REASONING. 333 



of marching so many miles ; the chair-maker, of having 

 such a shape ; the orator, of responding to such and such 

 feelings ; the theatre-manager, of being willing to pay just 

 such a price, and no more, for an evening's amusement. 

 Each of these persons singles out the particular side of the 

 entire man which has a bearing on Ms concerns, and not till 

 this side is distinctly and separately conceived can the 

 proper practical conclusions /or that reasoner be drawn ; and 

 when they are drawn the man's other attributes may be ig- 

 nored. 



All ways of conceiving a concrete fact, if they are true 

 ways at all, are equally true ways. TJiere is no property 

 ABSOLUTELY essential to any one thing. The same projDerty 

 which figures as the essence of a thing on one occasion be- 

 comes a very inessential feature upon another. Now that 

 I am writing, it is essential that I conceive my paper as a 

 surface for inscription. If I failed to do that, I should have 

 to stop my work. But if I wished to light a fire, and no 

 other materials were by, the essential way of conceiving 

 the paper would be as combustible material ; and I need 

 then have no thought of any of its other destinations. It is 

 really all that it is : a combustible, a writing surface, a thin 

 thing, a liydrocarbonaceous thing, a thing eight inches one 

 way and ten another, a thing just one furlong east of a certain 

 stone in my neighbor's field, an American thing, etc., etc., 

 ad infinitum. Whichever one of these aspects of its being I 

 temporarily class it under, makes me unjust to the other 

 aspects. But as I always am classing it under one aspect 

 or another, I am always unjust, always partial, always ex- 

 clusive. My excuse is necessity — the necessity which my 

 finite and practical nature lays upon me. My thinking is 

 first and last and always for the sake of my doing, and I 

 can only do one thing at a time. A God, who is supposed 

 to drive the whole universe abreast, may also be supposed, 

 without detriment to his activity, to see all parts of it at 

 once and without emphasis. But were our human attention 

 so to disj)erse itself we should simply stare vacantly at 

 things at large and forfeit our opportunity of doing any 

 particular act. Mr. Warner, in his Adirondack story, shot a 

 bear by aiming, not at his eye or heart, but * at him gen- 



