The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 06 (of 12)Burke, Edmund
Philosophy
The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 06 (of 12)
Burke, Edmund
Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1760-1820; Political science -- Early works to 1800
doctrine: a man ought to be decided in his opinions before he attempts
to teach. His fugitive lights may serve himself in some unknown region,
but they cannot free us from the effects of the error into which we have
been betrayed. His active Will-o'-the-wisp may be gone nobody can guess
where, whilst he leaves us bemired and benighted in the bog.
Having premised these few reflections upon this new mode of teaching a
lesson, which whilst the scholar is getting by heart the master forgets,
I come to the lesson itself. On the fullest consideration of it, I am
utterly incapable of saying with any great certainty what it is, in the
detail, that the author means to affirm or deny, to dissuade or
recommend. His march is mostly oblique, and his doctrine rather in the
way of insinuation than of dogmatic assertion. It is not only fugitive
in its duration, but is slippery in the extreme whilst it lasts.
Examining it part by part, it seems almost everywhere to contradict
itself; and the author, who claims the privilege of varying his
opinions, has exercised this privilege in every section of his remarks.
For this reason, amongst others, I follow the advice which the able
writer gives in his last page, which is, "to consider the _impression_
of what he has urged, taken from the _whole_, and not from detached
paragraphs." That caution was not absolutely necessary. I should think
it unfair to the author and to myself to have proceeded otherwise. This
author's _whole_, however, like every other whole, cannot be so well
comprehended without some reference to the parts; but they shall be
again referred to the whole. Without this latter attention, several of
the passages would certainly remain covered with an impenetrable and
truly oracular obscurity.
The great, general, pervading purpose, of the whole pamphlet is to
reconcile us to peace with the present usurpation in France. In this
general drift of the author I can hardly be mistaken. The other
purposes, less general, and subservient to the preceding scheme, are to
show, first, that the time of the Remarks was the favorable time for
making that peace upon our side; secondly, that on the enemy's side
their disposition towards the acceptance of such terms as he is pleased
to offer was rationally to be expected; the third purpose was, to make
some sort of disclosure of the terms which, if the Regicides are pleased
to grant them, this nation ought to be contented to accept: these form
the basis of the negotiation which the author, whoever he is, proposes
to open.
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