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Often appears with: reason and the intellect · perception and the senses · language, naming, and meaning · education and the training of the young · the passions and the emotions · fate, destiny, and necessity · doubt, skepticism, and certainty · logic, method, and demonstration · history and the writing of history · will, choice, and freedom · books, libraries, and learning · religious persecution and toleration
Usually: argument (106) · detachment (96) · curiosity (64) · skepticism (48) · reflection (42) · narrative (25) · commentary or gloss (24) · wonder (16) · confronting death (14) · exhortation (11)
“Memory is simply a certain association of ideas involving the nature of things outside the human body, which association arises in the mind according to the order and association of the modifications (affectiones) of the human body.” Benedictus de Spinoza, Ethics — Part 2 · observation
“Repeat it then, Sancho,” said the barber, “and we will write it down afterwards.” Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote · precept
“O poverty, poverty! I know not what could have possessed the great Cordovan poet to call thee ‘holy gift ungratefully received.’ Although a Moor, I know well enough from the intercourse I have had with Christians that holiness consists in charity, humility, faith, obedience, and poverty; but for all that, I say he must have a great deal of godliness who can find any satisfaction in being poor;” Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote · insight
“And thus, Glaucon, the tale has been saved and has not perished, and will save us if we are obedient to the word spoken; and we shall pass safely over the river of Forgetfulness and our soul will not be defiled.” Plato, The Republic · insight
“Feeling her careful attention as an insult to his manliness, he ran back to her in a rage, and beat her, as well as his strength would permit.” James Boswell, Boswell's Life of Johnson · vivid
“The great thing to be recorded, (said he,) is the state of your own mind; and you should write down every thing that you remember, for you cannot judge at first what is good or bad; and write immediately while the impression is fresh, for it will not be the same a week afterwards.” James Boswell, Boswell's Life of Johnson · precept
“I received your foolish and impudent letter. Any violence offered me I shall do my best to repel; and what I cannot do for myself, the law shall do for me. I hope I shall never be deterred from detecting what I think a cheat, by the menaces of a ruffian.” James Boswell, Boswell's Life of Johnson · wit
“Great is this force of memory, excessive great, O my God; a large and boundless chamber! who ever sounded the bottom thereof? yet is this a power of mine, and belongs unto my nature; nor do I myself comprehend all that I am.” Augustine, of Hippo, Saint, The Confessions of St. Augustine · vivid
“The memory then is, as it were, the belly of the mind, and joy and sadness, like sweet and bitter food; which, when committed to the memory, are as it were passed into the belly, where they may be stowed, but cannot taste.” Augustine, of Hippo, Saint, The Confessions of St. Augustine · vivid
“Great is the power of memory, a fearful thing, O my God, a deep and boundless manifoldness; and this thing is the mind, and this am I myself.” Augustine, of Hippo, Saint, The Confessions of St. Augustine · observation
“Many endeavouring to return unto Thee, and of themselves unable, have, as I hear, tried this, and fallen into the desire of curious visions, and been accounted worthy to be deluded.” Augustine, of Hippo, Saint, The Confessions of St. Augustine · observation
“But the true Mediator, Whom in Thy secret mercy Thou hast showed to the humble, and sentest, that by His example also they might learn that same humility, that Mediator between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus, appeared betwixt mortal sinners and the immortal just One; mortal with men, just with God:” Augustine, of Hippo, Saint, The Confessions of St. Augustine · insight
On 27th Pepys marvels at a large stone from Sir Thomas Adams’s body and hears accusations about naval cowardice in the Straits, praising Charles Wager as exemplary.
and that, above all Englishmen that ever were there, there never was any man that behaved himself like poor Charles Wager, whom the very Moores do mention with tears sometimes. 29th. To church; and there did first find a strange reader, who could not find in the Service-book the place for churching women, but was fain to change books with the clerke: and then a stranger preached, a seeming able man; but said in hi…
Thucydides gives a clinical description of the plague’s symptoms, course, and effects, noting memory loss, bodily damage, and that predators avoid or die after consuming victims.
the student, if it should ever break out again. This I can the better do, as I had the disease myself, and watched its operation in the case of others. That year then is admitted to have been otherwise unprecedentedly free from sickness; and such few cases as occurred all determined in this. As a rule, however, there was no ostensible cause; but people in good health were all of a sudden attacked by violent heats in…
Helen recognizes Telemachus as Odysseus’s son by likeness, recounts Odysseus’s Trojans disguise and her oath, while Menelaus and Peisistratus explain Telemachus’s mourning and explain his father’s absence.
