Is it absurd to suppose that some peculiarity in the nervous system,
in the connecting link between soul and body, may bring some, more
than others, into an almost abnormal contact with the spirit-world
(for example, Jacob Boehme and Swedenborg), and that, too, without
correcting their faults, or making them morally better than others?
Allow me to say that I have always admired the working of your mind,
there is about it such a perfect uprightness and uncalculating
honesty. I think you are a better Christian without church or theology
than most people are with both, though I am, and always have been in
the main, a Calvinist of the Jonathan Edwards school. God bless you! I
have a warm side for Mr. Lewes on account of his Goethe labors.
Goethe has been my admiration for more than forty years. In 1830 I got
hold of his "Faust," and for two gloomy, dreary November days, while
riding through the woods of New Hampshire in an old-fashioned
stagecoach, to enter upon a professorship in Dartmouth College, I was
perfectly dissolved by it.
Sincerely yours,
C. E. STOWE.
In a letter to Mrs. Stowe, written June 24, 1872, Mrs. Lewes alludes
to Professor Stowe's letter as follows: "Pray give my special thanks
to the professor for his letter. His handwriting, which does really
look like Arabic,--a very graceful character, surely,--happens to be
remarkably legible to me, and I did not hesitate over a single word.
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