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He said that "Sur les Rives" had the best things in it. Perhaps it was less finished than some of the others, but it was on a bigger scale, the conception was more interesting. She asked what the conception was. He told her that it was about a woman who, out of affection for her husband, and deep intrinsical virtue, refuses to become the mistress of the man she passionately adores.
In brief, his life and death were such that I could not blame them who wished the like, and almost to have been himself: almost, I say; for though we may wish the prosperous appurtenances of others, or to be another in his happy accidents, yet so intrinsical is every man unto himself that some doubt may be made whether any would exchange his being, or substantially become another man.
But so many difficulties were foreseen, so many objections raised, that the ambassadors received instructions to confine themselves to the more sober proposal of "a strict and intimate alliance and union, which might give to each a mutual and intrinsical interest" in the prosperity of the other.
It is not every man’s part, saith one of our opposites, to judge de circumstantia, quae reddit actionem vel bonam vel malam. “Some circumstances, saith another of them, are intrinsical and essential to actions, and specially making up their nature.” The principal circumstances which here we speak of, are comprehended in this versicle:— Quis, quid, ubi, quibus auxiliis, cur quomodo, quando.
I know that those who are not convinced of the intrinsical evil and unlawfulness of former corruptions may, upon other considerations, go along and join in this reformation; for according to Augustine’s rule, men are to let go those ecclesiastical customs which neither Scriptures nor councils bind upon us, nor yet are universally received by all churches.
His doctrine was splendid and beautiful. To detect its imperfections was no easy task; to lay the foundations of virtue in utility, and to limit, by that scale, the operation of general principles; to see that the value of sincerity, like that of every other mode of action, consisted in its tendency to good, and that, therefore the obligation to speak truth was not paramount or intrinsical: that my duty is modelled on a knowledge and foresight of the conduct of others; and that, since men in their actual state, are infirm and deceitful, a just estimate of consequences may sometimes make dissimulation my duty were truths that did not speedily occur.
Sir James Mackintosh says, that “in his treatise de Servo Arbitrio against Erasmus, Luther states the distinction between co-action and necessity as familiar a hundred and fifty years before it was proposed by Hobbes, or condemned in the Jansenists.” According to his definition of liberty, it is merely a freedom from co-action, or external compulsion. “I conceive liberty,” says he, “to be rightly defined in this manner: Liberty is the absence of all the impediments to action that are not contained in the nature and intrinsical qualities of the agent: as for example, the water is said to descend freely, or to have liberty to descend by the channel of the river, because there is no impediment that way; but not across, because the banks are impediments; and though the water cannot ascend, yet men never say it wants liberty to ascend, but the faculty or power, because the impediment is in the nature of the water and intrinsical.” According to this definition, though a man’s volitions were thrown out, not by himself, but by some irresistible power working within his mind, say the power of the Almighty, yet he would be free, provided there were no impediments to prevent the external effects of his volitions.
Sir, if such a man fell into errors, it must be from defects not intrinsical; they must be rather sought in the particular habits of his life; which though they do not alter the ground-work of character, yet tinge it with their own hue. He was bred in a profession.
If only that might be; if only upon the verge of night I might redeem by usefulness my lost unserviceable day. Then this grey life, so long sole and intrinsical to itself, should glow at last with some reflection of the sunset; once more I should know young ardours imagined lost and devotions miraculously born again.