You can
say so much if you like. Talk to me just as you did when we last sat
under the cedar-tree. I MUST know your mind about theology and
metaphysics.
Your affectionate godchild,
HERMIONE.
My Dear Hermione,--I am sorry you could not come. I am sorry that what
people call a "cause" should have kept you away. If any of your friends
had been ill; if it had been a dog or a cat, I should not have cared so
much. You are dreadful! Theology and metaphysics! I do not understand
what they are as formal sciences. Everything seems to me theological
and metaphysical. What Shakespeare says now and then carries me further
than anything I have read in the system-books into which I have looked.
I cannot take up a few propositions, bind them into faggots, and say,
"This is theology, and that is metaphysics." There is much "discourse
of God" in a May blossom, and my admiration of it is "beyond nature,"
but I am not sure upon this latter point, for I do not know in the least
what f?s?? or Nature is. We love justice and generosity, and hate
injustice and meanness, but the origin of virtue, the life of the soul,
is as much beyond me as the origin of life in a plant or animal, and I
do not bother myself with trying to find it out.
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