Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“men with common minds seldom break through general rules.”
- Date
- 1796
Meaning of “men with common minds seldom break through general…”
The travel reflection criticizes automatic conformity, suggesting that ordinary caution can keep people from testing whether a rule still makes sense in a particular situation.
Where does it come from?
Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, Letter I; represented Cassell & Company 1889 text in Project Gutenberg #3529, preserving Wollstonecraft’s 1796 travel-letter work. After describing the customary maritime rule against sending out a boat, Wollstonecraft says that “men with common minds seldom break through general rules” while criticizing the captain’s reluctance to depart from convention. This is a first-person travel judgment about a particular situation, not a general empirical claim about ordinary people.
