Are full of inward guilt, may shake with horror, We were as twinn'd lambs, that did frisk i' th' sun, And bleat the one at the other: what we changed Boldly, Not Guilty: the imposition clear'd, INNOVATION-Spirit of. A spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper and confined views. People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors. Burke. INQUIRY-Free. Free inquiry, if restrained within due bounds, and applied to proper subjects, is a most important privilege of the human mind; and, if well conducted, is one of the greatest friends to truth. But when reason knows neither its office nor its limits; when it is employed on subjects foreign to its jurisdiction, and revelation itself is, as it were, called in to bow down to its usurped authority;-it then becomes a privilege dangerous to be exercised, because a want of due respect for the mysterious doctrines of Religion seldom fails to enter into a total disbelief of them. Daubeny. Midway between the height and depth of ocean, I mark'd a whirlpool in perpetual play, Shapeless they seem'd, but endless shapes assumed; Elongated like worms, they writhed and shrunk Their tortuous bodies to grotesque dimensions; Subtle and variable as flickering flames, As all their ancestors had done, and rest, By marvellous structure climbing tow'rds the day. Each wrought alone, yet all together wrought, Hence what Omnipotence alone could do Life's needful functions, food, exertion, rest, INSECTS. INSECTS-Perfection of. In these beings so minute, and as it were lowances of. INSURRECTIONS. INSTINCT-Unerring Providence of Beasts, birds, and insects, even to the minutest and meanest of their kind, act with the unerring providence of instinct; man, the while, who possesses a higher faculty, abuses it, and therefore goes blundering on. They, by their unconscious and unhesitating obedience to the laws of nature, fulfil the end of their existence; he, in wilful neglect of the laws of God, loses sight of the end of his. INSTINCT and REASON. Southey. Improvable reason is the distinction between man and the animal. Binney. Aim of. Insensibility, in return for acts of seeming, even of real, unkindness, is not required of us. But whilst we feel for such acts, let our feelings be tempered with forbearance and kindness Let not the sense of our Own sufferings render us peevish and morose. Let not our sense of neglect on the part of others induce us to judge of them with harshness and severity. Let us be indulgent and compassionate towards them. Let us seek for INSTITUTIONS (Civil and Religious)— apologies for their conduct. Let us be forward in endeavouring to excuse them. And if, in the end, we must condemn them, let us look for the cause of their delinquency, less in a defect of kind intention, than in the weakness and errors of human nature. He who knoweth of what we are made, and hath learned, by what he himself suffered, the weakness and frailty of our nature, hath thus taught us to make compassionate allowances for our brethren, in consideration of its manifold infirmities. Bishop Mant. INSIGNIFICANT-Nothing. INSOLENCE. As it is the nature of a kite to devour little birds, so it is the nature of some minds to insult and tyrannize over little people; this being the means which they use to recompense themselves for their extreme servility and condescension to their superiors; for nothing can be more reasonable than that slaves and flatterers should exact the same taxes on all below them which they themselves pay to all above them. Fielding. INSTABILITY-Characteristics of. As the morning cloud, and as the early dew that passeth away, as the chaff that is driven with the whirlwind out of the floor, and as the smoke out of the chimney. INSTABILITY-Disadvantage of. INSTINCT-Power of. Hosea. Jacob. Who taught the natives of the field and wood Prescient, the tides and tempests to withstand, Pope. Man is an animal formidable both from his 'Tis but instruction, all! Our parent's hand INSTRUCTION-Necessity for. The fruits of the earth do not more ob viously require labour and cultivation to prepare them for our use and subsistence, than our faculties demand instruction and regulation, in order to qualify us to become upright and valuable members of society, useful to others, or happy in ourselves. Barrow. INSURRECTIONS-Character of. Insurrection, never so necessary, is a most sad necessity; and governors who wait for that to instruct them, are surely getting into the fatalest courses,-proving themselves sons of Nox and Chaos, of blind Cowardice, not of seeing Valour! How can there be any remedy in insurrection? It is a mere announcement of the disease,-visible now even to sons of Night. Insurrection usually gains little; usually wastes how much. One of its worst INTELLECT-Superiority of. kinds of waste, to say nothing of the rest, is that of irritating and exasperating men against each other, by violence done, which is always sare to be injustice done; for violence does even justice unjustly. Carlyle. INTELLECT-Development of Times of general calamity and confusion have ever been productive of the greatest tinds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace, and the brightest thunderbolt is elicited from the darkest storm. Colton. INTELLECT-No Limit to. God has placed no limits to the exercise of the intellect he has given us, on this side of the grave. Bacon. INTELLECT-March of. The march of intellect is proceeding at quick time; and if its progress be not accompanied by a corresponding improvement in Lorals and religion, the faster it proceeds, with the more violence will you be hurried down the road to ruin. Southey. INTELLECT-Misguided. The mind of mortals, in perverseness strong, Imbibes with dire docility the wrong. Juvenis. INTELLECT-Pleasures of. The more any object is spiritualized, the more delightful it is. There is much delight in the tragical representation of those things which in reality would be sights full of amazement and horror. The ticklings of fancy are more delightful than the touches of sense. How does poetry insinuate and turn about the minds of men! Anacreon might take more delight in one of his odes than in one of his cups: Catullus might easily find more sweetness in one of his epigrams than in the lips of a Lesbia. Sappho might take more com placency in one of her verses