Page:The reflections of Lichtenberg.djvu/62

 sets a specific region of the brain in motion, and that either this motion, communicated to all the other parts of the organ, is more or less vigorous in different people, or else, being only partially distributed, carries further in one man than another. The sequence of dreams might be explained on this hypothesis. All motion in the world has its origin in some thing that is not motion: why, then, should not the universal force just as well be the cause of my thoughts as it is of fermentation? Truth has a thousand obstacles to overcome in order to reach paper safe and sound, and a thousand more to travel back from paper to head. Liars are its feeblest enemies. The gushing writer who talks of everything under the sun, and views that everything like other honest people who happen to be slightly off their heads; the superfine, affected student of human nature, who, like angels in a monad, sees and intends to see his whole life reflected in every human action; the worthy, pious man, who believes everything out of respect, examines nothing that he learnt before his fifteenth year, and builds on unexamined ground the little that he has examined,these are truth’s dangerous enemies. What is due and meet in the world comes irresistibly to pass. If it should be in human nature, then, that the Christian religion, for example, should ultimately