date

20 April 1807 2 (5) 2 (5 Letter
20 April 1807

2 (5) 2 (5

Letter V

Inadequate compensations

2. Interlocutors

II. Irrep.[?] Damage

Sublime genius's who conceive by intuition, and prove by ipse dixit look down with weariness and pity upon me and upon drudges like myself who work by classifications what alas! what little we [are] able to do, it is by these alone that we contrive to do it.

Order is a staff which mental weakness, in proportion as it knows itself, is glad to make for itself to lean upon: the almighty may be complimented with it; but the almighty has no need of it. Lofty minds throw it by: humble minds feel at every step the use of it: it is thus they get on, working their way upon terra firma - less quickly indeed but not the less surely - while the lofty ones keep to the air, or, if they vouchsafe to alight, alight like Icarus.

Objects then, my Lord, that present themselves to an eye accustomed to regard the field of procedure to no other end than that of seeing how laws may have their effect & right be done: objects that let them strike with whatsoever force they may strike, will not find entrance into any one of the thousands of eyes by which the same field surveyed to no other end than that fees may be reaped from it - than as yielding a crop of fees.
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