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Prose

Notes governments to keep their subjects always at variance. If a few centuries ago all Europe believed
in the infallibility of the Pope, this was not an opinion derived from the proper exercise or erroneous
direction of the common sense of the people; common sense had nothing to do with it—they
believed whatever their priests told them. England at present is divided into Whigs and Tories,
Churchmen and Dissenters; both parties have numbers on their side; but common sense and party
spirit are two different things. Sects and heresies are upheld partly by sympathy, and partly by the
love of contradiction; if there was nobody of a different way of thinking, they would fall to pieces
of themselves. If a whole court say the same thing, this is no proof that they think it, but that the
individual at the head of the court has said it; if a mob agree for a while in shouting the same
watchword, this is not to me an example of the sensus communis, they only repeat what they have
heard repeated by others. If indeed a large proportion of the people are in want of food, of
clothing, of shelter—if they are sick, miserable, scorned, oppressed—an d if each feeling it in
himself, they all say so with one voice and one heart, and lift up their hands to second their
appeal, this I should say was but the dictate of common sense, the cry of nature. But to waive this
part of the argument, which it is needless to push farther,—l believe that the best way to instruct
mankind is not by pointing out to them their mutual errors, but by teaching them to think rightly
on indifferent matters, where they will listen with patience in order to be amused, and where they
do not consider a definition or a syllogism as the greatest injury you can offer them.
There is no rule for expression. It is got at solely by feeling, that is, on the principle of the
association of ideas, and by transferring what has been found to hold good in one case (with the
necessary modifications) to others. A certain look has been remarked strongly indicative of a
certain passion or trait of character, and we attach the same meaning to it or are affected in the
same pleasurable or painful manner by it, where it exists in a less degree, though we can define
neither the look itself nor the modification of it. Having got the general clue, the exact result may
be left to the imagination to vary, to extenuate or aggravate it according to circumstances. In the
admirable profile of Oliver Cromwell after—, the drooping eyelids, as if drawing a veil over the
fixed, penetrating glance, the nostrils somewhat distended, and lips compressed so as hardly to let
the breath escape him, denote the character of the man for high-reaching policy and deep designs
as plainly as they can be written. How is it that we decipher this expression in the face? First, by
feeling it. And how is it that we feel it? Not by re-established rules, but by the instinct of analogy,
by the principle of association, which is subtle and sure in proportion as it is variable and indefinite.
A circumstance, apparently of no value, shall alter the whole interpretation to be put upon an
expression or action and it shall alter it thus powerfully because in proportion to its very
insignificance it shows a strong general principle at work that extends in its ramifications to the
smallest things. This in fact will make all the difference between minuteness and subtlety or
refinement; for a small or trivial effect may in given circumstances imply the operation of a great
power. Stillness may be the result of a blow too powerful to be resisted; silence may be imposed
by feelings too agonising for utterance. The minute, the trifling and insipid is that which is little
in itself, in its causes and its consequences; the subtle and refined is that which is slight and
evanescent at first sight, but which mounts up to a mighty sum in the end, which is an essential
part of an important whole, which has consequences greater than itself, and where more is meant
than meets the eye or ear. We complain sometimes of littleness in a Dutch picture, where there are
a vast number of distinct parts and objects, each small in itself, and leading to nothing else. A sky
of Claude’s cannot fall under this censure, where one imperceptible gradation is as it were the
scale to another, where the broad arch of heaven is piled up of endlessly intermediate gold and
azure tints, and where an infinite number of minute, scarce noticed particulars blend and melt into
universal harmony. The subtlety in Shakespear, of which there is an immense deal scattered
everywhere up and down, is always the instrument of passion, the vehicle of character. The action
of a man pulling his hat over his forehead is indifferent enough in itself, and generally speaking,

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