Sniffing Paint

[py3ak]

S.T. Coleridge, Aids to Reflection:

The indisposition, nay, the angry aversion to think, even in persons who are most willing to attend, and on the subjects to which they are giving studious attention, as political economy, biblical theology, classical antiquities, and the like,--is the phenomenon that forces itself on my notice afresh, every time I enter into the society of persons of in the higher ranks. To assign a feeling and a determination of will, as a satisfactory reason for embracing or rejecting this or that opinion or belief, is of ordinary occurrence, and sure to obtain the suffrages of the company. And yet to me this seems little less irrational than to apply the nose to a picture, and to decide on its genuineness by the sense of smell.

This frustration is probably shared by nearly everyone who has attempted to reason with someone about the grounds of their acceptance or rejection of a particular idea.

 

[a mere housewife]

You only like that quote because you don't eat enough vegetables.

 

[PuritanCovenanter]

Do you mean he is sniffing brussel sprouts and turns his nose up at them?

 

[earl40]

This is a quote which I will use with some of the subjects that are referenced. Who knows if The Lord may jar them out of the slumber they reside in.

 

[VictorBravo]

is the phenomenon that forces itself on my notice afresh. every time I enter into the society of persons of in the higher ranks.

Did he really put a period after "afresh" and start the next phrase lowercase?

 

[py3ak]

No, that was a transcription error.

 

[MW]

A part of the frustration for Coleridge may have been the standard of his reasoning. William Maxwell Hetherington stated in his lecture on Coleridge and his Followers:

We are thus led to consider the application which Coleridge made of his philosophical system to theology. And in the very outset we must say that we have often deplored his constant and persevering attempts, not only to express scriptural doctrines in the language of philosophy, but to translate or transmute the words of Scripture into the scholastic terms of philosophy, till by such transmutation Scripture and transcendentalism seemed to be the same thing. That reason will never contradict revelation we very confidently believe; but it does not follow either that reason is the standard and test of revelation, or that reason can anticipate and supersede the necessity of revelation. Yet in this very point Coleridge has, as we think, fallen into grievous and pernicious error in consequence of his adoption of Kant's theory of "practical reason."

 

[JoannaV]

If a Rubens smells of fresh paint I assume it to be a Bat forgery.