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Congenial. Tendency to soar & branch off. Routes to journey thither

 Isaac   Ware N.H.  May 16th. 1849

Dear Joseph It is some days since I received your letter. I was intending to write immediately after receiving it; but - I am SO busy - that I do not always do every thing I intend - except in matters of business. I do not know but I write too many letters, for one with so much on hands and mind, as I have.

 I expect there is a difference between your letters & mine. Perhaps there is between your mind & mine. Perhaps it is rather the result of the different tenderness of our occupations.  
 There seems to be in your letters a {to me, strange} tendency to Soar, to branch off on every occasion into Metaphysics, or some kindred matters. You cannot, from the very nature of your intellectual constitution, be a transcendentalist. No cultivation could induce it. But you have a tendency to think, talk, argue, about "philosophy in the ancients' application of the term; Mind, thought, feeling, and the developments and phenomena thereof.  Now herein I cannot argue or sympathise with you.  I have a dim remembrance of a time when I took an interest in such matters. When I perceived something  in Upham Wayland, Cousin, Butler &c. in matters of their sort.  In fact, I suspect I might have had more inclination that way naturally than you. Naturally it would have been far easier making a Trancendentalist, a German, out of me, than you   
 But  -- I am an Engineer. Mine is the most intensely practical, perhaps I should say Materializing of all human occupations.  The Engineer has to do with things.  What are thoughts to him?  He may be a Naturalist, in its broadest or Minutest sense. He cannot well