The visibility of motion at a great distance is increased by all that increases the the distinct visibility of the moving object. This Saturday, August 3, 1804, in the room immediately under the tower in St. Antonio, as I was musing on the difference, whether ultimate or only of degree, between _auffassen_ and _erkennen_ (an idea received and an idea acquired) I saw on the top of the distant hills a shadow on the sunny ground moving very fast and wave-like, yet always in the same place, which I should have attributed to the windmill close by, but the windmill (which I saw distinctly too) appeared at rest. On steady gazing, however, (and most plainly with my spy-glass) I found that it was not at rest, but that this was its shadow. The windmill itself was white in the sunshine, and there were sunny white clouds at its back, the shadow black on the white ground.
[Sidenote: SYRACUSE Thursday night at the Opera, September 27, 1804]
In reflecting on the cause of the "meeting soul" in music, the seeming recognisance etc., etc., the whole explanation of _memory_ as in the nature of _accord_ struck upon me; accord produces a phantom of memory, because memory is always in accord.
Philosophy to a few, religion with many, is the friend of poetry, as producing the two conditions of pleasure arising from poetry, namely tranquillity and the attachment of the affections to _generalisations_. God, soul, Heaven, the Gospel miracles, etc., are a sort of _poetry_ compared with Lombard Street and Change Alley speculations.
[Sidenote: A SERIOUS MEMORANDUM Syracuse, Saturday, Oct. 5, 1804]
In company, indeed, with all except a very chosen few, never dissent from anyone as to the _merits_ of another, especially in your own supposed department, but content yourself with praising, in your turn; the really good praises of the unworthy are felt by a good man, and man of genius as detractions from the worthy, and robberies--so the _flashy_ moderns seem to _rob_ the ancients of the honours due to them, and Bacon and Harrington are _not_ read because Hume and Condillac _are_. This is an evil; but oppose it, if at all, in books in which you can evolve the whole of your reasons and feeling, not in conversation when it will be inevitably attributed to envy. Besides, they who praise the unworthy must be the injudicious: and the eulogies of critics without taste or judgment are the natural pay of authors without feeling or genius--and why rob them? _Sint unicuique sua præmia._ Coleridge! Coleridge! will you never learn to appropriate your conversation to your company! Is it not desecration, indelicacy, and a proof of great weakness and even vanity to talk to, etc. etc., as if you [were talking to] Wordsworth or Sir G. Beaumont?