TRUB STUDY. 343 



even though none of the people leave it. Thus, it is 

 not leisure that mankind needs, it is stimulus and 

 activity ; and study, even the most profound and 

 abstruse study, thrives better in the few snatches 

 of time which the busy man can spare for it, than in 

 all the listless and loitering days of him who has 

 nothing to do. 



That is as true of the study of the productions and 

 phenomena of nature, as it is of those sciences 

 which are more immediately the tools of art. [But; 

 these are the tools ; nature furnishes the materials, 

 which are of primary importance.] And there are 

 many advantages. Nature is always at hand ; our 

 own senses are all the apparatus that we need ; and 

 we have only to look at the connexion in which any 

 thing or appearance that we observe is placed, both 

 in juxtaposition in space and in succession in time, 

 in order to get a lesson from every thing that comes 

 in our way. Could the whole people, according to 

 their opportunities, bring themselves to do that upon 

 all occasions, the extent, the correctness, the use- 

 fulness of the knowledge that must be obtained 

 would be immense. As they would have no hy- 

 pothesis of a school or dogma of a sect to support, 

 each would communicate the result of his own ex- 



Eerience to the general store, and receive that of 

 is fellows in return ; an4 error would be exploded, 

 and so would silly and deceptive credulity, and 

 skepticism equally silly and deceptive ; for all men 

 would see with their own eyes, and believe from 

 their own understanding ; and the heavens and the 

 earth, in all their fairness and in all their fulness, 

 would be every man's kingdom. That is a consum- 

 mation to which it is perhaps hopeless to look : but 

 every approach which can be made to it is an addi- 

 tion to the happiness of man, and to the rational and 

 true adoration and glory of man's Almighty Maker. 



THE END. 



