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My Life as an Author by Martin Farquhar Tupper
page 17 of 433 (03%)
fearing their posthumous publication; and in this connection let me now
add my express protest against the printing hereafter of any of my
innumerable private letters to friends, or other MSS., unless they are
strictly and merely of a literary nature.

Biography, where honest and true, is no doubt one of the most
fascinating and instructive phases of literature; but it requires a
higher Intelligence than any (however intimate) friend of a man to do it
fairly and fully; so many matters of character and circumstance must
ever be to him unknown, and therefore will be by him unrecorded. And
even as to autobiography, who, short of the Omniscient Himself, can take
into just account the potency of outward surroundings, and still more of
inborn hereditary influences, over both mind and body? the bias to good
or evil, and the possession or otherwise of gifts and talents, due very
much (under Providence) to one's ancient ancestors and one's modern
teachers? We are each of us morally and bodily the psychical and
physical composite of a thousand generations. Albeit every individual
possesses as his birthright a freewill to turn either to the right or to
the left, and is liable to a due responsibility for his words and
actions, still the Just Judge alone can and must make allowance for the
innate inclinings of heredity and the outward influences of
circumstance, and He only can hold the balance between the guilt and
innocence, the merit or demerit, of His creature.

So far as my own will goes, I leave my inner spiritual biography to the
Recording Angel, choosing only to give some recollections and memories
of my outer literary life. For spiritual self-analysis in matters of
religion and affection I desire to be as silent as I can be; but in such
a book as this absolute taciturnity on such subjects is practically
impossible.
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