whether he be alive or dead. Yea methinks they lament him, even that old Laertes and the constant Penelope and Telemachus, whom he left a child new-born in his house.” So spake he, and in the heart of Telemachus he stirred a yearning to lament his father; and at his father’s name he let a tear fall from his eyelids to the ground, and held up his purple mantle with both his hands before his eyes. And Menelaus marked …
Odysseus continues his account by describing the clothing and entourage of Odysseus at Crete, listing specific tokens, which Penelope recognizes as having been made and given to her husband.
me what manner of raiment he was clothed in about his body, and what manner of man he was himself, and tell me of his fellows that went with him.” Then Odysseus of many counsels answered her saying: “Lady, it is hard for one so long parted from him to tell thee all this, for it is now the twentieth year since he went thither and left my country. Yet even so I will tell thee as I see him in spirit. Goodly Odysseus wo…
The narrative of Odysseus’s youth continues through the origin of the scar: Autolycus and his sons host Odysseus at Parnassus, where Odysseus is injured during a boar chase and later returns to Ithaca with the wound.
to the great house of his mother’s kin at Parnassus, whereby are my possessions, I will give him a gift out of these and send him on his way rejoicing.” Therefore it was that Odysseus went to receive the splendid gifts. And Autolycus and the sons of Autolycus grasped his hands and greeted him with gentle words, and Amphithea, his mother’s mother, clasped him in her arms and kissed his face and both his fair eyes. Th…
He compares hybrids and mongrels beyond fertility, claiming mongrels are more variable in the first generation, explaining variability via sensitive reproductive systems, and arguing that perceived differences often depend on experimental designs and parent histories.
unimportant differences between the so-called hybrid offspring of species, and the so-called mongrel offspring of varieties. And, on the other hand, they agree most closely in very many important respects. I shall here discuss this subject with extreme brevity. The most important distinction is, that in the first generation mongrels are more variable than hybrids; but Gärtner admits that hybrids from species which h…
After the empty tomb, Peter verifies the linen cloth; Jesus joins two disciples on the road to Emmaus, explains Scripture, breaks bread, is recognized, and then appears among the gathered followers.
Then arose Peter and ran unto the sepulchre, and stooped in, And saw the linen clothes laid by them self. And departed wondering in himself at that which had happened. And behold, two of them went that same day to a town, which was from Ierusalem about three score furlongs, called Emaus: and they talked together of all these things that had happened. And it chanced, as they communed together, and reasoned, that Iesu…
Livy contrasts true battlefield outcomes with exaggerated reports that the Romans are panicking, then describes Quinctius’s formation choices (reserves, elephants front) and Philip’s battlefield adjustments.
driven down in disorderly flight, was the Aetolian horsemen. The Aetolians were then by far the best cavalry in Greece; in infantry, they were surpassed by some of their neighbours. 8. This affair was represented as more successful than the advantage gained in the battle could warrant; for people came, one after another, and calling out that the Romans were flying in a panic; so that, though reluctant and hesitating…
After seeing Roman standards and Macedonian flight from a hill, Philip withdraws; Romans mistakenly attack surrendering Macedonians, then routs occur, with massive casualties and conflicting numerical reports attributed to Roman historians.
on their rear. Thus attacked on both sides, they were exposed for some time to great slaughter, and then betook themselves to flight, most of them throwing away their arms. 10. Philip, with a small party of horse and foot, ascended a hill somewhat higher than the rest, to take a view of the situation of his troops on the left. Then, when he saw them flying in confusion, and all the hills around glittering with Roman…
Douglass describes his birthplace in Talbot County’s Eastern Shore district called Tuckahoe near Easton, explains the origin of the name, notes the Choptank River’s role, and estimates his birth around 1817 under slavery’s lack of genealogical records.
