4–10 November 1839

People hold to you as long as you please yourself with the Ideal life only as a pretty dream and concede a resistless force to the lim- itations of the same, to structure, or organiza- tion, and to society. But as quickly as you profess your unlimited allegiance to the first, so far as to be no longer contented with doing the best you can in the circumstances, but demand that these mountain circumstances should skip like rams and the little hills like lambs before the presence of the Soul, then they distrust your wisdom and defy your resolutions. And yet Na- ture is in earnest. That aspiration in every heart which they like that you should paint, or carve, or chaunt, — anything but enact, — is not a cas- tle in the air. They moreover admit it in the moral world ; they concede that a perfect jus- tice should be sought and done ; but an intel- lectual equality, an intellectual society, a mode of domestic life, in which trifles should at last descend to their place, confectionery should come down, and character, art, and joy ascend, this is an incredible proposition. But what they con- cede destroys the force of their denial. Nature is unique throughout. The prayer of the soul predicts its own answer in facts. The moral na- ture is not a patch of light here, whilst the social world is a lump of darkness there, but tends in- cessantly to rectify and ennoble the whole cir- cumference of facts.

We are helped along by good and bad ; am- bition, want, vanity, and such canaille spur us to industry. I have no love for Lord Brougham, yet the recital of his immense and unweariable activity inspires good resolutions in me.