scientific men, too mindful of abstract theories to make practical innovations, find themselves suddenly confronted with some new application of those theories, or some complete reversal of them. These audacious exhibitions of scientific heterodoxy have of late years been more common in America. The active, volatile, knowing States' man is as little disposed to submit to antiquated authority in intellectual matters as in political affairs. Household Words. power, that is so useful towards the conserva- in their forecastings, to their own great pecuniary tion of a vast, disconnected, infinitely diversified disadvantage and the edification of a censorious empire, with that liberty and safety of the prov-world, so will it frequently occur that professed inces which they must enjoy (in opinion and practice at least) or they will not be provinces at all. I know, and have long felt, the difficulty of reconciling the unwieldy haughtiness of a great ruling nation, habituated to command, pampered by enormous wealth, and confident from a long course of prosperity and victory, to the high spirit of free dependencies, animated with the first glow and activity of juvenile heat, and assuming to themselves, as their birthright, some part of that very pride which oppresses them. They who perceive no difficulty in reconciling these tempers (which, however, to make peace, must some way or other be reconciled) are much above my capacity, or much below the magnitude of the business. Of one thing I am perfectly clear: that it is not by deciding the suit, but by compromising the difference, that peace can be restored or kept. They who would put an end to such quarrels by declaring roundly in favour of the whole demands of either party have mistaken, in my humble opinion, the office of a mediator. BURKE: Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol, 1777. I am beyond measure surprised that you seem to feel no sort of terror at the awfulness of the situation in which you are placed by Providence, or into which you thought proper to intrude yourselves. A whole people culprit! Nations under accusation! A tribunal erected for commonwealths! This is no vulgar idea, and no trivial undertaking; it makes me shudder. I confess that, in comparison of the magnitude of the situation, I feel myself shrunk to nothing. Next to that tremendous day in which it is revealed that the saints of God shall judge the world, I know nothing that fills my mind with greater apprehension; and yet I see the matter trifled with, as if it were the beaten routine, an ordinary quarter-session, or a paltry course of common gaol-delivery. BURKE: AMUSEMENTS. The next method, therefore, that I would propose to fill up our time, should be useful and innocent diversions. I must confess, I think it is below reasonable creatures to be altogether innocent, and have nothing else to recommend conversant in such diversions as are merely them but that there is no hurt in them. Whether any kind of gaming has even thus much to say for itself I shall not determine; but I think it is very wonderful to see persons of the best sense passing away a dozen hours together in shuffling and dividing a pack of cards, with no other conversation but what is made up of a few game phrases, and no other ideas but those of black or red spots ranged together in different figures. Would not a man laugh to hear any one of this species complaining that life is short? ADDISON: Spectator, No. 93. disembitter the minds of men and make them Encourage such innocent amusements as may mutually rejoice in the same agreeable satisfac tions. ADDISON. Whatever amuses serves to kill time, to lull the faculties, and to banish reflection. Whatever entertains usually awakens the understanding or gratifies the fancy. Whatever diverts is lively in its nature, and sometimes tumultuous in its effects. CRABB: Synonymes. On the Measures against the American Colonies: Corresp., 1844, iv. 488. Everything has been done [in your History It is a private opinion of mine that the dull of America] which was so naturally to be ex- people in this country-no matter whether they pected from the author of the History of Scot-belong to the Lords or the Commons-are the land, and the age of Charles the Fifth. I believe few books have done more than this towards clearing up dark points, correcting errors, and removing prejudices. You have, too, the rare secret of rekindling an interest in subjects that had been so often treated, and in which everything that could feed a vital flame appeared to have been consumed. I am sure I read many parts of your history with that fresh concern and anxiety which attends those who are not previously informed of the event. people who, privately as well as publicly, govern when it interferes with no greater, especially as Analysis and synthesis, though commonly treated as two different methods, are, if properly understood, only the two necessary parts of the same method. Each is the relative and correlative of the other SIR W. HAMILTON. The investigation of difficult