31

Logic II 31

The Power of Ideas

I fear I may be producting the impression of
talking at random. It is that I wish the reader to
"catch on" to my idea conception, my point of view;
and just as one cannot make a man see that a
thing is red, or is beautiful, or is touching, by describing
redness, beauty, or pathos, but can only point to
something else that is red, beautiful, or pathetic, and
say "Look here too for something like that there", so if
the reader has not been in the habit of conceiving
ideas as I conceive them, I can only cast a sort of
dragnet into his experience and hope that it will may
fish up some instance in which he shall have had a
similar conception. Do you think, reader, that is is
a positive fact that

Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again;

or do you think that this, being poetry, is only a pretty
fiction? Do you think that, notwithstanding the