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Untitled Article
( in her works cm the physical sciences , ) or has * he ttfgfe'th * most of her ftatttre ? it is not improbable that an equal abstrac tion from the consciousness of sex , when different education , habits , and position in society shall supersede the self-refetehce which is the necessary consequence of being obliged to act , and even think , on the defensive , will be manifested by many women with reference to the moral sciences . It would appear , from Hazlitt ' s occasional remarks on this subject , that he had never met , in the course of his life , with any woman of superior intellect , whom he could place even as an exception to his general view ; though his remarks on Imogen , and some others among Shakspeare ' s women , show how fine a sense he had of such
characters m his imagination . But this much we know , that , there ate women lirmg , on whom his abstract intellect , his impansiotted love of truth , and his uncompromised integrity and patriotism , have produced almost as strong and lasting an effect as his in * tense sensibility in appreciating all the deepest human feelings * and all the forms and idealisms of beauty . Let us return , however , to the subject of this paper .
While nation wars with nation , and then , recoiling upon itself , strangles and merges the blessings of peace in the war of politics , consequent on its debts and losses ; wnile the tumultuous scheme of society advances , retrogrades , and yet again advances , borne onward by the inherent impulses of human nature towards a
better condition ; abstract truth—which ought to precede all practical changes and constitute their philosophical foundations , as the only means of ensuring their value and permanence—comes struggling fitfully among mankind , after the longest intervals * by the slowest gradations , with the most arduous efforts , and accompanied by the fewest adherents . In proportion as we undermine the matter-of-fact surface of
a question , does the abstraction remove it from ordinary comprehension , because it is comparatively distinct from and independent of all the practical bearings . Hence it will be found that abstract truth in its purest forms , is almost always in direct opf osition to the assumptions on which the common practice of man ( - ind is founded . Tnis is the case with society as to morals , not with individual man , who often acts contrary to convention from a just feeling of abstract right , ) and with mankind at large as to
metaphysics . ' Ever since the beginning of the world , * says Bayle , * all men , except one in two hundred millions , have firmly believed that bodies are coloured ; and yet it is a mistake /* Now ,
* It ii a curious instance of the difficulty of establishing a theory , even in tto physical sciences , that trie doctrines of colour , propounded by Newton , hare recently been disputed and repudiated b y some of the mo » t etniaent scientific men in Btfrope ; uch *» Professor A * tty , Or . Young , Arago , Fresnel , Bre wster , &c Alter all tft * indqmatioti showered upoo Hooke and Huygeoa by tne Newtonians , it induce * * a equallyjjtats and ludicrous renectioo , when we fad the th—ris g ti the ** twttarty autagotifitt in a ftir way « f being « taMi » lMkU ~ fer a time .
Untitled Article
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 1, 1835, page 483, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2647/page/47/
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