From my book, Innovations in Rhetoric in the Writing of Sydney Owenson (Lady Morgan, 1781-1859), pages 52-53:
In her 1840 book, Woman and Her Master, Sydney Owenson makes the following observation:
As the acquirement of a physical elevation, in expanding the sphere of vision, and opening new and vast regions to the sense, obscures and diminishes the individual details comprehended in its grasp; so that intellectual and moral elevation, which has opened to the mind’s eye the wider fields of scientific research and of social combination, has caused the relative value of the smaller facts presented to its apprehension to be either overlooked, or mistaken. Society has become complicated more rapidly than philosophy and legislation can follow; the actions of man upon man, and those of the species upon nature, have multiplied faster than observation can co-ordinate, or reason control; until a positive advance has assumed the appearance of a relative retrogradation. (Woman and Her Master, p. 15)
The global
network of intellectual thought feeds upon innovation within the consciousness of humanity. As one notion spirals to form a
new idea, the resulting awareness creates new perspectives on issues not
perceived within the current reality of some communities. Knowledge gained from
sharing this new awareness provides more communities with intellectual
capabilities to affect a positive change.
