Subject: E--of the pure intellect into the human na

From: Shure Hoople <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 2009 15:58:51 +0100

Ical outcome; though here, too, there is not wanting a light ingenuity,
a figurativeness, and fanciful sport, with glimpses of insight far
deeper than the common. But Boswell's grand intellectual talent was (as
such ever is) an _unconscious_ one, of far higher reach and significance
than Logic; and showed itself in the whole, not in parts. Here again we
have that old saying verified, "The heart sees farther than the head."
Thus does poor Bozzy stand out to us as an ill-assorted, glaring mixture
of the highest and the lowest. What, indeed is man's life generally but
a kind of beast-godhead; the god in us triumphing more and more over the
beast; striving more and more to subdue it under his feet? Did not the
Ancients, in their wise, perennially significant way, figure Nature
itself, their sacred All, or Pan, as a portentous commingling of these
two discords; as musical, humane, oracular in its upper part, yet ending
below in the cloven hairy feet of a goat? The union of melodious,
celestial Freewill and Reason, with foul Irrationality and Lust; in
which, nevertheless, dwelt a mysterious unspeakable Fear and half-mad
_panic_ Awe; as for mortals there well might! And is not ma