Yes, I hope we are well out of that phase in which the most philosophic view of the past was held to be a smiling survey of human folly, and when the wisest man was supposed to be one who could sympathize with no age but the age to come.
When I received your Monday packet I was fresh from six quarto volumes on the history of the monastic orders, and had just begun a less formidable modern book on the same subject—Montalembert's "Monks of the West." Our reading, you see, lay in very different quarters, but I fancy our thoughts sometimes touched the same ground. I am rather puzzled and shocked, however, by your high admiration of the articles on the "Study of History," in the Cornhill. I should speak with the reserve due to the fact that I have only read the second article; and this, I confess, did not impress me as exhibiting any mastery of the question, while its tone towards much abler thinkers than the writer himself is to me extremely repulsive. Such writing as, "We should not be called upon to believe that every crotchet which tickled the insane vanity of a conceited Frenchman was an eternal and self-evident truth," is to me simply disgusting, though it were directed against the father of lies. It represents no fact except the writer's own desire to be bitter, and is worthily finished by the dull and irreverent antithesis of "the eternal truth and infernal lie."
I quite agree with you—so far as I am able to form a judgment—in regarding Positivism as one-sided; but Comte was a great thinker, nevertheless, and ought to be treated with reverence by all smaller fry.
I have just been reading the "Survey of the Middle Ages" contained in the fifth volume of the "Philosophie Positive," and to my apprehension few chapters can be fuller of luminous ideas. I am thankful to learn from it. There may be more profundity in the Cornhill's exposition than I am able to penetrate, or, possibly, the first article may contain weightier matter than the second.
Mrs. Bodichon is near us now, and one always gets good from contact with her healthy, practical life. Mr. Lewes is gone to see Mrs. Congreve and carry his net to the Wimbledon ponds. I hope he will get a little strength as well as grist for his microscope.
Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 18th July, 1861.
The English "Imitation" I told you of, which is used by the Catholics, is Challoner's. I have looked into it again since I saw you, and I think, if you want to give the book away, this translation is as good as any you are likely to get among current editions. If it were for yourself, an old bookstall would be more likely to furnish what you want. Don't ever think of me as valuing either you or Mr. Congreve less instead of more. You naughtily implied something of that kind just when you were running away from me. How could any goodness become less precious to me unless my life had ceased to be a growth, and had become mere shrinking and degeneracy? I always imagine that if I were near you now I should profit more by the gift of your presence—just as one feels about all past sunlight.
Diary, 1861.
July 24.—Walked with George over Primrose Hill. We talked of Plato and Aristotle.
July 26.—In the evening went to see Fechter as Hamlet, and sat next to Mrs. Carlyle.