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Lectures and biographical sketches

Chapter 18: THE SOVEREIGNTY OF ETHICS.
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About This Book

A compact volume of lectures and sketches that interweaves philosophical essays with concise portraits of notable contemporaries. Topics range from dreams, character, and education to ethics, literary life, and historical reflection, presented in a dense, aphoristic prose that mixes moral inquiry with cultural observation. Several pieces consider the disposition and duties of intellectual life, while the biographical sketches illuminate individual temperaments and habits of mind, together offering a mosaic of ideas about personal integrity, artistic vocation, and the social forces that shape thought and character.

THE SOVEREIGNTY OF ETHICS.

THESE rules were writ in human heart
By Him who built the day;
The columns of the universe
Not firmer based than they.

THOU shalt not try
To plant thy shrivelled pedantry
On the shoulders of the sky.