Part 3 (1/2)

To each reproach that thunders from without may remorse groan an echo.

A prison without ransom, anguish without patience, a sick bed in the house of contempt.

To _think_ of a thing is different from to _perceive_ it, as ”to walk”

is from to ”feel the ground under you;” perhaps in the same way too--namely, a succession of perceptions accompanied by a sense of _nisus_ and purpose.

s.p.a.ce, is it merely another word for the perception of a capability of additional magnitude, or does this very perception presuppose the idea of s.p.a.ce? The latter is Kant's opinion.

A babe who had never known greater cruelty than that of being s.n.a.t.c.hed away by its mother for half a moment from the breast in order to be kissed.

To attempt to subordinate the idea of time to that of likeness.

Every man asks _how_? This power to instruct is the true substratum of philosophy.

G.o.dwin's philosophy is contained in these words: _Rationem defectus esse defectum rationis_.--HOBBES.

Hartley just able to speak a few words, making a fire-place of stones, with stones for fire--four stones for the fire-place, two for the fire--seems to ill.u.s.trate a theory of language, the use of arbitrary symbols in imagination. Hartley walked remarkably soon and, therefore, learnt to talk remarkably late.

Anti-optimism! Praised be our Maker, and to the honour of human nature is it, that we may truly call this an inhuman opinion. Man strives after good.

Materialists unwilling to admit the mysterious element of our nature make it all mysterious--nothing mysterious in nerves, eyes, &c., but that nerves think, etc.! Stir up the sediment into the transparent water, and so make all opaque.

[Sidenote: 1797-1801]

As we recede from anthropomorphism we must go either to the Trinity or Pantheism. The Fathers who were Unitarians were anthropomorphites.

[Sidenote: EGOTISM January 1801]

Empirics are boastful and egotists because they introduce real or apparent novelty, which excites great opposition, [while] personal opposition creates re-action (which is of course a consciousness of power) a.s.sociated with the person re-acting. Paracelsus was a boaster, it is true; so were the French Jacobins, and Wolff, though not a boaster, was persecuted into a habit of egotism in his philosophical writings; so Dr. John Brown, and Milton in his prose works; and those, in similar circ.u.mstances, who, from prudence, abstain from egotism in their writings are still egotists among their friends. It would be unnatural effort not to be so, and egotism in such cases is by no means offensive to a kind and discerning man.

Some flatter themselves that they abhor egotism, and do not suffer it to appear _prima facie_, either in their writings or conversation, however much and however personally they or their opinions have been opposed.

What now? Observe, watch those men; their habits of feeling and thinking are made up of _contempt_, which is the concentrated vinegar of egotism--it is _laet.i.tia mixta c.u.m odio_, a notion of the weakness of another conjoined with a notion of our own comparative strength, though that weakness is still strong enough to be troublesome to us, though not formidable.

”--and the deep power of Joy We see into the Life of Things.”

[Sidenote: THE EGO]

By deep feeling we make our _ideas dim_, and this is what we mean by our life, ourselves. I think of the wall--it is before me a distinct image.

Here I necessarily think of the _idea_ and the thinking _I_ as two distinct and opposite things. Now let me think of _myself_, of the thinking being. The idea becomes dim, whatever it be--so dim that I know not what it is; but the feeling is deep and steady, and this I call _I_--identifying the percipient and the perceived.