The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi by Sir Richard Francis Burton
page 84 of 91 (92%)
page 84 of 91 (92%)
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"Truth hath not an unchanging name." A modern English writer
says: "I have long been convinced by the experience of my life, as a pioneer of various heterodoxies, which are rapidly becoming orthodoxies, that nearly all truth is temperamental to us, or given in the affections and intuitions; and that discussion and inquiry do little more than feed temperament." Our poet seems to mean that the Perceptions, when they perceive truly, convey objective truth, which is universal; whereas the Reflectives and the Sentiments, the working of the moral region, or the middle lobe of the phrenologists, supplies only subjective truth, personal and individual. Thus to one man the axiom, _Opes irritamenta malorum_, represents a distinct fact; while another holds wealth to be an incentive for good. Evidently both are right, according to their lights. Haji Abdu cites Plato and Aristotle, as usual with Eastern songsters, who delight in Mantik (logic). Here he appears to mean that a false proposition is as real a proposition as one that is true. "Faith moves mountains" and "Manet immota fides" are evidently quotations. He derides the teaching of the "First Council of the Vatican" (cap. v.), "all the faithful are little children listening to the voice of Saint Peter," who is the "Prince of the Apostles." He glances at the fancy of certain modern physicists, "devotion is a definite molecular change in the convolution of grey pulp." He notices with contumely the riddle of which Milton speaks so glibly, where the Dialoguists, --reasoned high Of providence, foreknowledge, will and fate, Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute. |
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