PLACE OF BIRTH—CHARACTER OF THE DISTRICT—TUCKAHOE—ORIGIN OF THE NAME—CHOPTANK RIVER—TIME OF BIRTH—GENEALOGICAL TREES—MODE OF COUNTING TIME—NAMES OF GRANDPARENTS—THEIR POSITION—GRANDMOTHER ESPECIALLY ESTEEMED—“BORN TO GOOD LUCK”—SWEET POTATOES—SUPERSTITION—THE LOG CABIN—ITS CHARMS—SEPARATING CHILDREN—MY AUNTS—THEIR NAMES—FIRST KNOWLEDGE OF BEING A SLAVE—OLD MASTER—GRIEFS AND JOYS OF CHILDHOOD—COMPARATIVE HAPPINESS OF …
Don Quixote agrees to attend Chrysostom’s burial, and after the goatherd recommends rest for Pedro’s wound, Don Quixote sleeps while Sancho spends the night thinking of Dulcinea in imitation of Marcela’s lovers.
burial, which will be well worth seeing, for Chrysostom had many friends, and it is not half a league from this place to where he directed he should be buried.” “I will make a point of it,” said Don Quixote, “and I thank you for the pleasure you have given me by relating so interesting a tale.” “Oh,” said the goatherd, “I do not know even the half of what has happened to the lovers of Marcela, but perhaps to-morrow…
Asked to repeat the lost Dulcinea letter from memory, Sancho can only recall a distorted beginning, recites a garbled version multiple times, and then tells of Don Quixote’s plan to become an emperor and make Sancho an officer’s spouse.
he would get him to renew the order, and make a fresh draft on paper, as was usual and customary; for those made in notebooks were never accepted or honoured. Sancho comforted himself with this, and said if that were so the loss of Dulcinea’s letter did not trouble him much, for he had it almost by heart, and it could be taken down from him wherever and whenever they liked. “Repeat it then, Sancho,” said the barber…
Cardenio, recognized by the curate, explains that he is often driven by recollection into a madness-like condition, yet asks them to hear his full story of misfortunes before offering consolation.
As they, both of them, desired nothing more than to hear from his own lips the cause of his suffering, they entreated him to tell it, promising not to do anything for his relief or comfort that he did not wish; and thereupon the unhappy gentleman began his sad story in nearly the same words and manner in which he had related it to Don Quixote and the goatherd a few days before, when, through Master Elisabad, and Don …
Don Quixote defends the truth of chivalric narratives by equating disbelief with denying daylight, listing episodes and famous knights, and claiming relics and family memories prove them.
“Just so,” said the canon. “Well then,” returned Don Quixote, “to my mind it is you who are the one that is out of his wits and enchanted, as you have ventured to utter such blasphemies against a thing so universally acknowledged and accepted as true that whoever denies it, as you do, deserves the same punishment which you say you inflict on the books that irritate you when you read them. For to try to persuade anyb…
At Don Diego de Miranda’s house, Don Quixote recalls Dulcinea through wine-jars from El Toboso, greets Doña Christina and her son, and the translator notes mansion details are omitted.
OF WHAT HAPPENED DON QUIXOTE IN THE CASTLE OR HOUSE OF THE KNIGHT OF THE GREEN GABAN, TOGETHER WITH OTHER MATTERS OUT OF THE COMMON p18a.jpg (133K) Full Size Don Quixote found Don Diego de Miranda’s house built in village style, with his arms in rough stone over the street door; in the patio was the store-room, and at the entrance the cellar, with plenty of wine-jars standing round, which, coming from El Toboso, b…
Don Quixote notes Clavileño’s quiet ride, thanks the duchess, undresses alone, and suffers a burst of stitched green stockings, prompting Cide Hamete’s aside on poverty, starch, and crimped ruffs as he watches the cracks.
restless, wandering from land to land; and by its ashes and the trophy of the placard the valour of the great Don Quixote of La Mancha is established for ever.” Don Quixote renewed his thanks to the duchess; and having supped, retired to his chamber alone, refusing to allow anyone to enter with him to wait on him, such was his fear of encountering temptations that might lead or drive him to forget his chaste fidelit…
Freud explains fetichism as substituting an unfit object for the sexual aim due to overestimation, often rooted in early childhood impressions or unconscious symbolic associations, and discusses how exhibitions and voyeurism become perverse when they disrupt the normal aim.
but we have deferred mention of these until we became acquainted with the factor of sexual overestimation, upon which these manifestations, connected with the relinquishing of the sexual aim, depend. The substitute for the sexual object is generally a part of the body but little adapted for sexual purposes, such as the foot, or hair, or an inanimate object which is in demonstrable relation with the sexual person, an…
Freud references his earlier paper on “Deckerinnerungen” (earliest infantile recollections) and points readers to related work in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life.
