William Smith

“ How Thou art, and seemest to Thine own being, I can never know, any more than I can assume Thy nature. After thousands upon thousands of spirit-lives, I shall comprehend Thee as little as I do now in this earthly house. That which I conceive, becomes finite through my very conception of it; and this can never, even by endless exaltation, rise into the Infinite. Thou differest from men, not in degree but in nature. In every stage of their advancement they think of Thee as a greater man, and still a greater; but never as God—the Infinite,—whom no measure can mete. ”

“ Every one must at once be struck by the absolute command which Cicero had over the resources of his native tongue. His words seem to gush forth without an effort in an ample stream; and the sustained dignity of his phraseology is preserved from pompous stiffness by the lively sallies of a ready wit and a vivid imagination, while the happy variety which he communicated to his cadences prevents the music of his carefullymeasured periods from filling on the ear with cloying monotony. It is a style which attracts without startling, which fixes without fatiguing the attention. ”

“ And time may come when that whereof you boast,
Which is your youth's chief wealth and ornament,
Shall withered be by winter's raging frost,
When beauty's pride and flowering years are spent.
Then wilt thou mourn when none shall thee respect;
Then wilt thou think how thou hast scorned my tears;
Then pitiless each one will thee neglect,
When hoary grey shall dye thy yellow hairs;
Then wilt thou think upon poor Corin's case,
Who loved thee dear, yet lived in thy disgrace.
XXVII
O Love, leave off with sorrow to torment me;
Let my heart's grief and pining pain content thee! ”

“ Slavery existed almost throughout the whole of Greece; and Aristotle says that a complete household is that which consists of slaves and freemen, and he defines a slave to be a living working-tool and possession. None of the Greek philosophers ever seem to have objected to slavery as a thing morally wrong; Plato in his perfect state only desires that no Greeks should be made slaves by Greeks, and Aristotle defends the justice of the institution on the ground of a diversity of race, and divides mankind into the free and those who are slaves by nature ”

“ Fichte died as he bad lived,—the priest of knowledge, the apostle of freedom, the martyr of humanity. He belongs to those Great Men whose lives are an everlasting possession to mankind, and whose words the world does not willingly let die. His character stands written in his life, a massive but severely simple whole. It has no parts;—the depth and earnestness on which it rests, speak forth alike in his thoughts, words, and actions. No man of his time—few perhaps of any time—exercised a more powerful, spirit-stirring influence over the minds of his fellow-countrymen. ”

“ And yet my Chloris draws her angry breath;
My hopes still hoping hopeless now repine,
For living she doth add to me but death.
Thy Phinis, dying, lovèd thee full dear;
My Chloris, living, hates poor Corin's love,
Thus doth my woe as great as thine appear,
Though sundry accents both our sorrows move.
Thy swan-like songs did show thy dying anguish;
These weeping truce-men show I living languish.
XV
These weeping truce-men show I living languish,
My woeful wailings tells my discontent;
Yet Chloris nought esteemeth of mine anguish,
My thrilling throbs her heart cannot relent. ”

“ A post office is a monopoly, and at certain stages of its history that fact has been its bane. To-day when the demands of social and commercial intercourse make an efficient vehicle for the transmission of correspondence a necessity, the evils inherent in monopolies sink out of sight so far as the post office is concerned.
A peremptory public takes the place of competitors as a motive for alertness. The faults of the institution are freely exposed, and correction insisted upon; and, what is as much to the point, the public contributes of its ingenuity for the improvement of the service. ”

“ All Greece looked on in suspense as its two leading cities were about to engage in a strife of which no man could forsee the end; but the youth, with which both Athens and Peloponnesus then abounded, having had no experience of the bitter calamities of war, rushed into it with ardour. It was a war of principles and races. Athens was a champion of democracy, Sparta of aristocracy; Athens represented the Ionic tribes, Sparta the Dorian; the former were fond of novelty, the latter were conservative and stationary; Athens had the command of the sea, Sparta was stronger upon land. ”

“ And now one nation speaks forth the word which all are struggling to utter, and soon every eye is turned upon France,—the theatre on which the new act in the drama of human history is to be acted; where freedom and right are once more to become realities; where man, no longer a mere appendage to the soil, is to start forth on a new career of activity and honour, and show the world the spectacle of an ennobled and regenerated race. ”

“ The habit of stating and comparing a multitude of conflicting theories, each of which could number a long array of great names among its supporters, would naturally confirm that disposition to deny the certainty of human knowledge which must have been imbibed in early life by the pupil of Philo of Larissa; while the multitude of beautiful and profound reflections scattered over the writings of the Greek sages would lead an unbiassed mind, honest in its search after truth, to select what was best in each without binding himself exclusively to one. ”

“ Be gracious to perplexèd Corin's lines;
You that do feel love's proud authority,
Help me to sing my sighs and sad designs.
Chloris, requite not faithful love with scorn,
But as thou oughtest have commiseration;
I have enough anatomised and torn
My heart, thereof to make a pure oblation.
Likewise consider how thy Corin prizeth
Thy parts above each absolute perfection,
How he of every precious thing deviseth
To make thee sovereign. Grant me then affection!
Else thus I prize thee: Chloris is alone
More hard than gold or pearl or precious stone. ”

