Now if there be anything of
impatience, that whether truth and justice ought to follow that "'but'"
you will inform me. It is not my habit to go to work so seriously about
matters of pecuniary business; but my ill health makes my life more than
ordinarily uncertain, and I have a wife and three little ones. If your
judgment leads you to advise me to offer it to Phillips, would you take
the trouble of talking with him on the subject, and give him your real
opinion, whatever it may be, of the work and of the powers of the
author?
When this book is fairly off my hands, I shall, if I live and have
sufficient health, set seriously to work in arranging what I have
already written, and in pushing forward my studies and my investigations
relative to the 'omne scibile' of human nature--'what' we are, and 'how
we become' what we are; so as to solve the two grand problems--how,
being acted upon, we shall act; how, acting, we shall be acted upon. But
between me and this work there may be death.
I hope your wife and little ones are well. I have had a sick family. At
one time every individual--master, mistress, children, and
servants--were all laid up in bed, and we were waited on by persons
hired from the town for the week. But now all are well, I only excepted.
If you find my paper smell, or my style savour of scholastic quiddity,
you must attribute it to the infectious quality of the folio on which I
am writing--namely, 'Scotus Erigena de Divisione Naturae', the
forerunner, by some centuries, of the schoolmen.
Pages:
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366