The Words of Man paint the spirit of Man. The Words of a People depicture the Spirit of a People.
NORTH.
Well said, Seward. And, therefore, the Understanding that is to possess the Words of a language, in the Spirit in which they were or are spoken and written, must, by self-experience and sympathy, be able to converse, and have conversed, with the Spirit of the People, now and of old.
BULLER.
And yet what coarse fellows hold up their dunderheads as Scholars, forsooth, in these our days!
NORTH.
Hence it is an impossibility that a low and hard moral nature should furnish a high and fine Scholar. The intellectual endowments must be supported and made available by the concurrence of the sensitive nature—of the moral and the imaginative sensibilities.
BULLER.
What moral and imaginative sensibilities have they—the blear-eyed—the purblind—the pompous and the pedantic! But we have some true scholars—for example——