ABSTRACT
I hate people who have no notion of any thing but generalities, and forms, and creeds, and naked propositions,1 even worse than I dislike those who cannot for the soul of them arrive at the comprehension of an abstract idea. There are those (even among philosophers) who, deeming that all truth is contained within certain outlines and common topics, if you proceed to add colour or relief from individuality, protest against the use of rhetoric as an illogical thing; and if you drop a hint of pleasure or pain as ever entering into 'this breathing world,'2 raise a prodigious outcry against all appeals to the passions.
