Literary notes about mental (AI summary)
The term "mental" in literary contexts is employed with remarkable versatility, often extending beyond mere descriptions of cognitive capacity to evoke a range of inner states. For instance, early texts link mental qualities with moral and societal influence ([1]), while novels use it to contrast characters’ intellectual prowess and internal struggles ([2], [3]). It appears in both philosophical discussions of cognition and in depictions of distress or deficiency, as seen when it characterizes the conditions of mental anguish or decline ([4], [5]). Moreover, authors employ the adjective to denote the dynamics of thought processes, creative exercise, and even the development of personality ([6], [7], [8]), thereby establishing “mental” as a dynamic bridge between intellectual, emotional, and social dimensions in literature.
- How can society be otherwise than a gainer by the increased moral and mental influence of one-half of its members?
— from History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I - Pierre maintained the contrary, and as his mental faculties were greater and more resourceful, Nicholas felt himself cornered.
— from War and Peace by graf Leo Tolstoy - Another boy stood up, and eyed the letter very hard while Squeers made a mental abstract of the same.
— from Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens - If they are lacking in the mind, we find every degree of mental deficiency, every variety of insanity.
— from Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic by Henri Bergson - When—" Here there was a sudden fainting attack of his cough, brought on, no doubt, by his mental distress.
— from The Piazza Tales by Herman Melville - Simply as a mental exercise, without any assertion that it is true, let me indicate a possible line of thought.
— from The Valley of Fear by Arthur Conan Doyle - The outline pattern of mental life is thus set in the first four or five years.
— from How We Think by John Dewey - The higher the activity the more purely mental is it; the less does it have to do with physical things or with the body.
— from Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education by John Dewey
