86 BEGINNING OF STUDY. 



itself there, and sends up its stem, and becomes a 

 plant ; and if the man can wait and will attend 

 to it, and collect each year's produce, and sow it 

 again next year, his one bushel will soon become 

 a thousand bushels. In these instances, again, 

 there is nothing but a succession of motions; and, 

 in them all, there is a point at which the thing 

 gets too fine for weighing or measuring, and there 

 it glides slowly beyond our comprehension alto- 

 gether : and, the very minutest guess, as it were, 

 that we can get of a thing, is the proper point at 

 which to begin the study of it. 



The neglect of small things is, indeed, the grand 

 error, in consequence of which so many pass in 

 ignorance and heaviness, that life which nature 

 and art (for after all, art is merely the application 

 of nature) are capable of rendering so intelligent 

 and so full of happiness. The fable of " The boy 

 and the goose with golden eggs," applies in most 

 things to many people, and in many things to all 

 people. The eggs of the goose were brought to 

 their proper size by a process of nature, which 

 the owner of the goose could forward in no 

 other way than by giving the goose plenty of 

 wholesome food, and otherwise keeping it com- 

 fortable; and when the silly boy killed and opened 

 the goose, and found the germs of the eggs no 

 bigger than grains of mustard seed, he was not 

 only disappointed in his expectations, but he was 

 deprived of those eggs which, if he had waited, he 

 would have gotten in the course of nature. Just 

 so, in every process whether of nature or of art, 

 there is one succession of events which leads to 

 the proper result; and if at any stage of those 

 events the least change be made, the result will 



