The old law of England punishes those who dig up the bones of the dead for superstitious or magical purposes, that is, in order to injure the living. What then are they guilty of who uncover the dormitories of the departed, and throw their souls into hell, in order to cast odium on a living truth?
DARWIN'S BOTANICAL GARDEN
Darwin possesses the epidermis of poetry but not the cutis; the cortex without the liber, alburnum, lignum, or medulla. And no wonder! for the inner bark or liber, alburnum, and wood are one and the same substance, in different periods of existence.
SEVENTEEN HUNDRED AND SIXTY YARDS NOT EXACTLY A MILE
"It is a mile and a half in height." "How much is that in yards or feet?" The mind rests satisfied in producing a correspondency in its own thoughts, and in the exponents of those thoughts. This seems to be a matter purely analytic, not yet properly synthetic. It is rather an interchange of equivalent acts, but not the same acts. In the yard I am prospective; in the mile I seem to be retrospective. Come, a hundred strides more, and we shall have come a mile. This, if true, may be a subtlety, but is it necessarily a trifle? May not many common but false conclusions originate in the neglect of this distinction—in the confounding of objective and subjective logic?
OF A TOO WITTY BOOK
I like salt to my meat so well that I can scarce say grace over meat without salt. But salt to one's salt! Ay! a sparkling, dazzling, lit-up saloon or subterranean minster in a vast mine of rock-salt—what of it?—full of white pillars and aisles and altars of eye-dazzling salt. Well, what of it?—'twere an uncomfortable lodging or boarding-house—in short, all my eye. Now, I am content with a work if it be but my eye and Betty Martin, because, having never heard any charge against the author of the adage, candour obliges me to conclude that Eliza Martin is "sense for certain." In short, never was a metaphor more lucky, apt, ramescent, and fructiferous—a hundred branches, and each hung with a different graft-fruit—than salt as typical of wit—the uses of both being the same, not to nourish, but to season and preserve nourishment. Yea! even when there is plenty of good substantial meat to incorporate with, stout aitch-bone and buttock, still there may be too much; and they who confine themselves to such meals will contract a scorbutic habit of intellect (i.e., a scurvy taste), and, with loose teeth and tender gums, become incapable of chewing and digesting hard matters of mere plain thinking.