date

1817 Sept. 8 Not Paul Ch. Paul
1817 Sept. 8

Not Paul

Ch. Paul’s success―its causes

Give me but a standing place said Archimedes, I will move the earth Archimedes ( c. 287- c. 212 bc), Greek mathematician and inventor. The anecdote is related by Simplicius, a 6th century ad Neoplatonist, In Aristotelis de Physica Commentarii, 1110.5.―meaning in a physical [sense]. Give me but force and fluency (might a man almost any man say) and I will move the world, meaning in an intellectual and moral sense―such / Such / is the power of the evidence afforded by intellectual authority, especially when reinforced by sympathy. ( Si vis me flere) says the earliest of our writers in the field of aesthetics si vis me flere, dolendum est primum ipsi tibi. Grieve―for though without any real cause by the mere force of imagination the skilful writer though it be but for the moment introduces into his mind the passion of grief. Grieve first yourself says Horace, if you would make others weep. See Horace, Ars poetica, 102-3.

Intellectual authority and sympathy―those were the instruments of which Paul had put himself in possession and learnt the use.

In all stages in the career of civilization, nonsense on condition of being accompanied with the appearance of a certain degree of self-persuasion―nonsense so far as being obstructive has been productive of the effect of producing corresponding persuasion in other minds.

Cromwell! what an ascendancy did not that man acquire over other minds! to what a height in the ladder of ambition did he not raise himself! Yet of the sort of eloquence by which these effects were produced specimens are not wanting. Hume in his history has dragged out into day light one of them: a tissue of nonsense he pronounces it: nor does the propriety of the appellation seem much exposed to dispute.
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