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Untitled Article
of solitude , as you well may after so long an experience of it . I never find you alone and absorbed in study , as in old times . Does the ugly vision of your jailer haunt you ?" " Not to any terrifying degree ; nor am I afraid of solitude , nor do I abstain from it as you suppose . If you came to me early and late you would find me gowned and slippered , and in as deep a reverie , perhaps , as in former days . "
" Yet you are as active a man in society as myself , though not , like me , compelled to activity by a profession . " ' ' By no secular profession , certainly . But there are reasons to which you , my friend , are no stranger , which have at length obtained some power over my actions , and changed my views of duty . My former life was one of titter selfishness . " " Yet it was one which men regarded with respect . "
" Perhaps so ; but thus far men are wrong , unless they believe that the labours of the studious have a higher object than the gratification of taste , or even self-improvement . I speak , of course , of an entire devotion to books . '' ' « What think you then of a German theologian who had not crossed his threshold for half a century ?"
< c I judge him not ; as , for aught I know , his biblical studies might produce more beneficial effects than active exertions , and might be prosecuted with that view . But such a life would not now be my choice . I should fear to banish the influences of nature , and to reject the purest elements of knowledge and enjoyment which can be afforded . " " I do not wonder at your prizing the influences to which you owe so much . Clouds and sunshine , woods and streams , were your best companions for nine long years . "
" They were more ; they were messengers from heaven to me . But there were other messengers which spoke clearer truths , and in a loftier language . In my prison I learned that every man is made in God's image , not only as possessing a rational nature , but as being the source of spiritual influences . " " And is a nine years' * captivity necessary to the apprehension of this truth ?"
•* By no means ; though , to my shame , I acknowledge that no other discipline availed to teach it to me . —O no ! many a mind which I have regarded with contempt on account of its partial darkness has carried this true light into its inner recesses . Poor M— whom we laughed at for expounding the Revelations almost before he could read them , knew more of the philosophy of society than I ; and the peasant ' s child who teaches her baby-brother to say his prayers is doing more in her appointed office than I in my classical studies . Yet you will not suspect me of undervaluing such pursuits . "
• ' Certainly not . But I cannot understand why you were so very long in perceiving the end for which you were brought into the world . " ' NoirI . —And yet how few do appear to understand it ! Since I have re-entered society , nothing has stTUck me so forcibly as the misapprehension of which I speak . I see , in the moral frame of mankind , a system o £ mutual adaptation , secured by mutual dependence ; the deficiencies of some endowments are proportioned to the superabundance of others ; I observe a sufficient general analogy between the passions and affections of different souls to establish sympathy ; and a sufficient diversity to keep up curiosity
Untitled Article
448 Solitude and Society : a Tale .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1830, page 448, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2586/page/16/
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