Scriptures, and in communion with his own deep thoughts, George Fox sought to satisfy the hunger of his soul.[365] The intellectual character of this remarkable person is not easily measured. Possessing little of the logical faculty, eschewing argumentative forms of thought, and altogether ignorant of Baconian methods of induction, he had nevertheless a keen, lightning-like power of penetrating hidden truths and of laying open secret things. By intuitive perception he reached spiritual truths. He felt a great deal to be right which he could not prove to be so; and much which to men of another mould seemed occult and shadowy, to him appeared firmer than the earth on which he trod. He cared not for the coverings of truth, the nakeder it was to him the better. He could boast of no poetical imagination, yet he possessed a prodigious power of realizing what he believed, and had he been a school-man, he would have been as decided a Realist as Thomas Aquinas. George Fox had strong sympathies with what is spiritual everywhere and in all things, but especially with what is so in religion. As in striving after truth he was ever breaking shells to get at kernels, so in his pantings for fellowship with God, which constituted the most pressing need of his nature, he was intolerant of forms. He had no patience with any ceremonial avenues by which to walk up to the temple of the Eternal, but rather longed for an eagle's wing to fly at once to the mount of God; forgetful, in his sincere raptures, of the conditions of humanity, and not considering that in the pursuit of the noblest as of the humblest ends, mortals cannot dispense with means, and that we are all of us two-sided beings, needing helps from without to strengthen and preserve what is most Divine within. In morals his character was more than unimpeachable. Rarely has a man been found so just and true, so virtuous and temperate, so benevolent and pacific; although, withal, so bold, and even severe in rebuking falsehood, hypocrisy, and every kind of sin. His moral indignation, which was sometimes misplaced, made him forgetful of the courtesies of life, and the rudeness which he thus displayed served to increase both the animosity and the number of his enemies.[366] [Sidenote: _George Fox._]