[xxxvi. 4]

1821 April 26

Constitut Code

First Lines

First Principles

Appropriate Aptitude

Aptitude is inversely as altitude

Sympathy of affection (1.) and of conception

[...?] per copies

\PS\ With relation to political function, aptitude is not directly but inversely, as altitude in the conjunct scale of power, opulence and factitious dignity - of political prosperity - of political influence.

Factitious dignity, opulence, - of these will external instruments of human felicity, in themselves /their nature/ separate, but in various proportions naturally intermixed, is composed a sort of medium or atmosphere in which the favorites of fortune live, move, and have their being. Each having the faculty /property/ of introducing its possessor into the possession of the two others, they will on some occasions and to some persons, require to be considered and combined while on other occasions & to other purposes, they will require to be considered as separate. The quantities of these sweets, absorbed by different individuals rise one above another in a scale, the highest point or degree of which is occupied by the position absorbed by a despot of ancient or modern time - an Emperor of China, an Emperor of Rome an Emperor of Russia: the lowest point or Degree by the portion absorbed by an individual of the labouring class, whose labour affords him nothing beyond /above/ the means of bare subsistence, but that subsistence assured.

When degrees of appropriate aptitude are considered with relation to the possession and exercise of the powers of government, a conception commonly entertained appears to be, is that the height of a man's place in the scale of such appropriate aptitude, is as the height of his place in that scale of external felicity - in other words as the quantity possessed by him of that compound of the external elements of felicity - directly,

Upon a nearer inspection /closer scrutiny/ it will be found that how natural soever this conception is erroneous and that the reverse of it is the true one: that the proportions may in the main hold good, but that the ratio is not the direct but the reverse.

First let it be seen, that the appropriate aptitusde in question is not directly but inversely as the heighth of the place occupied by the individual in gorgeous scale: next where it is that the opposite corruption has come to be so generally entertained: in the influence exercised by the matter of wealth operating as an instrument of delusion, the cause it will be seen is to be found.