of the sexual apparatus, has not been verified. According to Halban (Zeitschrift fuer Geburtshilfe u. Gynaekologie, LIII, 1904) this process of involution ends after a few weeks of extra-uterine life. [7] The expression "sexual latency period" (sexuelle latenz-periode) I have borrowed from W. Fliess. [8] In the case here discussed the sublimation of the sexual motive powers proceed on the road of reaction formation…
Freud explains repression as requiring two cooperating processes, likening it to a tourist being pushed from one side and pulled from the other.
with satisfaction to the fact that direct observation has fully confirmed the conclusion drawn from psychoanalysis, and thus furnishes good evidence for the reliability of the latter method of investigation. Moreover, the "Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-year-old Boy" (Jahrbuch, Bd. 1) has taught us something new for which psychoanalysis had not prepared us, to wit, that sexual symbolism, the representation of the se…
Freud clarifies that sublimation and reaction formation should be distinguished: in the discussed case sublimation happens via reaction formations, but in general they are separate processes.
connected with the voiding of sexual substance there is no production of tension but rather a removal of all tension. Hence, pleasure and sexual tension can be only indirectly connected. *The Role of the Sexual Substance.*--Aside from the fact that only the discharge of the sexual substance can normally put an end to the sexual excitement, there are other essential facts which bring the sexual tension into relation …
He contrasts constitutional predispositions with occasional childhood experiences, arguing they cooperate rather than exclude one another, and emphasizes early childhood sexual experiences and their later regression.
with our task of enumerating the factors which have become known to us as influential for the sexual development, whether they be active forces or merely manifestations of the same. *Prematurity.*--Such a factor is the spontaneous sexual *prematurity* which can be definitely demonstrated at least in the etiology of the neuroses, though in itself it is as little adequate for causation as the other factors. It manifes…
Freud lists factors influencing sexual development—sexual prematurity, temporal sequencing of impulses, and heightened adhesion/fixedness—arguing these early impressions can become fixed via memory traces, producing enduring perversion or neurosis.
are hardly able to suggest. A view is opened here to a deeper phalanx of biological, and perhaps also historical problems, which we have not yet approached within fighting distance. *Adhesion.*--The significance of all premature sexual manifestations is enhanced by a psychic factor of unknown origin which at present can be put down only as a psychological preliminary. I believe that it is the *heightened adhesion* o…
Durkheim claims that because concepts are impersonal and communicable, they are elaborated by the community; language and shared meanings are collective representations that condense knowledge beyond any individual.
the other hand, conversation and all intellectual communication between men is an exchange of concepts. The concept is an essentially impersonal representation; it is through it that human intelligences communicate.[1309] The nature of the concept, thus defined, bespeaks its origin. If it is common to all, it is the work of the community. Since it bears the mark of no particular mind, it is clear that it was elabora…
Gibbon surveys Chinese historical chronologies, the revival under the Han dynasty, and how learning and book preservation developed through ink, paper, and printing.
merit, and his singular adventurers, are still celebrated in China. See the Eloge de Moukden, p. 20, and notes, p. 241—247; and Mémoires sur la Chine, tom. iii. p. 317—360.] 32 (return) [ See Isbrand Ives in Harris’s Collection, vol. ii. p. 931; Bell’s Travels, vol. i. p. 247—254; and Gmelin, in the Hist. Generale des Voyages, tom. xviii. 283—329. They all remark the vulgar opinion that the *holy s…
Díaz explains that he still remembers the appearance and habits of every companion in arms from the Cortés campaigns, comparing his memory to ancient generals and painters, and credits God for preserving him to write.
Cuba; was considered very rich, but miserly. He was an excellent spokesman, and obtained for himself the government of Florida, where, however, he lost both his life and his property. Several curious cavaliers who had read the minute description I have here given respecting the persons and the characters of the officers and soldiers of the courageous and fortunate Don Hernando Cortes, marquis del Valle Oaxaca, inqui…
Montaigne argues that his notoriously unreliable memory makes him seem ungrateful, since friends misread his forgetfulness as malice, and he distinguishes memory from understanding.
