FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138  
139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   >>  
and not missed from it. While this form of nonsense is conveyed in the popular use of words, there must be plenty of well-dressed ignorance at leisure to run through a box of books, which will feel itself initiated in the freemasonry of intellect by a view of life which might take for a Shaksperian motto-- "Fair is foul and foul is fair, Hover through the fog and filthy air"-- and will find itself easily provided with striking conversation by the rule of reversing all the judgments on good and evil which have come to be the calendar and clock-work of society. But let our habitual talk give morals their full meaning as the conduct which, in every human relation, would follow from the fullest knowledge and the fullest sympathy--a meaning perpetually corrected and enriched by a more thorough appreciation of dependence in things, and a finer sensibility to both physical and spiritual fact--and this ridiculous ascription of superlative power to minds which have no effective awe-inspiring vision of the human lot, no response of understanding to the connection between duty and the material processes by which the world is kept habitable for cultivated man, will be tacitly discredited without any need to cite the immortal names that all are obliged to take as the measure of intellectual rank and highly-charged genius. Suppose a Frenchman--I mean no disrespect to the great French nation, for all nations are afflicted with their peculiar parasitic growths, which are lazy, hungry forms, usually characterised by a disproportionate swallowing apparatus: suppose a Parisian who should shuffle down the Boulevard with a soul ignorant of the gravest cares and the deepest tenderness of manhood, and a frame more or less fevered by debauchery, mentally polishing into utmost refinement of phrase and rhythm verses which were an enlargement on that Shaksperian motto, and worthy of the most expensive title to be furnished by the vendors of such antithetic ware as _Les_ _marguerites de l'Enfer_, or _Les delices de Beelzebuth_. This supposed personage might probably enough regard his negation of those moral sensibilities which make half the warp and woof of human history, his indifference to the hard thinking and hard handiwork of life, to which he owed even his own gauzy mental garments with their spangles of poor paradox, as the royalty of genius, for we are used to witness such self-crowning in many forms of mental alienation; but he
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138  
139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   >>  



Top keywords:
Shaksperian
 

fullest

 

meaning

 

genius

 

mental

 
deepest
 
Frenchman
 

tenderness

 
disrespect
 

manhood


mentally

 

utmost

 
charged
 

refinement

 
phrase
 

polishing

 
fevered
 
debauchery
 

Suppose

 

French


peculiar

 

parasitic

 

swallowing

 

afflicted

 

apparatus

 

growths

 

characterised

 

hungry

 

disproportionate

 

suppose


Parisian

 
Boulevard
 

ignorant

 

gravest

 

nation

 
shuffle
 

nations

 
marguerites
 

handiwork

 
thinking

indifference
 

history

 
garments
 
spangles
 

crowning

 

alienation

 
witness
 

paradox

 
royalty
 

sensibilities