o that there are many competent judges of the best
book, and few writers of the best books. But some of the conditions of
intellectual construction are of rare occurrence. The intellect is a
whole and demands integrity in every work. This is resisted equally by
a man's devotion to a single thought and by his ambition to combine too
many.

Truth is our element of life, yet if a man fasten his attention on a
single aspect of truth and apply himself to that alone for a long
time, the truth becomes distorted and not itself but falsehood; herein
resembling the air, which is our natural element, and the breath of
our nostrils, but if a stream of the same be directed on the body for
a time, it causes cold, fever, and even death. How wearisome the
grammarian, the phrenologist, the political or religious fanatic, or
indeed any possessed mortal whose balance is lost by the exaggeration
of a single topic. It is incipient insanity. Every thought is a prison
also. I cannot see what you see, because I am caught up by a strong
wind and blown so far in one direction that I am out of the hoop of your
horizon.

Is it any better if the student, to avoid this offence, and to
liberalize himself, aims to make a mechanical whole of history, or
science, or philosophy, by a numerical addition of all the facts that
fall within his vision? The world refuses to be analyzed by addition and
subtraction. When we are young we spend much time and pains in filling
our note-books with all definitions of Religion, Love, Poetry, Politics,
Art, in the hope that in the course of a few years we shall have
condensed into our encyclopaedia the net value of all the theories at
which the world has yet arrived. But year after year our tables get
no completeness, and at last we discover that our curve is a parabola,
whose arcs will never meet.

Neither by detachment neither by aggregation is the integrity of the
intellect transmitted to its works, but by a vigilance which brings the
intellect in its greatness and best state to operate every moment. It
must have the same wholeness which nature has. Although no diligence can
rebuild the universe in a model by the best accumulation or disposition
of details, yet does the world reappear in miniature in every event,
so that all the laws of nature may be read in the smallest fact. The
intellect must have the like perfection in its apprehension and in its
works. For this reason, an index or mercury of intellectual prof