GHL to Alexander Main, London, [12 February 1875]
Title
GHL to Alexander Main, London, [12 February 1875]
Title
GHL to Alexander Main, London, [12 February 1875]
Sender
George Henry Lewes
Recipient
Alexander Main
Date(s)
- 1875-02-12
Place
London
Letter Content
GHL to Alexander Main, London, [12 February 1875]
Text: Main's copy owned by Mr. John R. Sprunt. Hitherto unpublished.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
Friday.
My dear Main
I should be glad if the second volume contains any real food for you -- mystical or non-mystical. We have observed with some surprise (not suspecting you of philosophic studies) a keen insight in such matters -- probably here as elsewhere insight comes from sympathy, as, according to my doctrine, all cognition is primarily emotion. Certainly no one ever really understood an opinion until he had learned to see it as it presented itself to the mind which formulated it. I shall send you Vol. 2 in a few days. You would have had the first had I thought it likely to be so much to your taste.
Mrs. Lewes is pretty well and hard at work -- despairing over it, of course, -- aliter non fit liber -- at least with her. I am and have been for some time supremely happy in my work, having got away from hated metaphysics into dear Biology and Psychology. If ever you see a duck painfully picking its way over the stones, and then, when it has reached the water, complacently wagging its tail, and turning round its head with an air of calm content at finding itself once more in its element, think of me as I was during the last two years, and as I am just now. If I wag my tail a little, don't call it conceit so much as Elemental Complacency! Mrs. Lewes told me when I wrote to you to send some pretty message from her -- and I send it. You remember Quintus Fixlein in Jean Paul 213 who was all his life occupied with a work on Errata, which contained important moral conclusions, he said, and -- advised the reader to draw them.
Ever yours
G. H. L.
Text: Main's copy owned by Mr. John R. Sprunt. Hitherto unpublished.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
Friday.
My dear Main
I should be glad if the second volume contains any real food for you -- mystical or non-mystical. We have observed with some surprise (not suspecting you of philosophic studies) a keen insight in such matters -- probably here as elsewhere insight comes from sympathy, as, according to my doctrine, all cognition is primarily emotion. Certainly no one ever really understood an opinion until he had learned to see it as it presented itself to the mind which formulated it. I shall send you Vol. 2 in a few days. You would have had the first had I thought it likely to be so much to your taste.
Mrs. Lewes is pretty well and hard at work -- despairing over it, of course, -- aliter non fit liber -- at least with her. I am and have been for some time supremely happy in my work, having got away from hated metaphysics into dear Biology and Psychology. If ever you see a duck painfully picking its way over the stones, and then, when it has reached the water, complacently wagging its tail, and turning round its head with an air of calm content at finding itself once more in its element, think of me as I was during the last two years, and as I am just now. If I wag my tail a little, don't call it conceit so much as Elemental Complacency! Mrs. Lewes told me when I wrote to you to send some pretty message from her -- and I send it. You remember Quintus Fixlein in Jean Paul 213 who was all his life occupied with a work on Errata, which contained important moral conclusions, he said, and -- advised the reader to draw them.
Ever yours
G. H. L.
Signature
G. H. L.
Citation
George Henry Lewes, GHL to Alexander Main, London, [12 February 1875], Complete George Eliot Letters(2026), George Eliot Archive, edited by Beverley Park Rilett. https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org, Accessed September 7, 2026. https://georgeeliotarchive.org/items/show/94384