Читать книгу A Commonplace Book of Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies - Mrs. (Anna) Jameson - Страница 21

“Thought and theory,” said Wordsworth, “must precede all action that moves to salutary purposes. Yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory.”

Yes, and no. What we act has its consequences on earth. What we think, its consequences in heaven. It is not without reason that action should be preferred before barren thought; but all action which in its result is worth any thing, must result from thought. So the old rhymester hath it:

“He that good thinketh good may do, And God will help him there unto; For was never good work wrought, Without beginning of good thought.”

The result of impulse is the positive; the result of consideration the negative. The positive is essentially and abstractedly better than the negative, though relatively to facts and circumstances it may not be the most expedient.

On my observing how often I had had reason to regret not having followed the first impulse, O. G. said, “In good minds the first impulses are generally right and true, and, when altered or relinquished from regard to expediency arising out of complicated relations, I always feel sorry, for they remain right. Our first impulses always lean to the positive, our second thoughts to the negative; and I have no respect for the negative—it is the vulgar side of every thing.”

On the other hand, it must be conceded, that one who stands endowed with great power and with great responsibilities in the midst of a thousand duties and interests, can no longer take things in this simple fashion; for the good first impulse, in its flow, meets, perhaps, some rock, and splits upon it; it recoils on the heart, and becomes abortive. Or the impulse to do good here becomes injury there, and we are forced to calculate results; we cannot trust to them.

I have not sought to deduce my principles from conventional notions of expediency, but have believed that out of the steady adherence to certain fixed principles, the right and the expedient must ensue, and I believe it still. The moment one begins to solder right and wrong together, one’s conscience becomes like a piece of plated goods.

It requires merely passive courage and strength to resist, and in some cases to overcome evil. But it requires more—it needs bravery and self-reliance and surpassing faith—to act out the true inspirations of your intelligence and the true impulses of your heart.

Out of the attempt to harmonise our actual life with our aspirations, our experience with our faith, we make poetry—or, it may be, religion.

F—— used the phrase “stung into heroism” as Shelley said, “cradled into poetry,” by wrong.