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Untitled Article
give tha ft » jty $ 9 t , a & . i |» beawg , which is « Jl that can bo rationally sought for by any « uch attempts . The author of * The Principle ^ of Human Action * required no more than this himself ; and it was not accorded . He had no hearing ; but then he was alive . He was very soon reconciled to the temporary disappointment ; he could afford to repose in imagination on the future / To know much , is to expect little , to fear little * and , as far as all personal advantage is concerned , to hope little . But as the
feelings , impelled by and impelling imagination ., are ever prompt to rove away from the severe eye of the understanding and revel in anticipated fields , where success crowns , with far-diverging rays , benevolence of will ; so it may well be believed that the abrupt recall of such feelings and anticipations by the harsh
convictions of knowledge and reason , can never be unattended with regret , and a painful sense of the postponement of general good . To the neglect of this work he was easily reconciled ; to the neglect of the principles it contains , he was never reconciled . Nt > r let it be supposed , that , thwarted in his first attempt , he
relinquished the purpose with splenetic indignation or moody chagrin . It will be shown , as we proceed through his subsequent works , that most of them have originated in the same feelings as his first , and grown out of its principles : we shall see this in our progress through , the grand continuous chain , like men , who , in their course through mountain passes , pause on their lofty way
to gaze on fertile plains , deep lakes , and rich embrowned slopes in the far distance below , and reflect that the sweeping masses above their heads on every side , clad in sunlight and in snow , or dark with mighty pines , to whose primeval music they listen with no una ^ t devotion , were once companions of the woods and plain * below , perchance deriving their original matter , even as their generative impulse , from the unknown depths of those silent
lakes . In the ceaseless operation of this principle , Hazlitt was enabled to compete with his destiny , dedicating his labours to future times , and his personal feelings to the great family of human nature . * Man ' s love is from man ' s life a thing apart ; a devoted contemplation of its object lifts him into a region of abstraction above the earthliness of his corporeal date , and far beyond * the ignorant present ; ' and if he record his passion , it
may chance to outlive the memory of where his lonely grave was made , and influence mankind , perhaps even when his name has melted away , through the fatuity of Time ' s overburthened memory , into fixed oblivion . If his passion hath had a wide extended benevolence of aim and of result , this obliteration of
mans nominal identity , being all that remained of the benefactor of his race , would be a sort of publinity in apathy , or universality of ingratitude , were f 6 »«* t thai Oblivion is a realm whose void majesty is the final boun ^ ^« U hunian aota ^ a univarse \ vhose -grmiKliOTis thrtwft ^ j ^^
Untitled Article
74 S Disquisition on tht ffiBnftt % < frc . of ffUOom Hazlitt .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1835, page 748, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2651/page/56/
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