1821 Sept. 26 B

To Toreno

Letter VI

§.2. Code welcome

§.3 Conditions

7

3

Permit me then if you can Sir, to unfetter[?] the organ of infallibility and give it to you to keep […?] who[?] […?] it existed[?]; the organ of impeccability will remain all the firmer on their heads.

Firm in the supposition that the whole would be found of a piece with the samples which chance in much larger proportion than design has thrown into my hands, such, Sir would be my wishes in favour of the existing work, taken as it stands, and on the supposition that by acclamation the whole was to receive without alteration the force of law. Of course much superior would be my satisfaction upon the supposition of its having first received from your influence and those who think with you those amendments which it would receive by being cleared /disburthened/ of the bad things you allude to and enriched with /improved by/ an additional lot of good ones.

Be this as it may, as you can not but have understood from the first, the sort of consent thus given can not be taken to be absolutely pure and simple: one condition to it you can not but have anticipated. It is that whatever other attributes may be found in the work as given to it, that of eternity may not be of the number: that on the contrary a power[?] limited duration be in the first instance given to it: leaving the attribute of eternity to wait the arrival of the appointed instant so appointed, and thereupon to which itself is not attaching itself to the work according to the indication afforded by discussion and experience.