4–10 January 1830

Knowledge, even, God's own attribute and delight and mean, I fear it is but the cock's pearl when it is in a spirit which is not united to the great spirit, ^antum sumus scimus. It will not do for us to dogmatize. Nothing is more un- true to nature. The meanest scholar in Christian practice may often instruct the greatest doctor both in faith and practice. I have no shame in saying, I lean to this opinion, but am not sure. I do not affect or pretend to instruct. O no, it is God working in you that instructs both you and me. I only tell how I have striven and climbed, and what I have seen, that you may compare it with your own observations of the same object. It is important to have some formal observer, whether a keen-sighted one or not, in order to furnish some ttov cttS), some other point to measure thought by.

"^elle profonde philosophie" says De Geran- do,' "ne supposent pas les legislations de Lycurgue et de Solon !" A specimen, it seems to me, had I found it elsewhere, of that superficial admiration which is so common. Neither Lycurgus nor Solon need have been profound thinkers to have made their respective codes, but only practical, severe and persevering men. Wonderful capa- bilities both moral and intellectual, the forma- tion of a code does indeed suppose, but in the general mind of man, and not in the individ- ual. Lycurgus and Solon were alike in the dark with their contemporaries as to the extent, or the order, or the history of those capabilities which yet their codes recognized, and the com- mon people they ruled recognized, and Dege- rando recognizes, and I recognize, — inevitably one and all.