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ON GENIUS.
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Transcript
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Addressed to the Author of an Article , entitled " Some Considerations respecting the Comparative Influence of A ncieut and Modern Times on the Development of Genius ; " and of its continuation , headed , " On the Intellectual Influences of Christianity . "
Sir , —You have turned your attention , and that of the readers of the Monthly Repository , to a question , with which , if we well consider its significance , none of the controversies which fill the present age with flame and fury is comparable in interest . You have shown that , without being indifferent to politics , you can see a deeper problem in the existing aspect of human affairs , than
the adjustment of a ten-pound franchise ; and that with no inclination to undervalue the intellect of these " latter days , " you do not write it down transcendant because steam-carriages can run twenty-five miles an hour on an iron railway ; because little children are taught to march round a room and sing psalms , or because mechanics can read the Penny Magazine . You do not
look upon man as having attained the perfection of his nature , when he attains the perfection of a wheel's or a pulley ' s nature , to go well as a part of some vast machine , being in himself nothing . You do not esteem the higher endowments of the intellect and heart to be given by God , or valuable to man , chiefly as means to his obtaining , first , bread ; next , beef to his bread ;
and , as the last felicitous consummation , wine and fine linen * Rather , you seem to consider the wants which point to these bodily necessaries or indulgences , as having for their chief use that they call into existence and into exercise those loftier qualities . You judge of man , not by what he does , but by what he is . For , though man is formed for action , and is of no worth further than
by virtue of the work which he does ; yet ( as has been often said , by one of the noblest spirits of our time ) the works which most of us are appointed to do on this earth are in themselves little better than trivial and contemptible : the sole thing which is indeed valuable in them , is the spirit in which they are done . Nor is this mere mysticism ; the most absolute utilitarianism must
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No , 70 . 3 A
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NEW SERIES , No . LXX .
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OCTOBER , 1832 .
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MONTHLY REPOSITORY .
On Genius.
ON GENIUS .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1832, page unpag, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1822/page/1/
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