27 



with their anxiety to deny the possibility of spon- 

 taneous generation. They think they understand 

 more ahout it if they shift it back a more or less 

 long- time, but it is all a delusion. Besides, what is 

 time ? 



Does not Tennyson sa} T : 



" For was, and is, and has been, are but ia ; 

 And all creation is one act, at once 

 The birth of light : but we that are not all, 

 As parts can see but parts, now this, now that, 

 And live perforce from thought to thought, and make 

 One act a phantom of succession ; thus 

 Our weakness somehow shapes the shadow time." 



And does not Archbishop Whately say that our 

 notions about time are delusive ; arising 1 as they do 

 only in consequence of the succession of our ideas. 

 There is an analogous propensity amongst critics ; 

 namely, a perpetual striving- to deny originality, 

 and to accuse of plagiarism. The fact is, they well 

 know that the few ideas that are in their own heads 

 were only got there through much tribulation from 

 other sources, so they cannot believe in ideas ever 

 coming 1 in any other way. For people proverbially 

 judg-e others by themselves. The melancholy nature 

 takes sombre views of people and thing's ; the 

 cheerful take cheerful views. The poet who has a 

 sense of beauty dwells on the beauty to be found in 

 all things, whilst the mind that is dead to beauty 

 sees none. Pythagoras and Jedidiah Buxton had 

 preternatural souls for number, so the former 