OF LIARS There is not a man living whom it would so little become to speak from memory as myself, for I have scarcely any at all, and do not think that the world has another so marvellously treacherous as mine. My other faculties are all sufficiently ordinary and mean; but in this I think myself very rare and singular, and deserving to be thought famous. Besides the natural inconvenience I suffer by it (for, certes…
He claims that if sleeping thoughts are rational yet never remembered, they are pointless like a looking-glass; he argues the soul cannot benefit from thinking that leaves no retrievable traces.
15. Upon this Hypothesis, the Thoughts of a sleeping Man ought to be most rational. To think often, and never to retain it so much as one moment, is a very useless sort of thinking; and the soul, in such a state of thinking, does very little, if at all, excel that of a looking-glass, which constantly receives variety of images, or ideas, but retains none; they disappear and vanish, and there remain no footsteps of t…
Locke argues that frequently refreshed ideas—especially those tied to bodily qualities like solidity, motion, and heat and cold—are hardest to lose and remain clearest in memory.
6. Constantly repeated Ideas can scarce be lost. But concerning the ideas themselves, it is easy to remark, that those that are oftenest refreshed (amongst which are those that are conveyed into the mind by more ways than one) by a frequent return of the objects or actions that produce them, fix themselves best in the memory, and remain clearest and longest there; and therefore those which are of the original qualit…
Locke distinguishes memory’s two defects: oblivion, which causes perfect ignorance by losing an idea entirely, and slowness, which prevents ideas from being retrieved in time for useful reasoning.
and so far it produces perfect ignorance. For, since we can know nothing further than we have the idea of it, when that is gone, we are in perfect ignorance. Secondly, That it moves slowly, and retrieves not the ideas that it has, and are laid up in store, quick enough to serve the mind upon occasion. This, if it be to a great degree, is stupidity; and he who, through this default in his memory, has not the ideas th…
Locke claims memory varies among beings: humans have limits compared with God and superior spirits, and he cites Pascal as forgetting nothing until illness, as an illustration of higher memory.
10. Brutes have Memory. This faculty of laying up and retaining the ideas that are brought into the mind, several other animals seem to have to a great degree, as well as man. For, to pass by other instances, birds learning of tunes, and the endeavours one may observe in them to hit the notes right, put it past doubt with me, that they have perception, and retain ideas in their memories, and use them for patterns. F…
Locke argues that brutes have memory by claiming birds learn and refine tunes over time using retained ideas, which he says cannot be explained by mere mechanical motion during sound.
OF DISCERNING, AND OTHER OPERATIONS OF THE MIND. 1. No Knowledge without Discernment. Another faculty we may take notice of in our minds is that of DISCERNING and DISTINGUISHING between the several ideas it has. It is not enough to have a confused perception of something in general. Unless the mind had a distinct perception of different objects and their qualities, it would be capable of very little knowledge, thou…
Locke reiterates that our notions of hours, days, and years are ideas of periodic motions we recall; therefore we can measure past durations though the measured motion never coexisted with the thing.
4. Why Men more easily admit infinite Duration than infinite Expansion. Hence I think we may learn the reason why every one familiarly and without the least hesitation speaks of and supposes Eternity, and sticks not to ascribe INFINITY to DURATION; but it is with more doubting and reserve that many admit or suppose the INFINITY OF SPACE. The reason whereof seems to me to be this,—That duration and extension being us…
Locke notes people date the world’s age differently and claims that varying reckoning doesn’t prevent imagining and comparing durations; measuring time doesn’t require co-existence between the thing measured and the motion used.
of those infinite abysses of space and duration, set out or supposed to be distinguished from the rest, by marks and known boundaries, have each of them a twofold acceptation. FIRST, Time in general is commonly taken for so much of infinite duration as is measured by, and co-existent with, the existence and motions of the great bodies of the universe, as far as we know anything of them: and in this sense time begins…
Locke explains why children do not count early: they lack names and the mental faculty to retain ordered numeral progressions; counting requires careful retention of each unit-step.
7. Why Children number not earlier. Thus children, either for want of names to mark the several progressions of numbers, or not having yet the faculty to collect scattered ideas into complex ones, and range them in a regular order, and so retain them in their memories, as is necessary to reckoning, do not begin to number very early, nor proceed in it very far or steadily, till a good while after they are well furnis…
Locke outlines modes of thinking derived from reflection, defining sensation, remembrance, recollection, contemplation, reverie, attention, intention/study, dreaming, and ecstasy as distinct mental modifications.
