Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/354

344 minds as innocent and ingenuous children whose guardians we are, be careful what objects and what subjects are thrust on their attention. I think even the facts of science may dust them by their dryness, unless they are in a sense effaced each morning, or rather rendered fertile by the dews of fresh and living truth. Every thought which passes through the mind helps to wear and tear it, and to deepen the ruts, which, as in the streets of Pompeii, evince how much it has been used. How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them. Routine, conventionality, manners, etc.; how insensibly an undue attention to these dissipates and impoverishes the mind, robs it of its simplicity and strength, emasculates it.

Knowledge does not come to us by details, but by lieferungs from the gods.

Only thought which is expressed by the mind in repose, or, as it were, lying on its back and contemplating the heavens, is adequately and fully expressed. What are sidelong, transient, passing half views? The writer expressing his thoughts must be as well seated as the astronomer contemplating the heavens. He must not occupy a constrained position. The facts, the experience we are well poised upon! which secure our whole attention!