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conqueror of the world was troubled , and changed colour again and again ; till at length the scroll prepared for the condemnation of the patriot fell from his band . Sudden and irresistible conviction is chiefly the offspring of living speech . We may arm ourselves against the arguments of an author ; but the strength of reasoning in him who addresses us takes us at unawares . It is in the reciprocation of answer and rejoinder that the power of conversion specially lies . A book is an abstraction . It is but imperfectly that we feel that a real man addresses us in it , and that what he delivers is the entire and
deepwrought sentiment of a being of flesh and blood like ourselves , a being who claims our attention and is entitled to our deference . The living human voice , with a countenance and manner corresponding , constrains us to weigh what is said , shoots through us like a stroke of electricity , will not away from our memory , and haunts our very dreams . It is by means of this peculiarity in the nature of mind , that it has been often observed that there is from time to time an Augustan age in the intellect of nations , that men of superior
powers shock with each other , and that light is struck from the collision , which most probably no one of these men would have given birth to , if they had not been thrown into mutual society and com in union . And even so , upon a narrower scale , he that would aspire to do the most of which his faculties are susceptible , should seek the intercourse of his fellows , that his powers may be strengthened , and he may be kept free from that torpor and indolence of soul which , without external excitement , are ever apt to take possession of us .
* ' The man who lives in solitude and seldom communicates with minds of the same class as his own , works out his opinions with patient scrutiny , returns to the investigation again and again , imagines that he had examined the question on all sides , and at length arrives at what is to him a satisfactory conclusion . He resumes the view of this conclusion day after day : he finds in it an unalterable validity : he says in his heart , ' Thus much I have gained ; this is a real advance in the search after truth ; I have added in a defined and
palpable degree to what I knew before / And yet it has sometimes happened Jhat this person , after having been shut up for weeks , or for a longer period , in his sanctuary , living , so far as related to an exchange of oral disquisitions with his fellow-men , like Robinson Crusoe in the desert island , shall come into the presence of one , equally clear-sighted , curious and indefatigable with himself , and shall hear from him an obvious and palpable statement , which in a moment shivers his sightly and glittering fabric into atoms . The statement
was palpable and near at hand ; it was a thin , an almost imperceptible partition that hid it from him ; he wonders in his heart that it never occurred to }\ is meditations . And yet so it is ; it was hidden from him for weeks , or perhaps for a longer period ; it might have been hid from him for twenty years , if it had not been for the accident that supplied it . And he no sooner sees it , than he instantly perceives that the discovery upon which he plumed himself was an absurdity of which even a schoolboy might be ashamed . "—Pp .
251—263 — I would in the first place assert that the merits and demerits of the public-house are very unjustly rated by the fastidious among the more favoured orders of society . We ought to consider that the opportunities and amusements of the lower orders of society are few . They do not frequent coffee-houses ; theatres and places of public exhibition are ordinarily too expensive for them : and they cannot engage in rounds of visiting , thus
cultivating a private and familiar intercourse with the few whose conversation might be most congenial to them . We certainly bear bard upon persons in this rank of society , if we expect that they should take all the severer labour , qnd baye no periods of unbending and amusement . But in reality , what occurs , in the public-house we are too much in the habit of calumniating . If we would visit this scene , wo should find it pretty extensively a theatre of eager and earnest discussion . It is here that the ardent and ' unwashed artificer * and the sturdy husbandman , compare notes and measure wits with each
Untitled Article
438 Godwin ' s Thoughts on Man .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1831, page 438, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2599/page/6/
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