ial cabinet.

Nothing seems so easy as to speak and to be understood. Yet a man may
come to find that the strongest of defences and of ties,--that he has
been understood; and he who has received an opinion may come to find it
the most inconvenient of bonds.

If a teacher have any opinion which he wishes to conceal, his pupils
will become as fully indoctrinated into that as into any which he
publishes. If you pour water into a vessel twisted into coils and
angles, it is vain to say, I will pour it only into this or that;--it
will find its level in all. Men feel and act the consequences of your
doctrine without being able to show how they follow. Show us an arc of
the curve, and a good mathematician will find out the whole figure.
We are always reasoning from the seen to the unseen. Hence the perfect
intelligence that subsists between wise men of remote ages. A man cannot
bury his meanings so deep in his book but time and like-minded men
will find them. Plato had a secret doctrine, had he? What secret can
he conceal from the eyes of Bacon? of Montaigne? of Kant? Therefore,
Aristotle said of his works, "They are published and not published."

No man can learn what he has not preparation for learning, however near
to his eyes is the object. A chemist may tell his most precious secrets
to a carpenter, and he shall be never the wiser,--the secrets he would
not utter to a chemist for an estate. God screens us evermore from
premature ideas. Our eyes are holden that we cannot see things that
stare us in the face, until the hour arrives when the mind is ripened;
then we behold them, and the time when we saw them not is like a dream.

Not in nature but in man is all the beauty and worth he sees. The world
is very empty, and is indebted to this gilding, exalting soul for all
its pride. "Earth fills her lap with splendors" not her own. The vale of
Tempe, Tivoli and Rome are earth and water, rocks and sky. There are as
good earth and water in a thousand places, yet how unaffecting!

People are not the better for the sun and moon, the horizon and the
trees; as it is not observed that the keepers of Roman galleries or the
valets of painters have any elevation of thought, or that librarians are
wiser men than others. There are graces in the demeanor of a polished
and noble person which are lost upon the eye of a churl. These are like
the stars whose light has not yet reached us.

He may see what he maketh. Our dreams are the sequel