Afterword: Thomas Love Peacock and Habits of Thinking

Reading these essays on habit and Romanticism has put me in mind of the discursive habits – or fixations intellectuals who appear novels Thomas Love Peacock. Here is Mr Flosky, recognisably a version Coleridge, from Nightmare Abbey: Flosky. Tea, late dinners, French Revolution, have played devil, Listless, brought devil into play. […] The Honourable Listless. Revolution. I cannot see connection ideas. should be sorry if you could; pity man can his own Still more do him, whose ideas any other person see.1 Whereupon Flosky launches one bewildering, dazzling speeches, tendency to advocate purely abstract ‘synthetical’ reasoning as an invigoratingly endless exercise for mind. As good Kantian, he pities those minds are conditioned by world around them: mental connections they make according familiar appearances things, visible therefore plainest intelligence. By contrast, leaping idea unencumbered reference fact, maintains independent freedom unintelligibility being happy hallmark success.