As
to catching the residuum of the process, or what we call
_thought_,--the gaseous ashes of burned-out _thinking_,--the excretion
of mental respiration,--that will depend on many things, as, on having
a favorable intellectual temperature about one, and a fitting
receptacle.--I sow more thought-seeds in twenty-four hours' travel over
the desert-sand, along which my lonely consciousness paces day and
night, than I shall throw into soil where it will germinate, in a year.
All sorts of bodily and mental perturbations come between us and the
due projection of our thought. The pulse-like "fits of easy and
difficult transmission" seem to reach even the transparent medium
through which our souls are seen. We know our humanity by its often
intercepted rays, as we tell a revolving light from a star or meteor by
its constantly recurring obscuration.
An illustrious scholar once told me, that, in the first lecture he ever
delivered, he spoke but half his allotted time, and felt as if he had
told all he knew. Braham came forward once to sing one of his most
famous and familiar songs, and for his life could not recall the first
line of it;--he told his mishap to the audience, and they screamed it
at him in a chorus of a thousand voices.
Pages:
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291