“ To this ennobling enterprise he consecrated his being;—to it he devoted his gigantic powers of thought, his iron will, his resistless eloquence. But he taught it also in deeds more eloquent than words. In the strong reality of his life,—in his intense love for all things beautiful and true,—in his incorruptible integrity and heroic devotion to the right, we see a living manifestation of his principles. His life is the true counterpart of his philosophy;—it is that of a strong, free, incorruptible man. And with all the sternness of his morality, he is full of gentle and generous sentiments ”

“ In Thee, the Incomprehensible, I myself, and the world in which I live, become clearly comprehensible to me, all the secrets of my existence are laid open, and perfect harmony arises in my soul.
“Thou art best known to the childlike, devoted, simple mind. To it Thou art the searcher of hearts, who seest its inmost depths; the ever-present true witness of its thoughts, who knowest its truth, who knowest it though all the world know it not. Thou art the Father who ever desirest its good, who rulest all things for the best. ”

“ My sighs shall tell to her my sad designs,
My painful pen shall ever sue for grace
To help my heart, which languishing now pines;
And I will triumph still amidst my woe
Till mercy shall my sorrows overflow.
XXX
The raging sea within his limits lies
And with an ebb his flowing doth discharge;
The rivers when beyond their bounds they rise,
Themselves do empty in the ocean large;
But my love's sea which never limit keepeth,
Which never ebbs but always ever floweth,
In liquid salt unto my Chloris weepeth,
Yet frustrate are the tears which he bestoweth. ”

“ We find besides, Will, Freedom, Self-determination; and here is a world altogether independent of sense, and of the knowledge of outward things. Freedom is the root, the very ground-work of our being; free determination is the most intimate and certain fact in our nature. To this freedom we find an absolute law addressed,—the unconditional law of morality. Here, then, in the practical world of duty, of free obedience, of moral determination, we have the true world of man, in which the moral agent is the only existence, the moral act the only reality. ”

“ If the spectacle of the scholar contending against the hindrances of fortune and the imperfections of his own nature,—struggling with the common passions of mankind and the weakness of his own will,—soaring aloft amid the highest speculations of genius, and dragged down again to earth by its meanest wants;—if this be one of the most painful spectacles which the theatre of life presents, surely it is one of the noblest when we see such a man pursuing some lofty theme with a constancy which neither difficulty nor discouragement can subdue. Such was now Fichte’s position. ”

“ And Chloris if these weeping truce-men may
One spark of pity from thine eyes obtain,
In recompense of their sad heavy lay,
Poor Corin shall thy faithful friend remain;
And what I say I ever will approve,
No joy may be comparèd to thy love! ”

“ A gift out of mere compassion for my poverty I would abhor, and even hate the giver:—this is perhaps the most neglected part of my character. But the gift of friendship, of a friendship which, like yours, rests upon cordial esteem, cannot proceed from compassion, and is an honour, not a dishonour. But, in truth, I need it not. I have indeed no money by me at present, but I have no unusual disbursements to make, and I shall have enough to meet my very small regular expenses till my departure. I seldom come into difficulties when I have no money,—I believe Providence watches over me. ”

“ But the spirit of Fichte’s philosophy is a proud and bold spirit, for which the domain of human knowledge, even in its widest extent, is too narrow; which opens up new paths at every step it takes; which struggles with language in order to wrest from it words enough for its wealth of thought; which does not lead us, but seizes and hurries us along, and whose finger cannot touch an object without bruising it to dust. ”

“ Even his hatred is the offspring of a higher love. Truly indeed has he been described by one of our own country’s brightest ornaments as a “colossal, adamantine spirit, standing erect and clear, like a Cato Major among degenerate men; fit to have been the teacher of the Stoa, and to have discoursed of beauty and virtue in the groves of Academe.” But the sublimity of his intellect casts no shade on the soft current of his affections, which flows, pure and unbroken, through the whole course of his life, to enrich, fertilize, and adorn it. ”

“ In no other man of modern times do we find the stern grandeur of ancient virtue so blended with the kindlier humanities of our nature which flourish best under a gentler civilization. We prize his philosophy deeply,—it is to us an invaluable possession, for it seems the noblest exposition to which we have yet listened of human nature and divine truth,—but with reverent thankfulness we acknowledge a still higher debt, for he has left behind him the best gift which man can bequeath to man,—a brave, heroic human life. ”

“ The voice of conscience, of highest reason, bids us know, love, and honour beings like ourselves;—and those beings crowd around us. The ends of their and our existence demand the powers and appliances of physical life for their attainment;—that life, and the means of sustaining and using it, stand before us. The world is nothing more than the sphere and object of human activity; it exists because the purposes of our moral life require its existence. Of the law of duty we are immediately certain;—the world becomes a reality to us by means of that previous certainty. ”

“ He is thus the creator and sustainer of all things; for in Him alone all the thronging forms which people our dream of life “live and move and have their being.” All partake His essence:—material nature disappears, but its images are invested with a new reality. All our life is His life; and we are eternal, for He is eternal. Birth and the grave are no more; but, in their stead, undying energy and immortal youth. Of Him—the Infinite One,—of the mode of His being, we know nothing, nor need we to know ”

“ Cheerfulness and good courage are to me the highest proof that thou lovest me as I should be loved. Dejection and sorrow are distrust in me, and make me unhappy because they make thee unhappy. It is no proof of love that thou shouldst feel deeply the injustice done to me:—to me it is a light matter, and so must it be to thee, for thou and I are one. ”