★ Keep up to date with the latest news - subscribe to the Transcribe Bentham newsletter; Find a new page to transcribe in our list of Untranscribed Manuscripts
Prelud. XVII.
and where the figure they make in a whole
Instrument Act is represented may be seen at large.
Simple is is the proposition itself, that Voluminousness is not the means cause to insure either accuracy or amplitude the proof of
it drawn from this thesis must at any rate be long: and it will
rise in strength in proportion to the number
of examples that can be furnished.
The Analysis of this one subject thesis will furnish
examples of so many of the several species of
vitiosity as one instrument [can] contains:
and it may be perceived that there is that
analogy between this and the general run
of others that . . . . is not less more a true picture
of this, than it is of them.
Those who are inexperienced have but little experience may, at least suspect it as much: & those
who have much will know it this [to be so: the case]
---page break---
That the all the wordiness bestow'd upon the
Instrument, not having being regard compensated
by meeting with no compensation in any any superiority in amplitude or precision,
is merely gratuitous.
The time for judging is spent in the recollecting. The first edge of the mind is blunted upon these foreign
The time & stock of vigour stand up for the exercise of the judgment
is spent wasted on in the labour of the memory
The first & most exertion wasted upon &c
Whether the selection be made from
the materials articles which are lodged in the
storehouse of the memory, or from those
committed to writing, each irrelevant article must that in
presents itself in the course of the disquisition
must present itself, and for the judgment
which pronounces its irrelevance
to be formed. encounter the difficulties of the subject fresh with it's whole strength fresh & unbroken with desultory skirmishes
Added to the task of bringing those the few that are
relevant into view, & pronouncing the judgment
---page break---
of their relevance is that of bringing into the view the much
greater number of those that will obtrude
themselves in one case and are already
deposited in the other case, are deposited with them & pronouncing
the judgment of their irrelevance All these several objects which it meets with in its causes
Meantime a more than ordinary steadiness
is often necessary to the mind attention to resist the
foreign sollicitations of all those from irrelevant objects
which tend to reduce it from it's proper
path in the it's course of this progress. prevent being reduced out of it's path into another or different one
No hand so steady nimble as in this
case to keep pace with the motions of
the eye. As all men are not gifted with an equal of attention;
The mind is called off
Even these little efforts in which the
mind is obliged to make in order to surmount
the little difficulties that occur
in the execution of the mechanical
process are sometimes sufficient to
make a breach in the thread of the investigation
that can never at least that cannot without difficulty & loss of time be repaired:
a thought, howsoever narrowly watched will
make it's escape while the attention is a leaf is turning over.
in or separating from those to which it a
---page break---
These synoptic wars supply the defects of memory
and imagination, & while they raise
many others to the capacity of forming an accurate
judgment more than otherwise would have
been capable, tend to banish these inequalities
of natural talent between men of business,
give an ascendant to the few
too often adverse in the employment made of it to the
interests of Society. too apt to be misemployed to [put to the profit of] private purposes.
In Books the Book form, the order in which the
parts of a discourse are exhibited upon the
paper, tho' it should be the very same with that
which is called for, tho' it were undisturbed by
the intervention of any heterogeneous, is yet
broken by the mechanical divisions.
But it is not one order alone that can
suffice for all the various & changing purposes
of the mind which
unless it can traverse it's subject in all directions
leap from article to article, by how many
intermediate articles soever separated.
|
Identifier: | JB/095/018/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 95.
|
|||
|---|---|---|---|
|
095 |
|||
|
018 |
prelud. xvii |
||
|
001 |
|||
|
text sheet |
1 |
||
|
recto |
|||
|
jeremy bentham |
[[watermarks::gr [crown motif] [lion with vryheyt motif]]] |
||
|
30904 |
|||