OF THE MODES OF THINKING. 1. Sensation, Remembrance, Contemplation, &c., modes of thinking. When the mind turns its view inwards upon itself, and contemplates its own actions, THINKING is the first that occurs. In it the mind observes a great variety of modifications, and from thence receives distinct ideas. Thus the perception or thought which actually accompanies, and is annexed to, any impression on the body, ma…
Locke argues that attention varies in waking thought, dreaming shows looser thinking, and sleep ends ideas, so thinking seems an activity of the soul rather than its essence.
3. The various degrees of Attention in thinking. But perhaps it may not be an unpardonable digression, nor wholly impertinent to our present design, if we reflect here upon the different state of the mind in thinking, which those instances of attention, reverie, and dreaming, &c., before mentioned, naturally enough suggest. That there are ideas, some or other, always present in the mind of a waking man, every one’s …
He distinguishes mixed modes as fleeting combinations existing mainly in minds, but treated as stable because their names trigger the ideas, such as TRIUMPH and APOTHEOSIS.
10. Motion, Thinking, and Power have been most modified. It is worth our observing, which of all our simple ideas have been MOST modified, and had most mixed ideas made out of them, with names given to them. And those have been these three:—THINKING and MOTION (which are the two ideas which comprehend in them all action,) and POWER, from whence these actions are conceived to flow. These simple ideas, I say, of think…
Locke introduces collective ideas of substances—such as an army or the world—formed by the mind’s power to compose many particulars into one idea that functions for thinking and discourse.
OF RELATION. 1. Relation, what. BESIDES the ideas, whether simple or complex, that the mind has of things as they are in themselves, there are others it gets from their comparison one with another. The understanding, in the consideration of anything, is not confined to that precise object: it can carry any idea as it were beyond itself, or at least look beyond it, to see how it stands in conformity to any other. Wh…
Locke begins a new chapter explaining that some ideas are clear or obscure and some distinct or confused, comparing mental clarity to how well vision shows figures and colours.
5. Objection. If no idea be confused, but such as is not sufficiently distinguishable from another from which it should be different, it will be hard, may any one say, to find anywhere a CONFUSED idea. For, let any idea be as it will, it can be no other but such as the mind perceives it to be; and that very perception sufficiently distinguishes it from all other ideas, which cannot be other, i.e. different, without …
Locke explains obscurity’s causes as dull organs, faint or transient impressions, or weak memory, and defines distinct ideas as those perceived as different from all others while confused ones are not.
8. Secondly, or their simple ones jumbled disorderly together. Secondly, Another fault which makes our ideas confused is, when, though the particulars that make up any idea are in number enough, yet they are so jumbled together, that it is not easily discernible whether it more belongs to the name that is given it than to any other. There is nothing properer to make us conceive this confusion than a sort of pictures…
Locke argues that custom fixes strong associations of ideas not naturally connected, making mental trains run smoothly like practiced bodily motions, illustrated by a musician’s tune-triggered sequence.
8. Influence of association to be watched educating young children. I mention this, not out of any great necessity there is in this present argument to distinguish nicely between natural and acquired antipathies; but I take notice of it for another purpose, viz. that those who have children, or the charge of their education, would think it worth their while diligently to watch, and carefully to prevent the undue con…
He claims that many human sympathies and antipathies work like natural ones because past chance pairings become inseparable, though some antipathies are truly natural and some merely misattributed early impressions.
13. Why Time cures some Disorders in the Mind, which Reason cannot cure. When this combination is settled, and while it lasts, it is not in the power of reason to help us, and relieve us from the effects of it. Ideas in our minds, when they are there, will operate according to their natures and circumstances. And here we see the cause why time cures certain affections, which reason, though in the right, and allowed …
Locke says that by habit words quickly trigger ideas much like sensory impressions, but people often use words without ensuring their proper significations, leading to noise without meaning.
7. Words are often used without Signification, and Why. Secondly, That though the proper and immediate signification of words are ideas in the mind of the speaker, yet, because by familiar use from our cradles, we come to learn certain articulate sounds very perfectly, and have them readily on our tongues, and always at hand in our memories, but yet are not always careful to examine or settle their significations pe…
Locke explains how general words arise by abstraction from particular ideas, tracing the child’s growth from specific names (nurse, mamma) to increasingly general terms like man, animal, and being.
