near the Rhine, at Cologne, in Germany, is stored-up thought expressed
in stone. So with the picture and the statue: they are stored-up
thought on canvas and in marble.[24] In short, we learn by looking at
great things just what the little ones are; and we know from poems and
buildings and the like, that these, and even commoner things, like a
well-kept garden, a tidy room, a carefully learned lesson, even a
smile on one's face result, every one of them, from stored-up thought.

We can consequently make a definition of THINGS by saying they are
what is thought. Things are made of thought. Even if you cannot
understand this fully now, keep it by you and as you grow older its
truth will be more and more clear. It will be luminous. Luminous is
just the word, for it comes from a word in another language and means
_light_. Now the better you understand things the more _light_ you
have about them. And out of this you can understand how well ignorance
has been compared with darkness. Hence, from the poem, the building,
the painting, the statue, and from commoner things we can learn, as it
was said in a previous Talk, that music is stored-up thought told in
beautiful tones.

Now let us heed the valuable part of all this. If poems, statues, and
all other beautiful things are made out of stored-up thought (and
commoner things are, too), we ought to be able, by studying the
things, to tell what kind of a person it was who thought them; or, in
other words, who made them. It is true, we can. We can tell all the
person's thought, so far as his art and principal work are concerned.
Nearly all his life is displayed in the works he makes. We can tell
the nature of the man, the amount of study he has done, but best of
all we can tell his meaning. The face tells all its past history to
one who knows how to look.[25] His intentions are everywhere as plain