SELF-FORMATION; OR, THE HISTORY OF AN INDIVIDUAL MIND: INTENDED AS A GUIDE FOR THE INTELLECT THROUGH DIFFICULTIES TO SUCCESS. BY A FELLOW OF A COLLEGE. Capel Lofft Omnis boni principium intellectus cogitabundus.-VETUS AUCTOR. Necessario enim requiritur ut melior ac perfectior intellectûs humani usus atque So build we up the being that we are; Thus deeply drinking in the soul of things, VOL. II. LONDON: CHARLES KNIGHT AND CO., LUDGATE STREET. 1837. SELF-FORMATION. CHAPTER VIII. A soul without reflection, like a pile THIS was another epoch of my life-a resting place, to translate the word epoch from learned into plain language; and so, that I may do justice to etymology, I will stop a brief while and look around me, carrying myself back in imagination, as well as I may, to the scenes and sentiments of that period. I had passed from the childhood of my intellect to its boyhood. Instead of taking everything upon trust, and reproducing it upon order in the same form that it was given me, I had got by this time into the habit of looking out for myself, and combining and recombining as I pleased my store of imagery. I was becoming every day less mechanical and more rational. I was impatient of mere school drudgery. I regarded all its methods and elements as nothing more than the scaffolding whereby my intellectual structure had been raised; and now that its end, as I fancied, somewhat foolishly, was achieved, I was uneasy till it should be cleared away from before me, and the glories of existence VOL. 11. B |