mck@ratex.UUCP (Daniel Kian Mc Kiernan) (04/29/85)
I recently got a copy of *Aphorisms* by W H Auden and Louis Kronenberger.
I do NOT recommend this book. The authors assemble this book by, over the
years, jotting down aphorisms and noting the author, but NOT jotting down
the work cited; thus, it would have been extremely difficult to re-find
the relevant passage to double-check. As a consequence, there are some
SERIOUS ERRORS. For example, the quotation of John Locke on p 353 reads
It is not in the power of the most exalted wit or enlarged
understanding ... to invent or frame one simple new idea.
Here's the actual passage (*An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding* Bk II
Ch ii s 2):
But it is not in the power of the most exalted wit, or enlarged
understanding by any quickness of understanding or variety of thought,
to invent or frame one new simple idea in the mind, not taken in by
the ways before mentioned: nor can any force of the understanding
destroy those that are there.
In *Aphorisms*, the reader is not told that 'simple idea' refers to an
important particular concept, and the rearrangment from 'new simple idea' to
'simple new idea' further distorts the perception.
TNX,
Daniel Kian Mc Kiernan