There was in him that subtle fault, noted and named both by philosophy and religion in the [Greek: areskos] of Aristotle, the [Greek: anthropareskos] of St.Paul, which is more common than it is pleasant to think, even in good people, but which if it becomes dominant in a character is ruinous to truth and power.

He was one of the men--there are many of them--who are unable to release their imagination from the impression of present and immediate power, face to face with themselves.

It seems as if he carried into conduct the leading rule of his philosophy of nature, _parendo vincitur_.

In both worlds, moral and physical, he felt himself encompassed by vast forces, irresistible by direct opposition.

Men whom he wanted to bring round to his purposes were as strange, as refractory, as obstinate, as impenetrable as the phenomena of the natural world.