g itself to see whatever it chooses;--a great gift, if
directed to the discernment of the things needful and pertinent to its
own work and being; a great weakness, if directed to the discovery of
things profitless or discouraging. In all things throughout the world,
the men who look for the crooked will see the crooked, and the men who
look for the straight will see the straight. But yet the saying was a
notably sad one; for it came of the conviction in the speaker's mind
that there was in reality _no_ crooked and _no_ straight; that all so
called discernment was fancy, and that men might, with equal rectitude
of judgment, and good-deserving of their fellow-men, perceive and paint
whatever was convenient to them.

Sec. 5. Whereas things may always be seen truly by candid people, though
never _completely_. No human capacity ever yet saw the whole of a thing;
but we may see more and more of it the longer we look. Every individual
temper will see something different in it: but supposing the tempers
honest, all the differences are there. Every advance in our acuteness of
perception will show us something new; but the old and first discerned
thing will still be there, not falsified, only modified and enriched by
the new perceptions, becoming continually more beautiful in its harmony
with them and more approved as a part of the Infinite truth.

Sec. 6. There are no natural objects out of which more can be thus learned
than out of stones. They seem to have been created especially to reward
a patient observer. Nearly all other objects in nature can be seen, to
some extent, without patience, and are pleasant even in being half seen.
Trees, clouds, and rivers are enjoyable even by the careless; but the
stone under his foot has for carelessness nothing in it but stumbling;
no pleasure is languidly to be had out of it, nor food, nor good of any
kind; nothing but symbolism of the hard heart and the unfatherly gift.
And yet, do but give it some reverence and watchfulness, and there is
bread of thought in it, more than in any other lowly feature of all the
landscape.

Sec. 7. For a stone, when it is examined, will be found a mountain in
miniature. The fineness of Nature's work is so great, that, into a
single block, a foot or two in diameter, she can compress as many
changes of form and structure, on a small scale, as she needs for her
mountains on a large one; and, taking moss for forests, and grains of
crystal for crags, the surfa