Witcraft by Jonathan Rée

Author:Jonathan Rée
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241003657
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2019-08-19T16:00:00+00:00

James had promised his father that he would compile an anthology of passages from his writings, ‘after the manner of the extracts from Carlyle, Ruskin, & co’ that were already popular. He wanted to remind the world of his father’s depth and originality (‘he alone has conceived of theism in an entirely radical and consequent way’), and convey something of his intellectual courage: the ‘burly effortless power’ with which he faced up to ‘things turbid, more than he could formulate’.153

Over the next two years William read through Henry senior’s writings, published and unpublished, and felt that he ‘had never been as intimate with father before’. For the memorial volume, he decided to reprint an article called ‘Personal Recollections of Carlyle’ alongside an old ‘Autobiographic Sketch’ and an unfinished essay on ‘Spiritual Creation’ in which his father affirmed his ‘revolutionary hopes and aspirations’ – hopes of destroying ‘conservative prejudice’ and the ‘existing moralistic regimen’, and aspirations for an end to ‘alienation’ between human beings and their creator. The sojourn with ‘poor old father’s ghost’ was, as William put it to his wife, both ‘solemn’ and ‘wonderful’. After much difficulty he composed a substantial introduction – the longest piece he had ever written – documenting his father’s journey from ‘acute despair’ to ‘an equally acute optimism’, and the cheerful socialism through which he ‘lost himself in the sentiment of unity with his kind, like a river in the sea’. He recognized his father as a great man, and regretted having indulged in ‘criticisms of inessential details’ which, while they might have been superficially correct, were also profoundly untrue. ‘Why,’ he asked himself, ‘why cdn’t I more heartily acquiesce in the big heart of the whole?’154

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