of the chaise to run up the
hills; and going through Glenfarg, near Kinross, on a winter's
morning, when the rocks were hung with icicles; these being
culminating points in an early life of more travelling than is usually
indulged to a child. In such journeyings, whenever they brought me
near hills, and in all mountain ground and scenery, I had a pleasure,
as early as I can remember, and continuing till I was eighteen or
twenty, infinitely greater than any which has been since possible to
me in anything.

68. A fool always wants to shorten space and time; a wise man wants to
lengthen both. A fool wants to kill space and time; a wise man, first
to gain them, then to animate them.

69. I suspect that system-makers in general are not of much more use,
each in his own domain, than, in that of Pomona, the old women who tie
cherries upon sticks, for the more portableness of the same. To
cultivate well, and choose well, your cherries, is of some importance;
but if they can be had in their own wild way of clustering about their
crabbed stalks, it is a better connection for them than any others;
and if they cannot, then so that they be not bruised, it makes to a
boy of practical disposition not much difference whether he gets them
by handfuls, or in beaded symmetry on the exalting stick.

70. Every great man is always being helped by everybody, for his gift
is to get good out of all things and all persons.

71. God appoints to every one of His creatures a separate mission, and
if they discharge it honourably, if they quit themselves like men, and
faithfully follow the light which is in them, withdrawing from it all
cold and quenching influence, there will assuredly come of it such
burning as, in its appointed mode and measure, shall shine before men,
and be of service constant and holy. Degrees infinite of lustre there
must always be, but the weakest among us has a gift, however seemingly
trivial, which is peculiar to him, and which, worthily used, will be a
gift also to his race for ever.

72. There is not any matter, nor any spirit, nor any creature, but it
is capable of a unity of some kind with other creatures; and in that
unity is its perfection and theirs, and a pleasure also for the
beholding of all other creatures that can behold. So the unity of
spirits is partly in their sympathy, and partly in their giving and
taking, and always in their love; and these are their delight and
their strength; for their s