' Again, at p. 225 of his Sophiometer, he
says:--'The paramount thought that dwells in my mind incessantly is a
question I put to myself--whether, in the event of my personal dissolution
by death, I have communicated all the discoveries my unique mind possesses
in the great master-science of man and nature.' In the next page he
determines that he _has_, with the exception of one truth,--viz. 'the
latent energy, physical and moral, of human nature as existing in the
British people.' But here he was surely accusing himself without ground:
for to my knowledge he has not failed in any one of his numerous works to
insist upon this theme at least a billion of times. Another instance of
his magnificent self-estimation is--that in the title pages of several of
his works he announces himself as 'John Stewart, the only man of nature
[1] that ever appeared in the world.'
By this time I am afraid the reader begins to suspect that he was crazy:
and certainly, when I consider every thing, he must have been crazy when
the wind was at NNE; for who but Walking Stewart ever dated his books by a
computation drawn--not from the creation, not from the flood, not from
Nabonassar, or _ab urbe condita_, not from the Hegira--but from
themselves, from their own day of publication, as constituting the one
great era in the history of man by the side of which all other eras were
frivolous and impertinent? Thus, in a work of his given to me in 1812 and
probably published in that year, I find him incidentally recording of
himself that he was at that time 'arrived at the age of sixty-three, with
a firm state of health acquired by temperance, and a peace of mind almost
independent of the vices of mankind--because my knowledge of life has
enabled me to place my happiness beyond the reach or contact of other
men's follies and passions, by avoiding all family connections, and all
ambitious pursuits of profit, fame, or power.
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