Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/33

Rh cloud in the horizon. You tell me it is a mass of vapor which absorbs all other rays and reflects the red; but that is nothing to the purpose, for this red vision excites me, stirs my blood, makes my thoughts flow. I have new and indescribable fancies, and you have not touched the secret of that influence. If there is not something mystical in your explanation, it is quite insufficient. What sort of science is that which enriches the understanding, but robs the imagination? Not merely robs Peter to pay Paul, but takes from Peter more than it ever gives to Paul. That is simply the way in which it speaks to the understanding, but that is not the way it speaks to the imagination. Just as inadequate to a mere mechanic would be a poet s account of a steam-engine. If we knew all things thus mechanically merely, should we know anything really?—It would be a true discipline for the writer to take the least film of thought that floats in the twilight sky of his mind for his theme, about which he has scarcely one idea (that would be teaching his ideas how to shoot), make a lecture on this, by assiduity and attention get perchance two views of the same, increase a little the stock of knowledge, clear a new field instead of manuring the old. We seek too soon to ally the perceptions of the mind to the experience of the hand, to prove