things by the method of analysis ought ever to precede the method of composition. SIR I. NEWTON. The word Analysis signifies the general and particular heads of a discourse, with their mutual connections, both co-ordinate and subordinate, drawn out into one or more tables. DR. I. WATTS. ANCESTRY. Title and ancestry render a good name more illustrious, but an ill one more contemptible. ADDISON. It is a reverend thing to see an ancient castle not in decay; how much more to behold an ancient family which have stood against the waves and weathers of time! LORD BACON. The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends the most to the perpetuation of society itself. It makes our weakness subservient to our virtue; it grafts benevolence even upon avarice. The possessors of family wealth, and of the distinction which attends hereditary possession (as most concerned in it), are the natural securities for this transmission. BURKE: A long series of ancestors shows the native lustre with advantage; but if he any way degenerate from his line, the least spot is visible on ermine. DRYDEN. His ancestors have been more and more solicitous to keep up the breed of their dogs and horses than that of their children. GOLDSMITH. If the virtues of strangers be so attractive to us, how infinitely more so should be those of our own kindred; and with what additional energy should the precepts of our parents influence us, when we trace the transmission of those precepts from father to son through successive generations, each bearing the testimony of a virtuous, useful, and honourable life to their truth and influence; and all uniting in a kind and earnest exhortation to their descendants so to live on earth that (followers of Him through whose grace alone we have power to obey Him) we may at last be reunited with those who have gone before, and those who shall come after us: No wanderer lostA family in heaven. LORD LINDSAY. A people which takes no pride in the noble achievements of remote ancestors will never achieve anything worthy to be remembered with pride by remote descendants. LORD MACAULAY. The man who has not anything to boast of but his illustrious ancestors is like a potato,-the only good belonging to him is under ground. SIR T. OVERBURY. We highly esteem and stand much upon our birth, though we derive nothing from our ancestors but our bodies; and it is useful to improve this advantage, to imitate their good examples. RAY. The origin of all mankind was the same: it is only a clear and a good conscience that makes a man noble, for that is derived from heaven itself. It was the saying of a great man that, if we could trace our descents, we should find all slaves to come from princes, and all princes from slaves; and fortune has turned all things topsy-turvy in a long series of revolutions: beside, for a man to spend his life in pursuit of a trifle that serves only when he dies to furnish out an epitaph, is below a wise man's business. SENECA. Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790. For though hereditary wealth, and the rank which goes with it, are too much idolized by creeping sycophants, and the blind, abject admirers of power, they are too rashly slighted in shallow speculations of the petulant, assuming, I am no herald to inquire into men's pedi short-sighted coxcombs of philosophy. Some gree; it sufficeth me if I know their virtues. decent, regulated pre-eminence, some prefer SIR P. SIDNEY. What is birth to man if it shall be a stain to his dead ancestors to have left such an offspring? SIR P. SIDNEY. He that boasts of his ancestors, the founders and raisers of a family, doth confess that he hath less virtue. JEREMY TAYLOR. Human and mortal though we are, we are, nevertheless, not mere insulated beings, without relation to the past or future. Neither the point of time nor the spot of earth in which we physically live bounds our rational and intellectual enjoyments. We live in the past by a knowledge of its history, and in the future by hope and anticipation. By ascending to an association with our ancestors; by contemplating their example, and studying their character; by partaking their sentiments, and imbibing their spirit; by accompanying them in their toils; by sympathizing in their sufferings and rejoicing in their successes and their triumphs,-we mingle our own existence with theirs, and seem to belong to their age. We become their contemporaries, live the lives which they lived, endure what they endured, and partake in the rewards which they enjoyed. DANIEL WEBSTER. The happiest lot for a man, as far as birth is concerned, is that it should be such as to give him but little occasion to think much about it. WHATELY. In reference to nobility in individuals, nothing was ever better said than by Bishop Warburton -as is reported-in the House of Lords, on the occasion of some angry dispute which had arisen between a peer of noble family and one of a new creation. He said that "high birth was a thing which he never knew any one disparage, except those who had it not; and