18 THE MICROSCOPE AND ITS LESSONS. 



make him look stupid, as he imagines, in their estima- 

 tion ; and if he -has others with less light than himself, 

 they look stupid in his; then they all get sleepy and 

 wearied with each other. 



" Well," says my favourite author, " there is no harm 

 in being stupid, so long as a man does not think himself 

 clever ; no good in being clever, if a man think himself 

 so, for that is a short way to the worst of stupidity. If 

 you think yourself clever, set yourself to do something ; 

 then you will have a chance of humiliation." * 



The door to knowledge is open to all, but there must 

 first be a disposition to enter. The things which are 

 temporal are parables of the things which are eternal. 

 "If any man's will is to do His will" (the Syriac of a 

 well-known text), " he shall know of the doctrine." f I 

 have heard of a farmer who, complaining to a brother 

 farmer of the " sourness " of his land, was advised to sow 

 it with salt, that is, cover it with it ; he did so, and the 

 result was an abundant supply of mushrooms, the spores 

 of which must have been long deposited either in the 

 earth or in the salt, but in either case they only wanted 

 to meet to produce growth. 



Descending from the infinitely great to the infinitely 

 little, I am naturally led to what the late Dr. Carpenter 

 calls, with much reason, " the revelations of the micro- 

 scope." Truly they are revelations ; but of what ? and of 

 whom ? 



Dr. Dallinger says that no instrument in the hands of 

 science had reached a higher perfection, endorsing the 

 late Dr. Lankester's statement, that it was "the most 

 perfect instrument in the world." 



It is most encouraging to an amateur scientist to find 

 so great a man as Dr. Dallinger adopting precisely the 



* Dr. George MacDonalcl, in " Mary Marion," t Julm vii. 17. 



