A Commonplace Book of Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies Part 5

"The secret of peace," said A. B., "is the resolution of the lesser into the greater;" meaning, perhaps, the due relative appreciation of our duties, and the proper placing of our affections: or, did she not rather mean, the resolving of the lesser duties and affections into the higher?

But it is true in either sense.

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The love we have for Genius is to common love what the fire on the altar is to the fire on the hearth. We cherish it not for warmth or for service, but for an offering, as the expression of our wors.h.i.+p.

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All love not responded to and accepted is a species of idolatry. It is like the wors.h.i.+p of a dumb beautiful image we have ourselves set up and deified, but cannot inspire with life, nor warm with sympathy.

No!-though we should consume our own hearts on the altar. Our love of G.o.d would be idolatry if we did not believe in his love for us-his responsive love.

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In the same moment that we begin to speculate on the possibility of cessation or change in any strong affection that we feel, even from that moment we may date its death: it has become the _fetch_ of the living love.

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"Motives," said Coleridge, "imply weakness, and the reasoning powers imply the existence of evil and temptation. The angelic nature would act from impulse alone." This is the sort of angel which Angelico da Fiesole conceived and represented, and _he_ only.

Again:-"If a man's conduct can neither be ascribed to the angelic or the b.e.s.t.i.a.l within him, it must be fiendish. Pa.s.sion without appet.i.te is _fiendish_."

And, he might have added, appet.i.te without pa.s.sion, _b.e.s.t.i.a.l_. Love in which is neither appet.i.te nor pa.s.sion is _angelic_. The union of all is human; and according as one or other predominates, does the human being approximate to the fiend, the beast, or the angel.

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43.

I don't mean to say that principle is not a finer thing than pa.s.sion; but pa.s.sions existed before principles: they came into the world with us; principles are superinduced.

There are bad principles as well as bad pa.s.sions; and more bad principles than bad pa.s.sions. Good principles derive life, and strength, and warmth from high and good pa.s.sions; but principles do not give life, they only bind up life into a consistent whole. One great fault in education is, the pains taken to inculcate principles rather than to train feelings. It is as if we took it for granted that pa.s.sions could _only_ be bad, and are to be ignored or repressed altogether,-the old mischievous monkish doctrine.

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44.

It is easy to be humble where humility is a condescension-easy to concede where we know ourselves wronged-easy to forgive where vengeance is in our power.

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"You and I," said H. G., yesterday, "are alike in this:-both of us so abhor injustice, that we are ready to fight it with a broomstick if we can find nothing better!"

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45.

"The wise only _possess_ ideas-the greater part of mankind are _possessed by_ them. When once the mind, in despite of the remonstrating conscience, has abandoned its free power to a haunting impulse or idea, then whatever tends to give depth and vividness to this idea or indefinite imagination, increases its despotism, and in the same proportion renders the reason and free will ineffectual." This paragraph from Coleridge sounds like a _truism_ until we have felt its _truth_.

46.

"La Volonte, en se dereglant, devient pa.s.sion; cette pa.s.sion continuee se change en habitude, et faute de resister a cette habitude elle se transforme en besoin."-_St. Augustin_. Which may be rendered-"out of the unregulated will, springs _pa.s.sion_, out of pa.s.sion gratified, _habit_; out of habits unresisted, _necessity_." This, also, is one of the truths which become, from the impossibility of disputing or refuting them, _truisms_-and little regarded, till the truth makes itself felt.

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47.

I wish I could realise what you call my "_grand_ idea of being independent of the absent." I have not a friend worthy the name, whose absence is not pain and dread to me;-death itself is terrible only as it is absence. At some moments, if I could, I would cease to love those who are absent from me, or to speak more correctly, those whose path in life diverges from mine-whose dwelling house is far off;-with whom I am united in the strongest bonds of sympathy while separated by duties and interests by s.p.a.ce and time. The presence of those whom we love is as a double life; absence, in its anxious longing, and sense of vacancy, is as a foretaste of death.

"La mort de nos amis ne compte pas du moment ou ils meurent, mais de celui ou nous cessons de vivre avec eux;" or, it might rather be said, _pour eux_; but I think this arises from a want either of _faith_ or _faithfulness_.

"La peur des morts est une abominable faiblesse! c'est la plus commune et la plus barbare des profanations; _les meres ne la connaissent pas_!"-And why? Because the most _faithful_ love is the love of the mother for her child.

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48.

At dinner to-day there was an attempt made by two very clever men to place Theodore Hook above Sydney Smith. I fought with all my might against both. It seems to me that a mind must be strangely warped that could ever place on a par two men with aspirations and purposes so different, whether we consider them merely as individuals, or called before the bar of the public as writers. I do not take to Sydney Smith personally, because my nature feels the want of the artistic and imaginative in _his_ nature; but see what he has done for humanity, for society, for liberty, for truth,-for us women! What has Theodore Hook done that has not perished with him? Even as wits-and I have been in company with both-I could not compare them; but they say the wit of Theodore Hook was only fitted for the company of men-the strongest proof that it was not genuine of its kind, that when most bearable, it was most superficial. I set aside the other obvious inference, that it required to be excited by stimulants and those of the coa.r.s.est, grossest kind. The wit of Sydney Smith almost always involved a thought worth remembering for its own sake, as well as worth remembering for its brilliant vehicle: the value of ten thousand pounds sterling of sense concentrated into a cut and polished diamond.

It is not true, as I have heard it said, that after leaving the society of Sydney Smith you only remembered how much you had laughed, not the good things at which you had laughed. Few men-wits by profession-ever said so many memorable things as those recorded of Sydney Smith.

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49.

"When we would show any one that he is mistaken our best course is to observe on what side he considers the subject,-for his view of it is generally right on _this_ side,-and admit to him that he is right so far. He will be satisfied with this acknowledgment, that he was not wrong in his judgment, but only inadvertent in not looking at the whole of the case."-_Pascal._

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50.

"We should reflect," says Jeremy Taylor, preaching against ambition, "that whatever tempts the pride and vanity of ambitious persons is not so big as the smallest star which we see scattered in disorder and unregarded on the pavement of heaven."

Very beautiful and poetical, but certainly no good argument against the sin he denounces. The star is inaccessible, and what tempts our pride or our ambition is only that which we consider with hope as _accessible_.

That we look up to the stars not desiring, not aspiring, but only loving-therein lies our hearts' truest, holiest, safest _devotion_ as contrasted with _ambition_.

It is the "_desire_ of the moth for the star," that leads to its burning itself in the candle.

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51.