Part 8 (2/2)
There is an important distinction between the memory or reminiscent faculty of sensation which young children seem to possess in so small a degree, from their perpetual desire to have a tale repeated to them, and the memory of words and images which the very same children manifestly possess in an unusual degree, even to sealing-wax accuracy of retention and representation.
[Sidenote: THE ETHICS OF SPINOZA]
If Spinoza had left the doctrine of miracles untouched, and had not written so powerfully in support of universal toleration, his ethics would never have brought on him the charge of Atheism. His doctrine, in this respect, is truly and severely orthodox, in the reformed Church; neither do I know that the Church of Rome has authoritatively decided between the Spinosists and Scotists in their great controversy on the nature of the being which creatures possess.
[Sidenote: A UNITARIAN SCHOOLMAN]
Creation is explained by Joannes Scotus Erigena as only a manifestation of the unity of G.o.d in forms--_et fit et facit, et creat et creatur_.
Lib. 4. p. 7.
P. 8. A curious and highly-philosophical account of the Trinity, and completely Unitarian. G.o.d is, is wise, and is living. The essence we call Father, the wisdom Son, the life the Holy Spirit. And he positively affirms that these three exist only as distinguishable relations--_habitudines_; and he states the whole doctrine to be an invention and condescension of Theology to the intellect of man, which must _define_, and consequently _personify_, in order to understand, and must have some phantom of understanding in order to keep alive in the heart the substantial faith. They are _fuel_ to the sacred fire--in the empyrean it may burn without fuel, and they who do so are seraphs.
[Sidenote: A CROWD OF THOUGHTS]
A fine epitheton of man would be ”Lord of fire and light.” All other creatures whose existence we perceive are mere alms-receivers of both.
A company of children driving a hungry, hard-skinned a.s.s out of a corn-field. The a.s.s cannot by such weaklings be driven so hard but he will feed as he goes.
Such light as lovers love, when the waxing moon steals in behind a black, black cloud, emerging soon enough to make the blush visible which the long kiss had kindled.
All notions [remain] hushed in the phantasms of place and time that still escape the finest sieve and most searching winnow of our reason and abstraction.
A rosemary tree, large as a timber tree, is a sweet sign of the antiquity and antique manners of the house against which it groweth.
”Rosemary” (says Parkinson, _Theatrum Botanic.u.m_ [London, 1640] p. 76) ”is a herb of as great use with us in these days as any whatsoever, not only for physical but civil purposes--the civil uses, as all know, are at weddings, funerals, &c., to bestow on friends.”
Great harm is done by bad poets in trivialising beautiful expressions and images and a.s.sociating disgust and indifference with the technical forms of poetry.
Advantage of public schools. [They teach men to be] content with school praise when they publish. Apply this to Cottle and J. Jennings.
Religious slang operates better on women than on men. N.B.--Why? I will give over--it is not _tanti_!
Poem. Ghost of a mountain--the forms, seizing my body as I pa.s.sed, became realities--I a ghost, till I had reconquered my substance.
The sopha of sods. Lack-wit and the clock find him at last in the Yorks.h.i.+re cave, where the waterfall is.
[The reference is, no doubt, to Wordsworth's ”Idiot Boy,” which was composed at Nether Stowey, in 1798. In a letter addressed to John Wilson of June 5, 1802, Wordsworth discusses and discards the use of the word ”lackwit” as an equivalent to ”idiot.” The ”Sopha of Sods” was on Latrigg. In her journal for August, 1800, Dorothy Wordsworth records the making of a seat on Windybrow, a part of Latrigg. Possibly this was the ”Sopha of Sods.”--_Life of W. Wordsworth_, 1889, i. 268, 403.]
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