he never knew any one make a boast of it who had anything else to be proud of." . . . And it is curious that a person of so exceptionable a character that no one would like to have him for a father, may confer a kind of dignity on his great-great-greatgrandchildren. . . . If he were to discover that he could trace up his descent distinctly to a man who had deserved hanging for robbery-not a traveller of his purse, but a king of his empire, or a neighbouring state of a province-he would be likely to make no secret of it, and even to be better pleased, inwardly, than if he had made out a long line of ancestors who had been very honest farmers. WHATELY: Annot. on Bacon's Essay, Of Nobility. ANCIENTS. To account for this, we must consider that the first race of authors, who were the great heroes in writing, were destitute of all rules and arts of criticism; and. for that reason, though they excel later writers in greatness of genius, they fall short of them in accuracy and correctness. The moderns cannot reach their beauties, but can avoid their imperfections. When the world was furnished with these authors of the first eminence, there grew up another set of writers, who gained themselves a reputation by the remarks which they made on the works of those who preceded them. ADDISON: Spectator, No. 61. We may observe that in the first ages of the world, when the great souls and masterpieces of human nature were produced, men shined by a noble simplicity of behaviour, and were strangers to those little embellishments which are so fashionable in our present conversation. And it is very remarkable, that notwithstanding we fall short at present of the ancients in poetry, painting, oratory, history, architecture, and all the noble arts and sciences which depend them as much in doggerel humour, burlesque, more upon genius than experience, we exceed and all the trivial arts of ridicule. We meet with more raillery among the moderns, but more good sense among the ancients. ADDISON: Spectator, No. 249. It is pleasant to see a verse of an old poet revolting from its original sense, and siding with a modern subject. ADDISON. The poetical fables are more ancient than the astrological influences, that were not known to the Greeks till after Alexander the Great. In this age we have a sort of reviviscence, not, I fear of the power, but of a taste for the power, of the early times. COLERIDGE. What English readers, unacquainted with Greek or Latin, will believe me when we confess we derive all that is pardonable in us from DRYDEN. ancient fountains? critics, that this age and the last have excelled In tragedy and satire I maintain, against some the ancients; and I would instance in Shakespeare of the former, in Dorset of the latter. DRYDEN. It is an unaccountable vanity to spend all our time raking into the scraps and imperfect remains of former ages, and neglecting the clearer notices of our own. GLANVILL. made. All the metaphysical discoveries of all the philosophers from the time of Socrates to the northern invasion are not to be compared in importance with those which have been made in The sages of old live again in us, and in opin-beth. There is not the least reason to believe England every fifty years since the time of Elizaions there is a metempsychosis. Though the knowledge they have left us be worth our study, yet they exhausted not all its treasures: they left a great deal for the industry and sagacity of after-ages. LOCKE. In the philosophy of history the moderns have very far surpassed the ancients. It is not, indeed, strange that the Greeks and Romans should not have carried the science of government, or any other experimental science, so far as it has been carried in our time; for the experimental sciences are generally in a state of progression. They were better understood in the seventeenth century than in the sixteenth, and in the eighteenth century than in the seventeenth. But this constant improvement, this natural growth of knowledge, will not altogether account for the immense superiority of the modern writers. The difference is a difference not in degree, but of kind. It is not merely that new principles have been discovered, but that new faculties seem to be exerted. It is not that at one time the human intellect should have made but small progress, and at another time have advanced far; but that at one time it should have been stationary, and at another time constantly proceeding. In taste and imagination, in the graces of style, in the arts of persuasion, in the magnificence of public works, the ancients were at least our equals. They reasoned as justly as ourselves on subjects which required pure demonstration. But in the moral sciences they made scarcely any advance. During the long period which elapsed between the fifth century before the Christian era and the fifteenth after it, little perceptible progress was that the principles of government, legislation, and political economy were better understood in the time of Augustus Cæsar than in the time of Pericles. In our own country, the