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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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All the world has laughed at the mathematician who began to reail Thomson ' s * Seasons , ' but soon shut the book because he could not perceive what was to be proved thereby . But the world should remember that ' it is good to be merry and wise , ' and perhaps in this case its own laugh may deserve to be laughed at . The ridicule has not fallen upon the right point . The
mathematician is supposed to have been absurd , not for his want of perception of what the poem proved , but for his expecting that it should prove any thing . Now in regarding it as a principle that a poem should prove nothing , the world is as inconsequential as the mathematician was blind in not seeing the consequences and corollaries of Thomson ' s ' Seasons . ' There has neverbeen a true poem that did not prove more , and more to the purpose , than its
equal in quantity of Euclid ' s ' Elements . ' All poetry is probative . There is that in it abundantly which might be thrown into the form of propositions , profound and universal ones , and ticketed with an undeniable Q , E . D . In fact , poetry has the privilege of geometry ; it demonstrates . It helps us to truths , not by induction , but by intuition . There is no logic so rapid or so
satisfactory . Look at that tower , twenty miles off , on the top of Leith Hill , in the light of the setting sun ; how distinct its outline , how beautiful its colouring , how picturesque its position , how true its picture on the eye ; that sunlight is poetry . It' brings the object within the scope of your vision ; it shows the object ; it demonstrates . Logical induction , orders a post-chaise , bargains with the landlord for eighteen-pence a mile ; asks the boy , as twilight
is coming on , whether he knows the road , and bids him look to the direction-posts ; stops at the regular stages to change horses ; and after several hours' riding , and much packing and unpacking , with a host of minor arrangements , troubles , and carefulnesses , works out its proof to your understanding of the existence and form of the tower on L <* ith Hill , with little of the facility and less of the beauty than attended the equally satisfactory
accomplishment of the same thing by the far-beaming sunshine of poetry . It is thus that poetry darts and glances upon the remotest distances of the mental landscape . It stands upon a height ; it sees the world in sunshine ; its eye ' glances from heaven to earth , from earth to heaven ; and thus did many a bard of the barbarous olden time behold sights of beauty and grandeur in the soul of
man , while the metaphysician , though travelling with the best posthorses with which logic could furnish him , goes jogging on , century after century , without arriving at the verification of them , according to that definition of verification which the world in its wisdom has adopted . Laugh no more at the mathematician . If Thomson proves nothing , he was very right not to read Thomson ; but there was his blunder . 1 have read Euclid and Thomson both .
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LOCAL LOGIC .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1833, page 413, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2616/page/53/
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