MISUNDERSTANDINGS UNDER WHICH HE LIVED. 327 



the things of everyday life interpreted to the mass of men. 

 Familiarity not only breeds contempt of even the greatest 

 elements that surround and support them, but shuts their 

 eyes to their nature and importance. It thus becomes one 

 of the functions of science, to interpret to the blind the 

 true beauty and dignity of the commonest objects they 

 hourly use, as working under universal law ; of education, 

 to teach the real character and relations of common things ; 

 of religion, to show that there is nothing " common or un- 

 clean," as under the Great Father's love ; and of poetry, 



" To clothe the palpable and familiar 

 With golden exhalations of the dawn." 



Not less is there the same need of interpreting to the 

 great majority of mankind, the men and women they daily 

 meet in the house, on the highway, or at the market ; and 

 this is all the more necessary if their neighbours have 

 pursuits differing from their own. The best of men have 

 often been misunderstood all their days, or viewed in a 

 false light, or ignorantly persecuted, from this sheer inability 

 of their fellows to look beneath the mere outer surface of 

 things, as well as from the co-existing want of that blessed 

 charity which " hopeth all things and thinketh no evil." 



Such facts in the experience of mankind receive 

 abundant illustration in the history of John Duncan, and 

 few have passed through life whose real character and 

 pursuits were more hidden from their contemporaries than 

 this scientific weaver. Many things led to this result. 

 His eccentricities challenged criticism ; his unusual studies 

 were pursued at a time when science was little followed by 

 any, and still less by the poor; and -his seeming simplicity 



