Note 120 — KING JALI’AD OF HIND AND HIS WAZIR SHIMAS; FOLLOWED BY THE HISTORY OF KING WIRD KHAN, SON OF KING JALI’AD, WITH HIS WOMEN AND WAZIRS.[55] (continued 2)
Richard Francis Burton translation · Edition 2
A fine specimen of a peculiarity in the undeveloped mind of man, the universal confusion between things objective as a dead body and states of things as death. We begin by giving a name, for facility of intercourse, to phases, phenomena and conditions of matter; and, having created the word we proceed to supply it with a fanciful entity, e.g. “The Mind (a useful term to express the aggregate action of the brain, nervous system etc.) of man is immortal.” The next step is personification as Time with his forelock, Death with his skull and Night (the absence of light) with her starry mantle. For poetry this abuse of language is a sine qua non, but it is deadly foe to all true philosophy.