The universality of a Principle does not imply _everywhere_ equal
energy or activity, or even the same mode of manifestation, any more
than do the essential Faculties of the Understanding. Of this we have
an analogous illustration in the faculty of Memory; which is almost
indefinitely differenced in different men, both in degree and mode. In
some, its greatest power is shown in the retention of thoughts, but
not of words, that is, not of the original words in which they were
presented. Others possess it in a very remarkable degree as to forms,
places, &c., and but imperfectly for other things; others, again,
never forget names, dates, or figures, yet cannot repeat a
conversation the day after it took place; while some few have the
doubtful happiness of forgetting nothing. We might go on with a long
list of the various modes and degrees in which this faculty, so
essential to the human being, is everywhere manifested. But this is
sufficient for our purpose. In like manner is the Principle of Harmony
manifested; in one person as it relates to Form, in another to Sound;
so, too, may it vary as to the degrees of truth and goodness. We say
degrees; for we may well doubt whether, even in the faculty of memory,
its apparent absence as to any one essential object is any thing more
than a feeble degree of activity: and the doubt is strengthened by the
fact, that in many seemingly hopeless cases it has been actually, as
it were, brought into birth. And we are still indisposed to admit its
entire absence in any one particular for which it was bestowed on man.
An imperfect developement, especially as relating to the intellectual
and moral, we know to depend, in no slight measure, on the _will_
of the subject. Nay, (with the exception of idiots,) it may safely be
affirmed, that no individual ever existed who could not perceive the
difference between what is true and false, and right and wrong. We
here, of course, except those who have so ingeniously _unmade_
themselves, in order to reconstruct their "humanity" after a better
fashion. As to the "_why_" of these differences, we know nothing;
it is one of those unfathomable mysteries which to the finite mind
must ever be hidden.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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