This will not only cast out the demon, but so
people the house that he will not dare return. If a man might disprove
all the untruths in creation, he would hardly be a hair's breadth nearer
the end of his own making. It is better to hold honestly one fragment of
truth in the midst of immeasurable error, than to sit alone, if that were
possible, in the midst of an absolute vision, clear as the hyaline, but
only repellent of falsehood, not receptive of truth. It is the positive
by which a man shall live. Truth is his life. The refusal of the false is
not the reception of the true. A man may deny himself into a spiritual
lethargy, without denying one truth, simply by spending his strength for
that which is not bread, until he has none left wherewith to search for
the truth, which alone can feed him. Only when subjected to the positive
does the negative find its true vocation.
I am jealous of the living force cast into the slough of satire. No
doubt, either indignant or loving rebuke has its end and does its work,
but I fear that wit, while rousing the admiration of the spiteful or the
like witty, comes in only to destroy its dignity. At the same time, I am
not sure whether there might not be such a judicious combination of the
elements as to render my remarks inapplicable.
At all events, poetry favours the positive, and from the _Emblems_ named
of Quarles I shall choose one in which it fully predominates.
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