9. General natures are nothing but abstract and partial ideas of more complex ones. That this is the way whereby men first formed general ideas, and general names to them, I think is so evident, that there needs no other proof of it but the considering of a man's self, or others, and the ordinary proceedings of their minds in knowledge. And he that thinks GENERAL NATURES or NOTIONS are anything else but such abstrac…
Locke distinguishes actual knowledge from habitual knowledge, and argues habitual knowledge comes in degrees: either immediate remembered intuition of relations or remembered certainty after demonstration.
5. Secondly, Of abstract Relations between ideas. SECONDLY, the next sort of agreement or disagreement the mind perceives in any of its ideas may, I think, be called RELATIVE, and is nothing but the perception of the RELATION between any two ideas, of what kind soever, whether substances, modes, or any other. For, since all distinct ideas must eternally be known not to be the same, and so be universally and constant…
Locke explains intuitive knowledge as immediate perception and demonstrative knowledge as certainty reached through intervening ideas and proofs, noting demonstration’s steps and reliance on memory can reduce clarity.
is ACTUAL KNOWLEDGE, which is the present view the mind has of the agreement or disagreement of any of its ideas, or of the relation they have one to another. II. A man is said to know any proposition, which having been once laid before his thoughts, he evidently perceived the agreement or disagreement of the ideas whereof it consists; and so lodged it in his memory, that whenever that proposition comes again to be …
Locke argues that each step of demonstrative reasoning must rest on an intuitive grasp of agreement in intermediate ideas, and that failing to track all parts leads people to mistake falsehood for demonstration.
ideas. And this is in all those truths whereof we have an intuitive knowledge; where the ideas themselves, by an immediate view, discover their agreement or disagreement one with another. Secondly, The other is of such truths whereof the mind having been convinced, it RETAINS THE MEMORY OF THE CONVICTION, WITHOUT THE PROOFS. Thus, a man that remembers certainly that he once perceived the demonstration, that the thre…
Near the end of his life, Yule resigns from the India Council in 1889, spends final months collecting revisions and visiting friends, receives a Paris nomination from the Institute of France, and dies amid his final acknowledgements.
attire, on the yellow robes of the Sorbonne, and the Palms of the Institute of France! Pasteur was, he wrote, the one most enthusiastically acclaimed of all who received degrees. I think it was about the same time that M. Renan was in England, and called upon Sir Henry Maine, Yule, and others at the India Office. On meeting just after, the colleagues compared notes as to their distinguished but unwieldy visitor. “It…
The passage compares conflicting measurements and related traditions about Adam’s footprints on Adam’s Peak, notes surviving pilgrimage chains and inscriptions, and explains the discrepancies via changing size with believers’ faith.
(*Daniel Parthey*, Nürnberg, 1698) also speaks of the tomb of Adam and his sons on the mountain. (See *Fabricius, Cod. Pseudep. Vet. Test.* II. 31; also _Ouseley’s Travels_, I. 59.) It is a perplexing circumstance that there is a double set of indications about the footmark. The Ceylon traditions, quoted above from Hardy, call its length 3 inches less than a carpenter’s cubit. Modern observers estimate it at 5…
John Adams (2 June 1776) records garden food-time observations, then explains he has begun keeping a folio copybook to preserve correspondence and verify whether letters miscarry.
me know that Harry will call upon him to-morrow and take this letter for me. I would not have you anxious about me. I make out better than I did. I took a ride last week, and ventured just as far as the stump of Liberty Tree. Roxbury looks more injured than Boston. That is, the houses look more torn to pieces. I was astonished at the extent of our lines and their strength. We have taken a most noble prize, the inve…
Nietzsche says philosophers’ ideas recur within a hidden system, arguing that philosophers “re-recognize” ancient patterns of thought and that grammar and language families shape philosophical development.
spell of certain grammatical functions is ultimately also the spell of PHYSIOLOGICAL valuations and racial conditions.--So much by way of rejecting Locke's superficiality with regard to the origin of ideas. 21. The CAUSA SUI is the best self-contradiction that has yet been conceived, it is a sort of logical violation and unnaturalness; but the extravagant pride of man has managed to entangle itself profoundly and fr…
Freud treats Leonardo’s “vulture in the cradle” recollection as an infantile memory that is actually a later-created phantasy shaped by psychological needs, drawing an analogy to how nations write and reshape early history through later motives.
