Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund BurkeBurke, Edmund
Philosophy
Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke
Burke, Edmund
Burke, Edmund, 1729-1797; Essays; Political science; Speeches, addresses, etc.
Bearing this in mind, we venture to think
Burke's gift of almost prescient insight into the recesses of our common
nature, and his consummate faculty of instructing the Future through the
medium of the Present,--were partly derived from the elevation of his
sentiments, and the purity of his private life. (The action and reaction
maintained between our moral and intellectual elements is but remotely
discussed by Quintilian in his "Institutes." But still, in more than
one passage, he most impressively declares, that mental proficiency is
greatly retarded by perversity of heart and will. For instance, on one
occasion we find him speaking thus:--"Nihil enim est tam occupatum, tam
multiforme, tot ac tam variis affectibus concisum, atque laceratum, quam
mala ac improba mens. Quis inter haec, literis, aut ulli bonae arti,
locus? Non hercle magis quam frugibus, in terra sentibus ac rubis
occupata."--"Nothing is so flurried and agitated, so self-contradictory,
or so violently rent and shattered by conflicting passions, as a bad
heart. In the distractions which it produces, what room is there for
the cultivation of letters, or the pursuits of any honourable art?
Assuredly, no more than there is for the growth of corn in a field
overrun with thorns and brambles.") It would be unwise to draw invidious
comparisons, but no student of the period in which Burke was in
Parliament, can deny that, compared with SOME of his illustrious
contemporaries, he was indeed a model of what reason and conscience
alike approve in all the relative duties and personal conduct of a man,
when beheld in his domestic career. It is, indeed, a source of deep
thankfulness, the admirer of Burke's genius in public, has no reason to
blush for his character in private; and that when we have listened to
his matchless oratory upon the arena of the House of Commons, we have
not to mourn over dissipation, impurity, and depravity amid the
circles of private history. Our theory, then, is, that beyond what
his distinctive genius inspired, Burke's wondrous power of enunciating
everlasting principles and of associating the loftiest abstractions
of wisdom with the commonest themes of the hour,--was sustained and
strengthened by the purity of his heart, and the subjection of passion
to the law of conscience. And if the worshippers of mere intellect,
apart from, or as opposed to, moral elevation, are inclined to ridicule
this view of Burke's genius, we beg to remind them, that "One greater
than the Temple" of mortal Wisdom, and all the idols enshrined therein,
has asserted a positive connection to exist between mental insight and
moral purity. We allude to the Redeemer's words, when He declares,--"If
any man WILLS to do His will, he shall KNOW of the doctrine." HOW the
passions act upon our perceptions, and by what process the motions of
the Will elevate or depress the forces of the Intellect, is beyond
our metaphysics to analyse. But that there exists a real, active, and
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