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Scientific Essays and Lectures by Charles Kingsley
page 91 of 160 (56%)
Understanding--by which He has established the heavens.



THOUGHTS IN A GRAVEL-PIT {262}



Ladies and gentlemen, we may of course think of anything which we
choose in a gravel-pit, as we may anywhere else. Thought is free:
at least so we fancy.

But the most right sort of thought, after all, is thought about what
lies nearest us; not always, but surely once in a way, that we may
understand something of everyday objects. And therefore it may be
well worth our while to go once into a gravel-pit, and think about
it, till we have learnt what a gravel-pit is.

Learnt what a gravel-pit is? Everybody knows.

If it be so, everybody knows more than I know. We all know a
gravel-pit when we see one; but we do not all know what we see. I
do not know. I know a little; a few scraps of fact about these pits
round here, though about no others. Were I to go into a pit a
hundred miles, even fifty miles off, I could tell you nothing
certain about it; perhaps might make a dozen mistakes. But what I
know, with tolerable certainty, about the pits round here, I wish to
tell you to-night.

But why? You do not need, one in ten of you, to know anything about
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