Part 32 (2/2)

[For the fragment ent.i.tled ”Mahomet,” see _P. W._, 1893, p. 139, and editor's _Note_, p. 615.]

[Sidenote: PRUDENCE _VERSUS_ FRIENDs.h.i.+P]

Among the countless arguments against the Paleyans state, this too--Can a wise moral legislator have made _prudence_ the true principle-ground, and guide of moral conduct, where in almost all cases in which there is contemplation to act wrong the first appearances of prudence are in favour of immorality, and, in order to ground the contrary on a principle of prudence, it is necessary to refine, to calculate, to look far onward into an uncertain future? Is this a guide, or primary guide, that for ever requires a guide against itself? Is it not a strange system which sets prudence against prudence? Compare this with the Law of Conscience--Is it not its specific character to be immediate, positive, unalterable? In short, _a priori_, state the requisites of a moral guide, and apply them first to prudence, and then to the law of pure reason or conscience, and ask if we need fear the result if the Judge is pure from all bribes and prejudices.

What then are the real dictates of prudence as drawn from every man's experience in late manhood, and so lured from the intoxication of youth, hope, and love? How cold, how dead'ning, what a dire vacuum they would leave in the soul, if the high and supreme sense of duty did not form a root out of which new prospects budded. What, I say, is the clear dictate of prudence in the matter of friends.h.i.+p? a.s.suredly to _like_ only, and never to be so attached as to be stripped naked by the loss. A friend may be a great-coat, a beloved a couch, but never, never our necessary clothing, our only means of quiet heart-repose! And, yet, with this the mind of a generous man would be so miserable, that prudence itself would fight against prudence, and advise him to drink off the draught of Hope, spite of the horrid and bitter dregs of disappointment, with which the draught will a.s.suredly finish.

Though I have said that duty is a consolation, I have not affirmed that the scar of the wound of disappointed love and insulted, betrayed fidelity would be removed in _this_ life. No! it will not--nay, the very duty must for ever keep alive feelings the appropriate objects of which are indeed in another world; but yet our human nature cannot avoid at times the connection of those feelings with their original or their first forms and objects; and so far, therefore, from removing the scar, will often and often make the wound open and bleed afresh. But, still, we know that the feeling is not objectless, that the counterfeit has a correspondent genuine, and this is the comfort.

[Sidenote: A POET ON POETRY]

_Canzone XVIII. fra le Rime di Dante_ is a poem of wild and interesting images, intended as an enigma, and to me an enigma it remains, spite of all my efforts. Yet it deserves transcription and translation. A.D. 1806 [? 1807].

”Tre donne intorno al cuor mi son venute,” &c.

[After the four first lines the handwriting is that of my old, dear, and honoured friend, Mr. Wade, of Bristol.--S. T. C.]

_Ramsgate, Sept. 2nd, 1819._--I _begin_ to understand the above poem, after an interval from 1805, during which no year pa.s.sed in which I did not reperuse, I might say construe, pa.r.s.e, and spell it, twelve times at least--such a fascination had it, spite of its obscurity! It affords a good instance, by the bye, of that soul of _universal_ significance in a true poet's composition, in addition to the specific meaning.

[Sidenote: GREAT AND LITTLE MINDS]

Great minds can and do create the taste of the age, and one of the contingent causes which warp the taste of nations and ages is, that men of genius in part yield to it, and in part are acted on by the taste of the age.

Common minds may be compared to the component drops of the stream of life--men of genius to the large and small bubbles. What if they break?

they are still as good as the rest--drops of water.

[Sidenote: SUBJECT AND OBJECT]

In youth our happiness is hope; in age the recollection of the hopes of youth. What else can there be?--for the substantial mind, for the _I_, what else can there be? Pleasure? Fruition? Filter hope and memory from pleasure, and the more entire the fruition the more is it the death of the _I_. A neutral product results that may exist for others, but no longer for itself--a c.o.ke or a slag. To make the object one with us, we must become one with the object--_ergo, an_ object. _Ergo_, the object must be itself a subject--partially a favourite dog, princ.i.p.ally a friend, wholly G.o.d, _the_ Friend. G.o.d is Love--that is, an object that is absolutely subject (G.o.d is a spirit), but a subject that for ever condescends to become the object for those that meet Him subjectively.

[As in the] Eucharist, [He is] verily and truly present to the Faithful, neither [by a] _trans_ nor _con_, but [by] _substantiation_.

[Sidenote: THE THREE ESTATES OF BEING]

We might as well attempt to conceive more than three dimensions of s.p.a.ce, as to imagine more than three kinds of living existence--G.o.d, man, and beast. And even of these the last (division) is obscure, and scarce endures a fixed contemplation without pa.s.sing into an unripe or degenerated humanity.

[Sidenote: A LIFE-LONG ERROR]

My mother told my wife that I was a year younger, and that there was a blunder made either in the baptismal register itself or in the transcript sent for my admission into Christ's Hospital; and Mrs. C., who is older than myself, believes me only 48. Be this as it may, in _life_, if not in years, I am, alas! nearer to 68.

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