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all things that really surround us we should be imprisoned and unable to
move. For though nothing is impassable to the soul, but all things are
pervious to it and like highways, yet this is only whilst the soul does
not see them. As soon as the soul sees any object, it stops before that
object. Therefore, the divine Providence which keeps the universe open
in every direction to the soul, conceals all the furniture and all the
persons that do not concern a particular soul, from the senses of that
individual. Through solidest eternal things the man finds his road as if
they did not subsist, and does not once suspect their being. As soon as
he needs a new object, suddenly he beholds it, and no longer attempts
to pass through it, but takes another way. When he has exhausted for
the time the nourishment to be drawn from any one person or thing,
that object is withdrawn from his observation, and though still in his
immediate neighborhood, he does not suspect its presence. Nothing is
dead: men feign themselves dead, and endure mock funerals and mournful
obituaries, and there they stand looking out of the window, sound and
well, in some new and strange disguise. Jesus is not dead; he is very
well alive: nor John, nor Paul, nor Mahomet, nor Aristotle; at times
we believe we have seen them all, and could easily tell the names under
which they go.

If we cannot make voluntary and conscious steps in the admirable science
of universals, let us see the parts wisely, and infer the genius of
nature from the best particulars with a becoming charity. What is best
in each kind is an index of what should be the average of that thing.
Love shows me the opulence of nature, by disclosing to me in my friend
a hidden wealth, and I infer an equal depth of good in every other
direction. It is commonly said by farmers that a good pear or apple
costs no more time or pains to rear than a poor one; so I would have no
work of art, no speech, or action, or thought, or friend, but the best.

The end and the means, the gamester and the game,--life is made up
of the intermixture and reaction of these two amicable powers, whose
marriage appears beforehand monstrous, as each denies and tends to
abolish the other. We must reconcile the contradictions as we can, but
their discord and their concord introduce wild absurdities into our
thinking and speech. No sentence will hold the whole truth, and the only
way in which we can be just, is by giving ourselves