sound doctrines of trade and jurisprudence have been within the lifetime of a single generation dimly hinted, boldly propounded, defended, systematized, adopted by all reflecting men of all parties, quoted in legislative assemblies, incorporated into laws and treaties. LORD MACAULAY: History, May, 1828. Seeing every nation affords not experience and tradition enough for all kind of learning; therefore we are taught the languages of those people who have been most industrious after wisdom. MILTON. But, after all, if they have any merit, it is to be attributed to some good old authors whose works I study. POPE: On Pastoral Poetry. These passages in that book were enough to humble the presumption of our modern sciolists, if their pride were not as great as their ignorSIR W. TEMPLE. ance. All the writings of the ancient Goths were composed in verse, which were called runes, or viises, and from thence the term of wise came. SIR W. TEMPLE. It was the custom of those former ages, in their over-much gratitude, to advance the first authors of any useful discovery among the number of their gods. BISHOP WILKINS. ANGELS. Though sometimes effected by the immediate fiat of the divine will, yet I think they are most ordinarily done by the ministration of angels. SIR M. HALE. Angels are spirits immaterial and intellectual, the glorious inhabitants of those sacred palaces where there is nothing but light and immortality; no shadow of matter for tears, discontentments, griefs, and uncomfortable passions to work upon; but all joy, tranquillity, and peace, even for ever and ever, do dwell. HOOKER. The obedience of men is to imitate the obedience of angels, and rational beings on earth are to live unto God, as rational beings in heaven live unto him. LAW. The supposition that angels assume bodies need not startle us, since some of the most ancient and most learned fathers seemed to believe that they had bodies. LOCKE. Superior beings above us, who enjoy perfect happiness, are more steadily determined in their choice of good than we, and yet they are not less happy or less free than we. LOCKE. ANGER. There is no other way but to meditate and ruminate well upon the effects of anger,-how it troubles man's life; and the best time to do this is to look back upon anger when the fit is thoroughly over. Seneca saith well, "that anger is like rain, which breaks itself upon that it falls." The Scripture exhorteth us "to possess our souls in patience:" whosoever is out of patience is out of possession of his soul. ... Anger is certainly a kind of baseness; as it appears well in the weakness of those subjects in whom it reigns,-children, women, old folks, sick folks. Only men must beware that they carry their anger rather with scorn than with fear; so that they may seem rather to be above the injury than below it; which is a thing easily done, if a man will give law to himself in it. . . . To contain anger from mischief, though it take hold of a man, there be two things whereof you must have special caution: the one of extreme bitterness of words, especially if they be aculeate and proper; for "communia maledicta" are nothing so much; and again, that in anger a man reveal no secrets; for that makes him not fit for society: the other, that you do not peremptorily break off in any business in a fit of anger; but howsoever you show bitterness, do not act anything that is not revocable. LORD BACON : Essay LVIII.: Of Anger. There is no affectation in passion; for that putteth a man out of his precepts, and in a new case there custom leaveth him. The sun should not set upon our anger, neither should he rise upon our confidence. We should freely forgive, but forget rarely. I will not be revenged, and I owe to my enemy; but I will remember, and this I owe to myself. C. C. COLTON. When anger rises, think of the consequences. CONFUCIUS. Had I a careful and pleasant companion, that should show me my angry face in a glass, I should not at all take it ill. Some are wont to have a looking-glass held to them while they wash, though to little purpose; but to behold a man's self so unnaturally disguised and disordered, will conduce not a little to the impeachment of anger. PLUTARCH. To be angry, is to revenge the faults of others POPE. upon ourselves. If anger is not restrained, it is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it. SENECA. Adam Smith, in his Theory of Moral Sentiments, seems to consider as the chief point of distinction between anger and hatred, the necessity to the gratification of the former that the object of it should not only be punished, but punished by means of the offended person, and on account of the particular injury inflicted. Anger requires that the offender should not only be made to grieve in his turn, but to grieve for that particular wrong which has been done by him. The natural gratification of this passion tends, of its own accord, to produce all the political ends of punishment: the correction of the criminal, and example to the public. WHATELY: Annot. on Bacon's Essay, Of Anger. |