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Tag: custom

  • Actions from neighboring circumstances

    “The surest thing, in my opinion, would be to trace our actions to the neighboring circumstances, without getting into any further research and without drawing from them any other conclusions.” II.1 “Of the inconsistency of our actions” (p. 292) [Makes me think of relational personalities instead of individual. Self as husband, father, son, brother, professor,…

  • Neither good nor useful

    “It is a marvelous testimony of the weakness of our judgment that it recommends things for their rarity or novelty, or even for their difficulty, even if they are neither good nor useful.” I.54 “Of vain subtleties” (p. 274)

  • A kind of mania

    “The present fashion in dress makes them promptly condemn the old, with such great positiveness and such universal agreement that you would think it was a kind of mania that thus turns their understanding upside down…it is inevitable that the despised fashions very often return into favor, and these very ones soon after fall back…

  • Reflecting upon the continual variation of human things

    “I want to pile up here some ancient fashions that I have in my memory, some like ours, others different, to the end that we may strengthen and enlighten our judgment by reflecting upon this continual variation of human things.” I.49 “Of ancient customs” (p.262)

  • Each man calls barbarism whatever

    “I think there is nothing barbarous and savage in that nation . . . except that each man calls barbarism whatever is not his own practice; for indeed it seems we have no other test of truth and reason than the example and pattern of the opinions and customs of the country we live in.”…

  • Disdaining what we do not comprehend

    “It is a dangerous and fateful presumption, besides the absurd temerity that it implies, to disdain what we do not comprehend. For after you have established, according to your fine understanding, the limits of truth and falsehood, and it turns out that you must necessarily believe things even stranger than those you deny, you are…

  • We drink customs with our milk

    “But the principal effect of the power of custom is to seize and ensnare us in such a way that it is hardly within our power to get ourselves back out of its grip and return into ourselves to reflect and reason about its ordinances. In truth, because we drink them with our milk from…