Do you think this is likely to interest you, and be worth the trouble of some thought and attention?
Perhaps you may tell me it sounds very tedious, and like making a great fuss about a trifle; that you have all your life eaten mouthfuls of bread without troubling yourself as to what became of them, and yet have not been stopped growing by your ignorance, any more than the little cat, who knows no more how it happens than you do.
True, my dear; but the cat is only a little cat, and you are a little girl. Up to the present moment you and she have known, one as much as the other on this subject, and on that point you have therefore had no superiority over her. But she will never trouble herself about it, and will always remain a little cat. You, on the contrary, are intended by God to become something more in intelligence than you are now, and it is by learning more than the cat that you will rise above her in this respect. To learn, is the duty of all men, not only for the pleasure of curiosity and the vanity of being called learned, but because in proportion to what we learn we approach nearer to the destiny which God has appointed to man, and when we walk obediently in the path which God himself has marked out for us, we necessarily become better.
It is sometimes said to grown-up people, that it is never too late to learn. To children one may say that it is never too early to learn. And among the things which they may learn, those which I want now to teach you have the double merit of being, in the first place amusing, and afterwards, and above all, calculated to accustom you to think of God, by causing you to observe the wonders which He has done. Sure am I that when you know them you will not fail to admire them; moreover I promise your mother that you will be all the better, as well as wiser, for the study.
FIRST PART.—MAN.
LETTER II.
THE HAND.
At the foot of the mountains, from whence I write to you, my dear child, when we want to show the country to a stranger, we commence by making him climb one of the heights, whence he may take in at a glance the whole landscape below, all the woods and villages scattered over the plain, even up to the blue line of the Rhine, which stretches out to the distant horizon. After this he will easily find his way about.
It is to the top of a mountain equally useful that I have just led you. It has cost you some trouble to climb with me. You have had to keep your eyes very wide open that you might see to the end of the road we had to go together. Now then, let us come down and view the country in detail. Then we shall go as if we were on wheels.
And now let us begin at the beginning: