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One word my dearest friend, in the midst of the anxiety that my own foolish
sensibilities have brought upon me, about the Book. I have looked it over —
I have found juster sentiments in it, that is sentiments more correspondent to
my own ( for that is all that any man in such a case can mean ) than I have yet seen
any where in print. At the same time I have found in some places the
sentiments expressed otherwise than I could have wished, in others the sentiments
themselves different from those I saw reason to entertain. I have remarked what
seemed to me the following imperfections. The stile too much agitated: running
too much into interrogations and exclamations. Too much pathos in it in some
places for an attack upon a work which in it's nature is not pathetic. Not
so uniform as could be wished: vibrating too quickly between a vein of invective
which supposes commotion, and a vein of Irony which supposes tranquillity.
Leave any part of it so light, so Voltarian, as many of your papers
on other subjects that I have seen. That legerete is the quality of a mind at ease. A mind
at to be at ease, must feel itself master of the subject. You are not yet
expressing exercised enough in it to be so: and you have too much discernment to fancy
yourself so when you are not. Pardon the comparison; your manner of
treating it is too much like what mine was two or three years ago. You are
teaching what you are learning: you have instruction to seek yourself, while you
have correction to give to him: you have your own ideas to form, while you
have his to censure. In pushing him down the hill you have to climb up it
yourself. Were you already up you could take a commanding view of the field choose your ground before hand, and
combat him with more advantage. This make you in some places take a
larger compass than perhaps is necessary. I have always found it so in myself.
Leading ideas, principles, take up many more words in their first disclosure, than are sufficient
to contain them afterwards. This Locke has seen; has intimated in his
preface: and his own work as he acknowledges, and as itself proves, is an example
of it. Without Locke I could have known nothing. But I think I
could now take Locke's Essay and write it over again, so as to make it much
more perspicuous precise and apprehensible in half the compass. The circuits you
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Identifier: | JB/537/322/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 537.
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1774-??-?? |
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537 |
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322 |
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001 |
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Correspondence |
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Jeremy Bentham |
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