On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
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.
-
-
Transcript
-
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.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
history or geography , we cannot but feel that a great principle is running to waste , and that we are losing the best exercise of its power . We want a code of laws of
universal application , not a mere string of local and peculiar regulations . We want a map of our moral world , showing where the sands lie , and the rocks ,
and where the deep water , —a manual for all navigators in the perilous seas of discussion . If I am curious in natural history or geology , I find myself placed in circumstances of unparalleled advantage since the
great mind of Cuvier has gone before , ordering and methodising ; and I know , from him , all that I have to expect of doubt and difficulty . If philology has attractions for me , I have to rejoice in the prospect that I can never fall into the
errors of the old grammarians , after Tooke has traced and mapped the zig-zag line of their ludicrous aberrations . If I would travel to the shores of
art and taste , there are those who forewarn me of the power of the Syrens , and , like the companions of Ulysses , I stop my ears in time . And so every subject of inquiry is appropriately prepared and illustrated , and if we get into wrong tracks it is our own fault . But
now all-this prudence and wisdom is cut up and dispersed amongst a multitude of isolated objects , and no attempt has been made to generalize the laws of , truth- —to fuse and amalgamate — and from the
Untitled Article
union of all to draw those broad and universal principles which uphold the common nature of things . We have marked each stone and visible pillar
in the temple of Truth , and we may have discovered something of the principle of their construction , but the huge cross beams concealed under the
mass they sustain , are apt to escape our recollection , and we go away with minds too full of the minuticB of the edifice , and least impressed with what ought most to have occupied us .
Numerous philosophical writers , indeed , have brought together the treasures of knowledge , and have applied themselves to the discovery of general laws for science or for art from a
comparative survey thus taken , and numerous theologians , placing themselves in the same circumstances for observation , have endeavoured to argue from facts to morals , and to
bring , religion in under the wing of natural history—a mode of introduction , it has always struck me , rather ceremonious than hearty . But these are not the best nor
the ultimate uses of the laws of science . Their highest use will be developed as soon as some deep-thinking universal is t shall be able to grasp them all in one hand , and , carefully sifting them till every accident is thrown out of the
measure , lay before us at once their common substance . Then , for the first time , we shall behold the practical moral issue of our accumulated fact know-* m 1
Untitled Article
Of tM Sufferings of Ttuth . 1 Vt
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 1, 1837, page 117, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1834/page/45/
-