Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts.djvu/107

 Degerando said justly that "Plato gives science sublime counsels,—directs her toward the regions of the ideas; Aristotle gives her positive and severe laws, and directs her toward a practical end." Only, in our researches into Nature, let not the higher faculties interfere with the lower. Let the mind reside steadily in the labyrinth of the brain; let the affections, not misplaced, have their constant residence in the heart; and not interfere with the hands and feet, more than with birds and monkeys and other parts of Nature.

Nature aids the efforts of the honest inquirer; for, by the visible form or shell, truth is simply contained, not withheld; as one of the three circles of the cocoa-nut is always so soft that it may be pierced with a thorn, and the traveller is grateful for the thick shell which held the liquor so faithfully. The works of science, as they improve in accuracy, are liable to lose the freshness and vigor, and the readiness to appreciate the profounder and more imposing secrets of Nature; which is a marked merit in the false theories of the ancients. I like [59]