Pièce 4b - Part of a draft syllabus of a paper entitled ‘On the Relations between Science and Some Modern Poetry’

1 single sheet

(Docketed ‘Cosmic Emotion’, the title of the published version of the paper.)

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Transcript

4ᵒ The ideas and feelings relating to the All are derived from those relating to individual events and are inferior to them in importance.

The cosmogony of the living world is that which is most important to us as causing cosmic emotion of the first kind. The general principle of this is a mode of action which distinguishes organic from inorganic things. This is also the most general conception of a good action.

There is no necessity to personify this principle for poetical purposes; since its nature is to personify itself in the human race.

Closer definition of the character of an Organic or Good action. This character may be called Freedom. Forms of it in the individual and in the social organism.

Cosmic emotions are fitted to the scientific conception of the cosmos are expressed in the works of Shelley, Wordsworth, Swinburne, and Walt Whitman.