But when Clementina, who has lately
lost her lover, with bosom heaving, eyes flashing, and her whole frame
in agitation, pronounces with a peculiar emphasis that she '_despises_
the fellow,' depend upon it that he is not quite so despicable in her
eyes as she would have us imagine.
"One more instance. If we must naturalize that portentous phrase, _a
truism_, it were well that we limited the use of it. Every commonplace
or trite observation is not a truism. For example: A good name helps
a man on in the world. This is nothing but a simple truth, however
hackneyed. It has a distinct subject and predicate. But when the thing
predicated is involved in the term of the subject, and so necessarily
involved that by no possible conception they can be separated, then
it becomes a truism; as to say, A good name is a proof of a man's
estimation in the world. We seem to be saying something, when we say
nothing. I was describing to F---- some knavish tricks of a mutual
friend of ours. 'If he did so and so,' was the reply, 'he cannot be an
honest man.' Here was a genuine truism, truth upon truth, inference and
proposition identical,--or rather, a dictionary definition usurping the
place of an inference."
* * * * *
"We are ashamed at sight of a monkey,--somehow as we are shy of poor
relations.
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