Читать книгу Specimens of the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Coleridge Samuel Taylor - Страница 30
TABLE TALK
July 23. 1827
ОглавлениеWILLIAM III.—BERKELEY.—SPINOSA.—GENIUS.—ENVY.—LOVE
William the Third was a greater and much honester man than any of his ministers. I believe every one of them, except Shrewsbury, has now been detected in correspondence with James.
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Berkeley can only be confuted, or answered, by one sentence. So it is with Spinosa. His premiss granted, the deduction is a chain of adamant.
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Genius may co-exist with wildness, idleness, folly, even with crime; but not long, believe me, with selfishness, and the indulgence of an envious disposition. Envy is *[Greek: kakistos kai dikaiotatos theos], as I once saw it expressed somewhere in a page of Stobaeus: it dwarfs and withers its worshippers.
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The man's desire is for the woman; but the woman's desire is rarely other than for the desire of the man.34
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"A woman's friendship," I find written by Mr. C. on a page dyed red with an imprisoned rose-leaf, "a woman's friendship borders more closely on love than man's. Men affect each other in the reflection of noble or friendly acts; whilst women ask fewer proofs, and more signs and expressions of attachment."—ED.
