June 23, 1856. To New Bedford with R. . . . Bay wings sang morning and evening about R's house, often resting on a bean-pole, and dropping down and running and singing on the bare ground amid the potatoes. Their note somewhat like–"Come, here-here, there-there, –[then three rapid notes] quick-quick-quick,–or I'm gone."
June 24, 1840. When I read Cudworth I find I can tolerate all, atomists, pneumatologists, atheists, and theists, Plato, Aristotle, Leueippus, Democritus, and Pythagoras. It is the attitude of these men, more than any communication, which charms me. It is so rare to find a man musing. But between them and their commentators there is an endless dispute. If it come to that, that you compare notes, then you are all wrong. As it is, each takes me up into the serene heavens, and paints earth and sky. Any sincere thought is irresistible. It lifts us to the zenith, whither the smallest bubble rises as surely as the largest.
Dr. Cudworth does not consider that the belief in a deity is as- great a heresy as exists. Epicurus held that the gods were "of human form, yet were so thin and subtile as that, comparatively with our terrestrial bodies, they might be called incorporeal; they having not so much carnem as quasi-carnem, nor sanguinem as
