mote
things and reduces all things into a few principles.

The making a fact the subject of thought raises it. All that mass of
mental and moral phenomena which we do not make objects of voluntary
thought, come within the power of fortune; they constitute the
circumstance of daily life; they are subject to change, to fear, and
hope. Every man beholds his human condition with a degree of melancholy.
As a ship aground is battered by the waves, so man, imprisoned in mortal
life, lies open to the mercy of coming events. But a truth, separated by
the intellect, is no longer a subject of destiny. We behold it as a god
upraised above care and fear. And so any fact in our life, or any
record of our fancies or reflections, disentangled from the web of our
unconsciousness, becomes an object impersonal and immortal. It is the
past restored, but embalmed. A better art than that of Egypt has taken
fear and corruption out of it. It is eviscerated of care. It is offered
for science. What is addressed to us for contemplation does not threaten
us but makes us intellectual beings.

The growth of the intellect is spontaneous in every expansion. The mind
that grows could not predict the times, the means, the mode of that
spontaneity. God enters by a private door into every individual. Long
prior to the age of reflection is the thinking of the mind. Out of
darkness it came insensibly into the marvellous light of to-day. In the
period of infancy it accepted and disposed of all impressions from the
surrounding creation after its own way. Whatever any mind doth or saith
is after a law; and this native law remains over it after it has come to
reflection or conscious thought. In the most worn, pedantic, introverted
self-tormenter's life, the greatest part is incalculable by him,
unforeseen, unimaginable, and must be, until he can take himself up by
his own ears. What am I? What has my will done to make me that I
am? Nothing. I have been floated into this thought, this hour, this
connection of events, by secret currents of might and mind, and my
ingenuity and wilfulness have not thwarted, have not aided to an
appreciable degree.

Our spontaneous action is always the best. You cannot with your best
deliberation and heed come so close to any question as your spontaneous
glance shall bring you, whilst you rise from your bed, or walk abroad
in the morning after meditating the matter before sleep on the previous
night. Our thinking is a pious recep