Cobwebs of Thought by Arachne
page 21 of 54 (38%)
page 21 of 54 (38%)
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world, but George Eliot is definite that this memory is all, that
personality has no other chance of surviving. Her hopes rested on being: "The sweet presence of a good diffused, And in diffusion ever more intense, So shall I join the Choir Invisible Whose music is the gladness of the world." Both George Eliot and Carlyle over accentuated one the race, the other the individual. Mazzini's place in thought was exactly between the two. He believed in God _and_ Collective Humanity. Humanity in God. He said: "We cannot relate ourselves to the Divine, but through collective humanity. Mr. Carlyle comprehends only the individual; the true sense of the unity of the race escapes him. He sympathises with men, but it is with the separate life of each man, and not their collective life."[3] Collective labour, according to an educational plan, designed by Providence, was, Mazzini believed, the only possible development of Humanity. He could never have trusted in any good and effective development from Humanity alone. Nationality, he reverenced, and widened the idea, until it embraced the whole world. He said it was the mission, the special vocation of |
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