APHORISM III.
To restore a common-place truth to its first uncommon lustre, you need only translate it into action. But to do this, you must have reflected on its truth.
APHORISM IV.
Leighton and Coleridge.
It is the advice of the wise man, 'Dwell at home,' or, with yourself; and though there are very few that do this, yet it is surprising that the greatest part of mankind cannot be prevailed upon, at least to visit themselves sometimes; but, according to the saying of the wise Solomon, The eyes of the fool are in the ends of the earth.
A reflecting mind, says an ancient writer, is the spring and source of every good thing. ('Omnis boni principium intellectus cogitabundus.') It is at once the disgrace and the misery of men, that they live without fore-thought. Suppose yourself fronting a mirror. Now what the objects behind you are to their images at the same apparent distance before you, such is Reflection to Fore-thought. As a man without Fore-thought scarcely deserves the name of a man, so Fore-thought without Reflection is but a metaphorical phrase for the instinct of a beast.
APHORISM V.
As a fruit-tree is more valuable than any one of its fruits singly, or even than all its fruits of a single season, so the noblest object of reflection is the mind itself, by which we reflect:
And as the blossoms, the green, and the ripe, fruit, of an orange-tree are more beautiful to behold when on the tree and seen as one with it, than the same growth detached and seen successively, after their importation into another country and different clime; so is it with the manifold objects of reflection, when they are considered principally in reference to the reflective power, and as part and parcel of the same. No object, of whatever value our passions may represent it, but becomes foreign to us, as soon as it is altogether unconnected with our intellectual, moral, and spiritual life. To be ours, it must be referred to the mind either as motive, or consequence, or symptom.