1821 June 21

Codification Offer

'.9. Draughtsman gratuitous

/In [...?]/ Intense enough no doubt, and what is more in duration [...?]

considerable enough no doubt is the labour and with it the uneasiness necessary

to the purchase of a chance for the attaintment of these intimately connected

/associated/ ends. Yet with all its magnitude scarcely does the labour, the

contention of mind the strain upon the mind which is seen bestowed - and by

multitudes in every country, upon any the most frivolous pursuit that presents

itself in the shape and under the name of pastime. Witness so many games from

which not only the hope of gain /prospect of pecuniary profit, but likewise/ the

exciting force of chance has been excluded. Witness in particular the game of

chess with the whole days expended in it by the antagonists face to face, and

the weeks, months or even years occupied by it through the medium of epistolary

correspondence /intercourse/ Value of the subject matter and object, absolutely

nothing: sole gratification, accepted as an equivalent and more than equivalent

for the labour, the pleasure attendant on the exercise of mental power, absolute

and comparative.

In proof of the probability of a fact will the certainty of it be admitted? With

/By/ no more than a chance and any one may see how a small a chance - for the

obtainment of the natural prize above described, for more years than fifty has

the author of these pages been engaged in the game of solitaire he is thus

playing. And in the springs to the action of which he stands subjected, any more

than in the powers which are put in motion by them, what is there to distinguish

him from the meanest of the hundreds who at this moment are passing before his

window? Even in his own conception, with all the partiality inseparable from

self-estimation, just nothing. Some prefer one sort of exercise, some another.

Some are a little weaker, some are a little stronger: some are a little

narrower, some a little broader: so it is with bodies, and so it is with

minds.