than in her practices. The nearer anything comes to mental joy, the purer and choicer it is. It is the observation not only of Aristotle, but of every one almost, “Some things delight merely because of their novelty;" and that surely upon this account, because the mind, which is the spring of joy, is more fixed and intense upon such things. The rosebud thus pleases more than the blown rose. INTELLECT-Radiancy of. Lamb. The intellect of the wise is like glass; it admits the light of heaven and reflects it. Hare. While the world lasts, the sun will gild the mountain-tops before it shines upon the plain. Bulwer Lytton. INTELLECT-Vanity of. Man's intellect has indeed great power over all outward things. This we are not disposed to question. In these days more especially we all take far too much pride in it, and make presumptuous boast of it, nay, are apt to fall down and worship it, as the one great miracle worker, the true mover of mountains. But powerful as it may be, omnipotent as we may deem it to be, over the world around us, over the outward fields of nature, there is one region where our hearts and consciences tell us, sometimes in half-muttered whispers, sometimes in cries of anguish and agony, that it is almost powerless: and that region is the dim, visionary, passion-haunted one within our own breasts. We all know but too well,every one whose life has not flowed away in listless inanity,-every one who has ever struggled against the evil within him, must have felt but too deeply, that our intellectual convictions, clear and strong as they may have been, have never of themselves been able to shake the foundations of a single sin, to subdue a single vice, to root out a single evil habit. Ever since that severing of the heart from the intellect, which took place when man gave himself up to the lust of godless knowledge, the Passions have made mock at the Undercontrol them, and have only flattered and standing, whenever it has attempted to pampered it, when it was content to wear their livery, and to drudge in their service; while the Will has lifted up its head against the Understanding in haughty defiance and scorn. Moreover this lesson, which we learn from our own grievous experience, is confirmed by all the evidence of history; where, in example the enlightening of the understanding has been after example, we see, how vain and impotent to elevate and purify man's moral being; and how, unless that enlightenment has been working together with other healthier powers, and been kept in check by them, its operation on the character of nations has rather been to weaken and dissipate their energies, to crumble the primitive rock into sand. INTELLECT and INDUSTRY. Hare. Intellect and industry are never incompatible. There is more wisdom, and will be more benefit, in combining them than scholars like to believe, or than the common world imagine; life has time enough for both, and its happiness will be increased by the union. Turner. INTENTIONS. INTRUSIVENESS. who would fly to save us if informed of our fate, and with consciousness that of this fate they can never be informed; that our hopeless portion is that of the really dead,-these con siderations, I say, carry into the heart which still palpitates a degree of appalling and intolerable horror, from which the most daring, imagination must recoil. We know of nothing so agonizing upon earth, we can dream of nothing half so hideous in the realms of the nethermost hell. INTERRUPTION. E. A. Po. You have displaced the mirth, broke the good meeting Shakspeare. With most admired disorder. INTENTIONS (Best)-Forgetfulness of. Addison. There are certain interests which the world supposes every man to have, and which therefore are properly enough termed worldly but the world is apt to make an erroneous estimate: ignorant of the dispositions which constitute our happiness or misery, they bring to an undistinguished scale the means of the one, as connected with power, wealth, or grandeur, and of the other, with their contraries. Philosophers and poets have often protested against this decision; but their arguments have been despised as declamatory, or ridiculed as romantic. Mackenzie. INTERMENT-Premature. What! because bread is good, and wholethrust a crumb into my windpipe while I am some, and necessary, and nourishing, shall you talking? Do not these muscles of mine represent a hundred loaves of bread? and is not my thought the abstract of ten thousand of these crumbs of truth with which you would choke off my speech? INTOLERANCE-Folly of. Holmes. evils by injudicious opposition heresies in Those who, having magnified into serious themselves insignificant, yet appeal to the magnitude of those evils to prove that their opposition was called for, act like unskilful physicians, who, when by violent remedies they have aggravated a trifling disease into a dangerous one, urge the violence of the symptoms which they themselves have produced in justification of their practice. INTOLERANCE-Principle of. Whately. The principle of intolerance makes rapid strides. When accepting it to-day, you may be a fanatic only; to-morrow, those who follow you will be shedders of blood. in the first trial of Penn, the Quaker patriarch, the judge (Sir John Howell, recorder of London) irritated by the sang froid of the prisoner, exclaimed, "I never before could understand how the Spaniards ever suffered the establishment of the Inquisition; but now I see clearly enough that we shall never be at peace in England until we have something of the same sort. Whoever attempts to suppress liberty of con. science, finishes some day or other by wishing for the Spanish Inquisition. Simca It may be asserted without hesitation, that no event is so terribly well adapted to inspire the supremeness of bodily and of mental distress, as is burial before death. The unendurable oppression of the lungs; the stifling fumes of the damp earth; the clinging to the death-garments; the rigid embrace of the nrrrow house; the blackness of the absolute night; the silence, like a sea, that overwhelms; INTRUSIVENESS-Annoyance of. the unseen, but palpable presence of conqueror By my troth, I'll go with thee to the lane's Worm-these things, with thoughts of the air end. I am a kind of burr,-I shall stick. and grass above, with memory of dear friends | Shakspeare. | |
