Coleridge, The Æolian Harp.
[165]: Fromm is the German. It is time the words religious and pious were redeemed from the base uses of sectarianism and bigotry.—Tr.
[166]: Enlightenment in an empty heart is mere memory-work, let it strain the faculty of acumen ever so much. Most men of our day resemble the new houses in Potsdam, in which (according to Reichard) Frederick the Second caused lights to be placed at night, that every one, including Reichard himself, might think they were—occupied.
[167]: Most men have, perhaps, only an equal number of good thoughts and actions; but it is still an open question how long the virtuous man may interrupt his good thoughts (which have less need than good actions of the outer world) by indifferent ones.
[168]: For the noblest leans just the most on loving souls, or at least on his ideals of them, with which, however, he is only in so far satisfied as he regards them as pledges of future prototypes. I do not except either the Stoic (that Epicurean God) or the Mystic: both love in the Creator only the sum total of his creatures; we the former in the latter.
[169]: The German Vorwand means literally front wall (not far from the etymological meaning of pretext); so that there may be a figurative element here beyond what appears to the casual reader.—Tr.
[170]: The reader of this letter will readily presuppose that Clotilda, as she does not know into whose hands it may fall,—in fact, it is actually in ours,—will have to hurry over her relations and mysteries (e. g. respecting Flamin, Victor, &c.) with an obscurity which to her proper reader was clear enough.
[171]: Let the reader remember that she is master of as much of this biography as he, if not more.
[172]: She means Giulia, from whose corpse grief had hurried her away.