A Commonplace Book of Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies Part 7

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61.

Religion, in its general sense, is properly the comprehension and acknowledgment of an unseen spiritual power and the soul's allegiance to it; and CHRISTIANITY, in its particular sense, is the comprehension and appreciation of the personal character of Christ, and the heart's allegiance to that.

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62.

Avarice is to the intellect what _sensuality_ is to the morals. It is an intellectual form of sensuality, inasmuch as it is the pa.s.sion for the acquisition, the enjoyment in the possession, of a palpable, tangible, selfish pleasure; and it would have the same tendency to unspiritualise, to degrade, and to harden the higher faculties that a course of grosser sensualism would have to corrupt the lower faculties. Both dull the edge of all that is fine and tender within us.

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63.

A king or a prince becomes by accident a part of history. A poet or an artist becomes by nature and necessity a part of universal humanity.

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As what we call Genius arises out of the disproportionate power and size of a certain faculty, so the great difficulty lies in harmonising with it the rest of the character.

"Though it burn our house down, who does not venerate fire?" says the Hindoo proverb.

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64.

An elegant mind informing a graceful person is like a spirit lamp in an alabaster vase, shedding round its own softened radiance and heightening the beauty of its medium. An elegant mind in a plain ungraceful person is like the same lamp enclosed in a vase of bronze; we may, if we approach near enough, rejoice in its influence, though we may not behold its radiance.

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65.

Landor, in a pa.s.sage I was reading to-day, speaks of a language of criticism, in which qualities should be graduated by colours; "as, for instance, _purple_ might express grandeur and majesty of thought; _scarlet_, vigour of expression; _pink_, liveliness; _green_, elegant and equable composition, and so on."

_Blue_, then, might express contemplative power? _yellow_, wit?

_violet_, tenderness? and so on.

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66.

I quoted to A. the saying of a sceptical philosopher: "The world is but one enormous WILL, constantly rus.h.i.+ng into life."

"Is that," she responded quickly, "another new name for G.o.d?"

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67.

A death-bed repentance has become proverbial for its fruitlessness, and a death-bed forgiveness equally so. They who wait till their own death-bed to make reparation, or till their adversary's death-bed to grant absolution, seem to me much upon a par in regard to the moral, as well as the religious, failure.

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68.

A character endued with a large, vivacious, active intellect and a limited range of sympathies, generally remains immature. We can grow _wise_ only through the experience which reaches us through our sympathies and becomes a part of our life. All other experience may be gain, but it remains in a manner extraneous, adds to our possessions without adding to our strength, and sharpens our implements without increasing our capacity to use them.

Not always those who have the quickest, keenest, perception of character are the best to deal with it, and perhaps for that very reason. Before we can influence or deal with mind, contemplation must be lost in sympathy, observation must be merged in love.

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69.

Montaigne, in his eloquent tirade against melancholy, observes that the Italians have the same word, _Tristezza_, for melancholy and for malignity or wickedness. The noun _Tristo_, "a wretch," has the double sense of our English word corresponding with the French noun _miserable_. So Judas Iscariot is called _quel tristo_. Our word "wretchedness" is not, however, used in the double sense of _tristezza_.

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"On ne considere pas a.s.sez les paroles comme des faits:" that was well said!

Since for the purpose of circulation and intercommunication we are obliged to coin truth into words, we should be careful not to adulterate the coin, to keep it pure, and up to the original standard of significance and value, that it may be reconvertible into the truth it represents.

If I use a term in a sense wherein I know it is not understood by the person I address, then I am guilty of using words (in so far as they represent truth), if not to ensnare intentionally, yet to mislead consciously; it is like adulterating coin.

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"Common people," said Johnson, "do not accurately adapt their words to their thoughts, nor their thoughts to the objects;"-that is to say, they neither apprehend truly nor speak truly-and in this respect children, half-educated women, and ill-educated men, are the "common people."

It is one of the most serious mistakes in Education that we are not sufficiently careful to habituate children to the accurate use of words.

Accuracy of language is one of the bulwarks of truth. If we looked into the matter we should probably find that all the varieties and modifications of conscious and unconscious lying-as exaggeration, equivocation, evasion, misrepresentation-might be traced to the early misuse of words; therefore the contemptuous, careless tone in which people say sometimes "words-words-mere words!" is unthinking and unwise.

It tends to debase the value of that which is the only medium of the inner life between man and man: "Nous ne sommes hommes, et nous ne tenons les uns aux autres, que par la parole," said Montaigne.

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70.

"We are happy, good, tranquil, in proportion as our inner life is accessible to the external life, and in harmony with it. When we become dead to the moving life of Nature around us, to the changes of day and night (I do not speak here of the sympathetic influences of our fellow-creatures), then we may call ourselves philosophical, but we are surely either bad or mad."