and the follies of weak men; how it must be overrun with prejudices and errors, what firm and deep roots they must have taken, and consequently how difficult a ...

— Berkeley, George (1685-1753)

Date: 1732

"On the other hand, those who duly employ their faculties in the search of truth, take especial care to weed out of their minds, and extirpate all such notions or prejudices as were planted in them before they arrived at the free and entire use of reason."

— Berkeley, George (1685-1753)

Date: 1732

"You have rooted up a world of notions: I should be glad to see what fine things you have planted in their stead."

— Berkeley, George (1685-1753)

Date: 1732

"Have patience, good Euphranor. I will show you in the first place, that whatever was sound and good we leave untouched, and encourage it to grow in the mind of man. And secondly, I will show you what excellent things we have planted in it."

— Berkeley, George (1685-1753)

Date: 1732

"And suppose that in man, after a certain season, the appetite of lust or the faculty of reason shall shoot forth, open, and display themselves as leaves and blossoms do in a tree; would you therefore deny them to be natural to him, because they did not appear in his original infancy?"

— Berkeley, George (1685-1753)

Date: 1732

" It seems then that from what you have granted it should follow, things may be natural to men, although they do not actually show themselves in all men, nor in equal perfection; there being as great difference of culture and every other advantage with respect to human nature, as is to be found w...

— Berkeley, George (1685-1753)

Date: 1732

"And as those fruits which grow from the most generous and mature stock, in the choicest soil, and with the best culture, are most esteemed; even so ought we not to think, those sublime truths which are the fruits of mature thought, and have been rationally deduced by men of the best and most imp...

— Berkeley, George (1685-1753)

Date: 1732

"And if so, being in fact reasonable, natural, and true, they ought not to be esteemed unnatural whims, errors of education, and groundless prejudices, because they are raised and forwarded by manuring and cultivating our tender minds, because they take early root and sprout forth betimes by the ...

— Berkeley, George (1685-1753)