A Commonplace Book of Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies.: 2nd ed.Jameson, Mrs. (Anna)
General
A Commonplace Book of Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies.: 2nd ed.
Jameson, Mrs. (Anna)
Art and literature; Commonplace books; Ethics; Quotations
This last common-place distinction seems to me, however, unworthy of
Bacon. It should be banished—utterly set aside. Things which are divine
should be human, and things which are human, divine; not as a mixture,
“a medley,” in the sense of Bacon’s words, but an interfusion; for
nothing that we esteem divine can be anything to us but as we make it
_ours_, _i. e._ humanise it; and our humanity were a poor thing but for
“the divinity that stirs within us.” We do injury to our own nature—we
misconceive our relations to the Creator, to his universe, and to each
other, so long as we separate and studiously keep wide apart the
_divine_ and the _human_.
45.
“Let no man, upon a weak conceit of sobriety or an ill-applied
moderation, think or maintain that a man can search too far or be too
well studied either in the book of God’s word or the book of God’s
works.” Well advised! But then he goes on to warn men that they do not
“unwisely mingle or confound their learnings together:” mischievous this
contradistinction between God’s word and God’s works; since both, if
emanating from him, must be equally true. And if there be one truth,
then, to borrow his own words in another place, “the voice of nature
will consent, whether the voice of man do so or not.”
46.
Apropos to education—here is a good illustration: “Were it not better
for a man in a fair room to set up one great light or branching
candlestick of lights, than to go about with a rushlight into every dark
corner?”
And here is another: “It is one thing to set forth what ground lieth
unmanured, and another to correct ill husbandry in that which _is_
manured.”
47.
“It is without all controversy that learning doth make the minds of men
gentle and generous, amiable, and pliant to government, whereas
ignorance maketh them churlish, thwarting, and mutinous.”
48.
“An impatience of doubt and an unadvised haste to assertion without due
and mature suspension of the judgment, is an error in the conduct of the
understanding.”
“In contemplation, if a man begin with certainties he shall end in
doubts, but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in
certainties.” Well said and profoundly true.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account