other and eminent uses of words, of which more anon; but
here let it be noted with sufficient emphasis that of minds there can be
no mixture, and that speech can make no substantive conveyance of any
mental product from one mind to another. Each soul must draw from its
native fountains; though we must never forget that without conversation
and social relationship its divine thirst would not have been excited.

Therefore, in the midst of all warmest and quickest verity of social
nearness, there is a kind of sacred and inviolable solitude of the soul.
We speak across to each other, as out of different planets in heaven;
and the closest intimacy of souls is like that of double stars which
revolve about each other, not like that of two lumps of clay which are
squeezed and confounded together.

So much, then, concerning the limits of verbal communication. Words, we
say, are not vehicles. No perception, no mental possession, passes from
mind to mind. You can impart to another no piece of knowledge whose main
elements were not already in his mind, no thought which was not
substantially existent in his consciousness before your voice began to
seek his ear. Instructors may, indeed, put a pupil in the way to obtain
fresh perceptions, and more rarely a wise man may put an apt disciple in
the way to obtain deeper insights; but, after all, the learner must
_learn_; the learner must for himself behold the fact, with the eyes of
body or of soul; and he must behold it as it is in itself, not merely as
it is in words.

Hence the new scheme of school-education. Agassiz says, in
substance,--"If you would teach a boy geography, take him out on the
hills, and make the earth herself his instructor. If you would teach him
respecting tigers or turtles, _show_ him tiger or turtle. Take him to a
Museum of Natural History; let him always, so far as possible, learn
about facts from the facts themselves." Judicious and important advice.
And the basis of it we find in what has been set forth above, namely,
that words convey no perception, whether of physical or of spiritual
truth.

It follows, therefore, that only he whose soul is eloquent within him
will gain much from any eloquence of his fellow. Only he whose heart is
a prophet will hear the prophet. A divine preparation of the nature,
divine activities of the soul, precede all high uses of communication.
Though Demosthenes or Phillips speak, it is the hearer's own spirit that
convinces him.