Sublimest—meanest in creation.’
Rhymes on the Road.
[67]. The poet himself, standing at the bottom of it, however diminutive in appearance, was a much greater proof of his own argument than a huge, shapeless lump of ice. But the immensity, the solitude, the barrenness, the immoveableness of the masses, so different from the whirl, the tinsel, the buzz and the ephemeral nature of the objects which occupy and dissipate his ordinary attention, gave Mr. Moore a turn for reflection, and brought before him the abstract idea of infinity and of the cause of all things.
[68]. Madame Warens resided for some time at Turin, and was pensioned by the Court.
[69]. What the nature of his attachment was is probably best explained by his cry, ‘Ah! voila de la pervenche!’ with which all Europe has rung; or by the beginning of the last of the ‘Reveries of a Solitary Walker,’ ‘Aujourd’hui jour de Pâques fleuries, il y a précisément cinquante ans de ma première connaissance avec Madame de Warens.’ But it is very possible our lively Anacreon does not understand these long-winded retrospects; and agrees with his friend Lord Byron, who professed never to feel any thing seriously for more than a day!
[70]. Mr. Pitt and Mr. Windham were not so nice. They were intimate enough with such a fellow as Cobbett, while he chose to stand by them.
[71]. One of them tried the other day to persuade people to give up the Classics and learn Chinese, because he has a place in the India House. To those who are connected with the tea-trade, this may be of immediate practical interest, but not therefore to all the world. These prosaical visionaries are a species by themselves. It is a matter of fact, that the natives of the South Sea Islands speak a language of their own, and if we were to go there, it might be of more use to us than Greek and Latin—but not till then!
[72]. The question whether abstract or merely intellectual ideas have ever much influence on the conduct has not been fairly stated. The point is not whether an abstract proposition (no matter whether true or false) of which I became convinced yesterday, will be able to overturn all my previous habits, and prejudices, but whether ideas of this kind may not be made the foundation of inveterate prejudices themselves and the strongest principles of action. The ideas concerning religion are of a sufficiently abstract nature: and yet it will not be disputed that early impressions of this kind have some influence on a man’s future conduct in life. Two persons accidentally meeting together, and who had never seen one another before shall conceive a more violent antipathy to each other in consequence of a dispute on religion or politics than they might have done from having been personally at variance half their lives. It is objected that this proceeds from wounded vanity. But why is our vanity more easily irritated upon these subjects than upon any other but from the importance attached to them by the understanding? Questions of morality do not always excite the same violent animosity; and this I think is because they do not so properly admit of dispute in themselves, also because they are not so often made the instruments of cabal, and power, and therefore depend less on opinion, or the number of votes, and because every one appealing to his own breast for the truth of his opinion attributes the continuance of the contest not to any want of force in his own arguments, but to a want of proper feelings in his opponent.—I will add here a remark in some measure connected with the last-mentioned observation, that the reason why men are generally more anxious about the opinion entertained of their understanding than their honesty is not so much that they really think this last of less consequence as that a man always believes himself to be the best judge of what passes in his own breast. He therefore thinks very little the better of himself for the good opinion of others. Indeed he considers their suffrages in this respect as a sort of impertinence at best, as implying some doubt upon the subject: and as to their direct censures, he will always find some feelings, or motives in his own mind, or some circumstances with which they are not acquainted, which will in his opinion make a total difference in the case. With respect to manners, and those moral qualities which are denominated pleasing, these again depend on the judgment of others; and we find the same jealousy of the opinions of others manifested with respect to these as with respect to our sense, wit, &c.
[73]. The distinction between the motives to action and the reasons for it cannot affect the argument here insisted on. When it is said, that though I am not really governed by such and such motives, I ought to be governed by them, this must mean (or it means nothing) that such would be the effect of a proper exertion of my faculties. The obligation to act in this or that manner must therefore be deduced from the nature of those faculties, and the possibility of their being impressed in a certain manner by certain objects.
[74]. Similarity has been defined to be partial sameness. Curve lines have a general resemblance, or analogy to one another as such. Does this resemblance then consist in their being partially the same? This may be said where the difference arises from drawing out the same sort of curve to a greater extent because by adding to the shorter curve I can make it equal to the other. But I cannot by adding any other line to an oval convert it into a circle, because these two sorts of curves can never coincide even in their smallest conceivable parts. It should seem then that their similarity is not to be deduced from partial sameness, or their having some one thing exactly the same, common to them both. But they have the same general nature as curves. True: but in what does this abstract identity consist? Is it not the same with similarity? So that we return to the same point from which we set out. I confess no light appears to me to be thrown on the subject by saying that it is partial identity. The same sort of reasoning is applicable to the question whether all good is not to be resolved into one simple principle, or essence, or whether all that is really good or pleasurable in any sensation is not the same identical feeling, an infusion of the same level of good, and that all the rest is perfectly foreign to the nature of good and is merely the form or vehicle in which it is conveyed to the mind. I cannot however persuade myself that our sensations differ only as to more, or less; or that the pleasure derived from seeing a fine picture, or hearing a fine piece of music, that the gratification derived from doing a good action and that which accompanies the swallowing of an oyster are in reality and at bottom the same pleasure. The liquor tastes of the vessel through which it passes. It seems most reasonable to suppose that our feelings differ in their nature according to the nature of the objects by which they are excited, though not necessarily in the same proportion, as objects may excite very distinct ideas which have little or nothing to do with feeling. Why should there be only two sorts of feeling, pleasure and pain? I am convinced that any one who has reflected much on his own feelings must have found it impossible to refer them all to the same fixed invariable standard of good or evil, or by throwing away the mere husk and refuse without losing any thing essential to the feeling to arrive at some one simple principle, the same in all cases, and which determines by it’s quantity alone the precise degree of good or evil in any sensation. Some sensations are like others; this is all we know of the matter, and all that is necessary to form a class, or genus. The contrary method of reasoning appears to proceed on a supposition that things differing at all in kind must differ in toto, must be quite different from each other; so that a resemblance in kind must imply an absolute coincidence in part, or in as far as the things resemble one another.—See Usher on the Human Mind.