Читать книгу Aids to Reflection; and, The Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit - Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Страница 43

It was customary with religious men in former times, to make a rule of taking every morning some text, or aphorism,[27] for their occasional meditation during the day, and thus to fill up the intervals of their attention to business. I do not point it out for imitation, as knowing too well, how apt these self-imposed rules are to degenerate into superstition or hollowness; otherwise I would have recommended the following as the first exercise.

[27] In accordance with a preceding remark, on the use of etymology in disciplining the youthful mind to thoughtful habits, and as consistent with the title of this work, 'Aids to Reflection,' I shall offer no apology for the following and similar notes:

Aphorism, determinate position, from the Greek, ap, from; and horizein, to bound or limit; whence our horizon.—In order to get the full sense of a word, we should first present to our minds the visual image that forms its primary meaning. Draw lines of different colours round the different counties of England, and then cut out each separately, as in the common play-maps that children take to pieces and put together—so that each district can be contemplated apart from the rest, as a whole in itself. This twofold act of circumscribing, and detaching, when it is exerted by the mind on subjects of reflection and reason, is to aphorize, and the result an aphorism.