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You made your court, I say, as servilely, and with as much offence to virtue, as the basest flatterer ever did to the most corrupted prince. But true philosophy will disdain to act either of these parts. Neither in the assemblies of the people, nor in the cabinets of kings, will she obtain favour by fomenting any bad dispositions.
Whether those holy lords I spoke of were always promoted to that rank upon account of their knowledge in religious matters, and the sanctity of their lives; had never been compliers with the times, while they were common priests; or slavish prostitute chaplains to some nobleman, whose opinions they continued servilely to follow, after they were admitted into that assembly?”
One man clings servilely to the old ready-made opinions which he finds, because he is afraid of being called rash and radical; another rejects the traditions of his people from fear of being thought fearful, and timid, and a slave. The results are very different: one is the tame conservative and the other is the fiery iconoclast; but I beg you to see that the cause in both cases is the same.
The daughter was sent by her physician, to avoid a northerly winter; the mother, her niece, and nephew, accompanied her. They were people of rank; but unfortunately, though of an ancient family, the title had descended to a very remote branch a branch they took care to be intimate with; and servilely copied the Countess's airs.
Such persons do not think so highly of the advantages, nor can they submit their imaginations so servilely to the trammels of strict scholastic discipline. There is a certain kind and degree of intellect in which words take root, but into which things have not power to penetrate.
His love, after a struggle, prevailed over his avarice: marriage only strengthened his passion; and, to the last hour of his life, Sarah enjoyed the pleasure and distinction of being the one human being who was able to mislead that farsighted and surefooted judgment, who was fervently loved by that cold heart, and who was servilely feared by that intrepid spirit.
On the other hand, the cunning, crafty man thinks to gain all his ends by the 'suaviter in modo' only; HE BECOMES ALL THINGS TO ALL MEN; he seems to have no opinion of his own, and servilely adopts the present opinion of the present person; he insinuates himself only into the esteem of fools, but is soon detected, and surely despised by everybody else.
In truth he was so afraid of assumptions and "anticipations" and prejudices his great bugbear was so much the "intellectus sibi permissus" the mind given liberty to guess and imagine and theorise, instead of, as it ought, absolutely and servilely submitting itself to the control of facts that he missed the true place of the rational and formative element in his account of Induction.
But even this gain would not long remain, seeing that pronunciation is itself continually changing; custom is lord here for better and for worse; and a multitude of words are now pronounced in a manner different from that of a hundred years ago, indeed from that of ten years ago; so that, before very long, there would again be a chasm between the spelling and the pronunciation of words; unless indeed the spelling varied, which it could not consistently refuse to do, as the pronunciation varied, reproducing each of its capricious or barbarous alterations; these last, it must be remembered, being changes not in the pronunciation only, but in the word itself, which would only exist as pronounced, the written word being a mere shadow servilely waiting upon the spoken.
Its fairest flowers had not been culled, and its choicest sweets rifled before them. As they were not encumbered and hedged in with the multitude of their predecessors, they did not servilely borrow their knowledge from books; they read it in the page of the universe. They studied nature in all her romantic scenes, and all her secret haunts.
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