Hours in a Library, Volume 2: New Edition, with AdditionsStephen, Leslie
History
Hours in a Library, Volume 2: New Edition, with Additions
Stephen, Leslie
English literature -- History and criticism
The instrument, in fact, finds itself originally tuned by its Maker, and
may preserve its original condition by careful obedience to the stern
teaching of life. The buoyancy common to all youthful and healthy
natures then changes into a deeper and more solemn mood. The great
primary emotions retain the original impulse, but increase their volume.
Grief and disappointment are transmuted into tenderness, sympathy, and
endurance. The reason, as it develops, regulates, without weakening, the
primitive instincts. All the greatest, and therefore most common, sights
of nature are indelibly associated with 'admiration, hope, and love;'
and all increase of knowledge and power is regarded as a means for
furthering the gratification of our nobler emotions. Under the opposite
treatment, the character loses its freshness, and we regard the early
happiness as an illusion. The old emotions dry up at their source. Grief
produces fretfulness, misanthropy, or effeminacy. Power is wasted on
petty ends and frivolous excitement, and knowledge becomes barren and
pedantic. In this way the postulate justifies itself by producing the
noblest type of character. When the 'moral being' is thus built up, its
instincts become its convictions, we recognise the true voice of nature,
and distinguish it from the echo of our passions. Thus we come to know
how the Divine order and the laws by which the character is harmonised
are the laws of morality.
To possible objections it might be answered by Wordsworth that this mode
of assuming in order to prove is the normal method of philosophy. 'You
must love him,' as he says of the poet,
Ere to you
He will seem worthy of your love.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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