the use of man. And even after that you cannot kill me. The
trampled and sodden straw will rot only to enter into a new life;
and I shall pass through a fresh cycle of strange adventures, age
after age, till time shall be no more; doing my work in my
generation, and fulfilling to the last the will of God, as
faithfully as when I was the water-breathing sponge in the abysses
of the old chalk sea." All this and more, gentlemen and ladies, the
pebble could tell to you, and will: but he is old and venerable,
and like old men, he wishes to be approached with respect, and does
not like to be questioned too much or too rapidly; so that you must
not be offended if you meet with more than one rebuff from him; or
if he keeps stubborn silence, till he has seen that you are a modest
and attentive person, to whom it is worth while to open a little of
his forty or fifty thousand years' experience.

Second only to the good effect of this study on the logical faculty,
seems to me to be its effect on the imagination. Not merely in such
objects as the pebble, whose history I have so hastily, but I must
add faithfully, sketched; but in the tiniest piece of mould on a
decayed fruit, the tiniest animalcule from the stagnant pool, will
imagination find inexhaustible wonders, and fancy a fairy-land. And
I beg my elder hearers not to look on this as light praise.
Imagination is a valuable thing; and even if it were not, it is a
thing, a real thing, a faculty which every one has, and with which
you must do something. You cannot ignore it; it will assert its own
existence. You will be wise not to neglect it in young children;
for if you do not provide wholesome food for it, it will find
unwholesome food for itself. I know that many, especially men of
business, are inclined to sneer at it, and ask what is the use of
it? The simple answer is, God has made it; and He has made nothing