The International Magazine, Volume 4, No. 5, December 1851Various
History
The International Magazine, Volume 4, No. 5, December 1851
Various
Art, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- History -- Periodicals
career towards the good old days of alchemists and necromancers. A
fifth, whom one might take for a Quaker, asserts that the march of
Enlightenment is a crusade for universal philanthropy, vegetable diet,
and the perpetuation of peace, by means of speeches, which certainly
do produce a very contrary effect from the Philippics of Demosthenes!
The sixth--(good fellow, without a rag on his back)--does not care a
straw where the march goes. He can't be worse off than he is; and it
is quite immaterial to him whether he goes to the dog-star above, or
the bottomless pit below. I say nothing, however, against the march,
while we take it altogether. Whatever happens, one is in good company;
and though I am somewhat indolent by nature, and would rather stay at
home with Locke and Burke, (dull dogs though they were,) than have my
thoughts set off helter-skelter with those cursed trumpets and drums,
blown and dub-a-dubbed by fellows that I vow to heaven I would not
trust with a five-pound note--still, if I must march, I must; and so
deuce take the hindmost. But when it comes to individual marchers upon
their own account--privateers and condottieri of Enlightenment--who
have filled their pockets with lucifer-matches, and have a sublime
contempt for their neighbours' barns and hay-ricks, I don't see why I
should throw myself into the seventh heaven of admiration and ecstasy.
[7] Continued from page 550.
If those who are eternally rhapsodizing on the celestial blessings
that are to follow Enlightenment, Universal Knowledge, and so forth,
would just take their eyes out of their pockets, and look about
them, I would respectfully inquire if they have never met any very
knowing and enlightened gentleman, whose acquaintance is by no means
desirable. If not, they are monstrous lucky. Every man must judge by
his own experience; and the worst rogues I have ever encountered were
amazingly well-informed, clever fellows! From dunderheads and dunces
we can protect ourselves; but from your sharp-witted gentleman, all
enlightenment and no prejudice, we have but to cry, "Heaven defend us!"
It is true, that the rogue (let him be ever so enlightened) usually
comes to no good himself, (though not before he has done harm enough to
his neighbors.) But that only shows that the world wants something else
in those it rewards, besides intelligence _per se_ and in the abstract;
and is much too old a world to allow any Jack Horner to pick out its
plums for his own personal gratification. Hence a man of very moderate
intelligence, who believes in God, suffers his heart to beat with human
sympathies, and keeps his eyes off your strong-box, will perhaps gain a
vast deal more power than knowledge ever gives to a rogue.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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