VI.] Chauncey Wright. 8i 



wonder, and miss the point of the incidental remark. 

 Of such sort of obscure, though pregnant, allusions 

 we have an instance in the use made of the con- 

 ception of a " spherical intelligence " in the essay on 

 " The Evolution of Self-Consciousness," where the 

 brief reference to the Platonic Timaios is by no 

 means sufficient to relieve the strain upon the reader's 

 attention. It is this too compact suggestiveness 

 which makes this remarkable essay so hard to under- 

 stand, and the exuberance of which half tempted 

 Mr. Wright to give to the paper the very esoteric 

 title of " The Cognition of CagitoT A writer who 

 kept the public in his mind would not proceed in this 

 way, but would more often give pages luminous with 

 concrete illustrations where Mr. Wright only gave 

 sentences cumbrous with epigrammatic terseness. If 

 Mr. Wright did not keep the public in mind while 

 writing, it was not from the pride of knowledge, for 

 no feeling could have been more foreign to him ; and 

 there was something almost touching in the endless 

 patience with which he would strive in conversation 

 to make abstruse matters clear to ordinary minds. 

 It was because, as a writer, he thought in soliloquy, 

 using his pen to note down the course of his reason- 

 ing, but failing to realize the difficulty which others 

 might find in apprehending the numerous and 



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