was still in the cradle, a vulture came down to me, he opened my mouth with his tail and struck me a few times with his tail against my lips._"[25] We have here an infantile memory and to be sure of the strangest sort. It is strange on account of its content and account of the time of life in which it was fixed. That a person could retain a memory of the nursing period is perhaps not impossible, but it can in no way…
Freud offers a mechanism for Leonardo’s vulture phantasy: reading church fathers or natural-science works about female-only vultures and wind impregnation triggers a transformed memory of being mothered without a father, reinforced by Christian imagery of the Christ child.
were "almost all" in the habit of relating this vulture fable, and now it can hardly remain doubtful that it also became known to Leonardo through so powerful a source. The origin of Leonardo's vulture phantasy can be conceived in the following manner: While reading in the writings of a church father or in a book on natural science that the vultures are all females and that they know to procreate without the cooeper…
Freud argues that the infant’s fantasy of a maternal penis underlies Leonardo’s vulture-tail image and that the nursing scene implies a homosexual character in later life, supported by psychoanalytic patterns in homosexual patients.
genital worship could be demonstrated until quite recent times, and that language, customs and superstitions of present day humanity contain the remnants of all phases of this course of development.[38] Important biological analogies have taught us that the psychic development of the individual is a short repetition of the course of development of the race, and we shall therefore not find improbable what the psychoa…
Freud analyzes a diary entry dated July 9, 1504 about the death of Leonardo’s father, treating a repeated time expression as “perseveration” betraying suppressed affect.
mercoledi, a ore 7 mori Ser Piero da Vinci notalio al palazzo del Potesta, mio padre, a ore 7. Era d'eta d'anni 80, lascio 10 figlioli maschi e 2 feminine."[64] The notice as we see deals with the death of Leonardo's father. The slight error in its form consists in the fact that in the computation of the time "at 7 o'clock" is repeated two times, as if Leonardo had forgotten at the end of the sentence that he had al…
Freud claims that Leonardo’s late-life recovery of creative drive came from meeting a woman who revived memories of his mother’s smile, enabling Leonardo to overcome artistic inhibition, after which his intellect later reached a high view of life.
certain traits which betrayed the activity of unconscious impulses; this was seen in his insatiability, his regardless obstinacy, and in his lack of ability to adjust himself to actual conditions. At the summit of his life, in the age of the first fifties, at a time when the sex characteristics of the woman have already undergone a regressive change, and when the libido in the man not infrequently ventures into an e…
Marcus explains how to maintain a purged disciplined mind, use opinion rightly, remember life’s smallness and fleeting fame, and repeatedly examine each mental object in its parts and true use.
only reject it; and from this thy tenet and conclusion keep off carefully all plausible shows and colours of external appearance, that thou mayest be able to discern things rightly. VIII. Never esteem of anything as profitable, which shall ever constrain thee either to break thy faith, or to lose thy modesty; to hate any man, to suspect, to curse, to dissemble, to lust after anything, that requireth the secret of wa…
He portrays memory as vast and organized, filled with sensory images and retrieved by will, then distinguishes bodily images from concepts that are grasped and stored as things known within the mind.
one mind, do through them enact. I will pass beyond this power of mine also; for this also have the horse, and mule, for they also perceive through the body. I will pass then beyond this power of my nature also, rising by degrees unto Him Who made me. And I come to the fields and spacious palaces of my memory, where are the treasures of innumerable images, brought into it from things of all sorts perceived by the se…
Augustine continues describing memory’s treasures, how it stores both experiences and learned knowledge, how speech and imagination draw up images, and compares the mind’s inward space to the marvels of the world.
discern the breath of lilies from violets, though smelling nothing; and I prefer honey to sweet wine, smooth before rugged, at the time neither tasting nor handling, but remembering only. These things do I within, in that vast court of my memory. For there are present with me, heaven, earth, sea, and whatever I could think on therein, besides what I have forgotten. There also meet I with myself, and recall myself, a…
He argues that memory retains not just images of sensed objects but also truths of disciplines, and he explains how people know universal meanings without sensory images, despite different languages for the sounds.
with mine eyes I beheld them; nor are they themselves with me, but their images only. And I know by what sense of the body each was impressed upon me. Yet not these alone does the unmeasurable capacity of my memory retain. Here also is all, learnt of the liberal sciences and as yet unforgotten; removed as it were to some inner place, which is yet no place: nor are they the images thereof, but the things themselves. …