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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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Untitled Article
istence ^ will be saluted in the more frequent and familiar throng of present things . Man is a microcosm : in his own breast he has a revelation
of what Happiness is ; in the ordinary business of life , in the social arrangements with which he is necessarily and immediately conversant ; in the course of his personal action , he may have the fullest , the most varied , and most certain experience of the laws from which must be calculated the means of
obtaining Happ iness . The convenience of a representative or deputy , the necessity of his responsibility , the modes of securing this by limitations of powers and an abridged term of engagement , the necessity for enlightened as well as wellmeaning supervision , the advantage of free opportunities of exchanging the produce of his labour , the equality of
obligations between the sexes in marriage , and also the morality of restricting the number of the family within the means of support and education , and the wickedness of indiscriminate almsgiving—all these and many more are principles far more apparent in present experience than in the records of the past revolutions of empires , yet equally operative in both . The laws of mental as of material existence hold on from the most
minute to the most extensive instances . The courses of the planets and the symptoms of Vesuvius were elucidated by the apple of Newton and the blowpipe of Wollaston ; the dissolution of the feudal system was connected by Adam Smith with the operations of the passions which are fired by a pair of gold buckles on silk . stockings ; and the nailer of Glasgow gave the principle of the division of labour by which he explained the political tendency of regular armies .
The most attractive of all the branches of serious literature to a young yet aspiring mind is History : promising information of scientific import , it is rich with all the materials for the playthings of Imagination , and Truth puts on so gay and
fanciful a garb that the more superficial yield a transient homage . To Fiction , accordingly / many students of History return as from her they came , while others linger amongst the curious walks and pleasant placets which diversify this vestibule of the severer muse . But the more ardent or less fanciful , the
inquirers after a truth which shall accomplish them for excellent action , soon perceive that this is not the conduct which * must introduce them to the adyta ; they are weary of attempts to extract a system from incomplete archives ; they are disgusted with the codes of disconnected maxims of Machiavellian policy which are presented to them as results : until convinced that Politiqal Wisdqm does not spring from , but must be brought to , HistorV--rthat a light must be obtained elsewhere Which shall
Untitled Article
284 Principles before Htstory .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 1, 1837, page 284, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1831/page/29/
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