Thomas de Quincey

y speaks to the discursive understanding of man. It

enables man to think and to learn from what he have read. y can occupy a very high place in human interests. y needing to be developed but never to be planted

y appeals to the higher understanding of reason through

affections of pleasure and sympathy. It urges man to move and to apply what he have read. y Higher literature y An exercise and expansion to man s own latent capacity of sympathy with the infinite.

Literature of Knowledge
y Function: to teach y rudder y Speaks to the mere

Literature of Power
y Function: to move y oar or sail y Ultimately higher

discursive understanding y Speaking of man s intellectual capacity, Scriptures speak of the understanding heart

understanding or reason y Has its field of action

y The very first step of power is flight, an ascending

movement into another element where earth is forgotten while all steps of knowledge carry you further on the same earthly level.

y A justice that differs from common forensic justice by

the degree in which it attains its object. y A justice that is more omnipotent over its own ends not with the refractory elements of earthly life, but with the elements of its own creation and with materials flexible to its own purest preconceptions.