The child receives data through the sense organs; the child also has some inborn processing capacities--otherwise it would not be ...able to learn--but in addition, some "information" or "programs" are built-in at birth (for example, the child does not have to learn how to suck, for this is an innate reflex); there is a working memory, in which the child keeps those items of knowledge that are being used at a particular moment; and there is a permanent memory, which is, in Locke's terms, largely a "blank tablet" at birth, but which has a storage capacity that makes a hard disk pale into insignificance. The child gradually builds up a symbolic representation of the world around it, so there must be some inner "language" or medium of representation; even a newborn baby is starting to see and taste and smell and hear and touch, and to remember the more striking of its experiences, so the internal medium by which it represents and stores these impressions cannot be the native language (of which it is still ignorant. Jerry Fodor [in The Language of Thought] has discussed this inbuilt "language of thought," which is similar conceptually to the "machine language" that is built into the personal computer and about which most users remain completely ignorant).LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Go bind thou up young dangling apricots Which, like unruly children, make their sire... Stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight. Give some supportance to the bending twigs. Go thou, and like an executioner Cut off the heads of too-fast-growing sprays That look too lofty in our commonwealth. All must be even in our government. You thus employed, I will go root away The noisome weeds which without profit suck The soil's fertility from wholesome flowers.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Emerson was the greater artist. His essays contain some of the most beautiful language in our literature. How Henry James could ha...ve thought he had never developed a "style" is to me one of the mysteries of criticism. Thoreau in Walden comes close to the master, but he falls behind in the homeliness of his details and in the occasional smugness of his social satire. It almost seems as if he were reacting against the chiseled beauty of Emerson's prose. The latter's sentences were so fine that he needed nothing else. They became, like marble statues, part of the garden that was Concord. Their composer, serene, calm, detached, bland in speech and manner, the soft-spoken philosopher revered by all, did not often trouble himself on his strolls in the woods and along the river to pluck the flowers or feed squirrels or even identify the different species of flora and fauna. As Thoreau observed, he wouldn't have been willing to trundle a wheelbarrow through the streets of Concord because it would have seemed out of character. Emerson communed with nature on a spiritual level, using his eyes to take in the landscape and his lungs the fresh air. He had no needs to brace himself with cold or rain or spend the night under the stars.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There are certain stereotypes that are offensive. Some of them don't worry me, though. For instance, I have always thought that Ma...mmy character in Gone with the Wind was mighty funny. And I just loved "Amos 'n' Andy" on the radio. So you see, I have enough confidence in myself that those things did not bother me. I could laugh.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There's plunder--where? Tankard, or spoon,... Earring, or stone, A watch, some ancient brooch To match the grandmamma, Staid sleeping there.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Some keep the Sabbath going to Church-- I keep it, staying at Home--... With a Bobolink for a Chorister-- And an Orchard, for a Dome--LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A set of ideas, a point of view, a frame of reference is in space only an intersection, the state of affairs at some given moment ...in the consciousness of one man or many men, but in time it has evolving form, virtually organic extension. In time ideas can be thought of as sprouting, growing, maturing, bringing forth seed and dying like plants.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It has been the struggle between privileged men who have managed to get hold of the levers of power and the people in general with... their vague and changing aspirations for equality, for justice, for some kind of gentler brotherhood and peace, which has kept that balance of forces we call our system of government in equilibrium.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »