primers, our cities, constitutions, galleries, traditions, cathedrals,
creeds. The long invention of the race is a tortuous, obscure way. Must
I creep all my fresh years in that labyrinth, and postpone youth to the
end of age? What need of so much experience and contrivance, if without
contrivance, if by simplicity, the children surely and beautifully live?

Healthy thought is organic, grows by assimilation, vitalizes all it
takes, and so like a plant puts forth knowledge from the old and from
within. The apple of to-morrow is earth, not apple, till it hangs on the
tree. Our knowing seems rather rejection than acceptance, so much is
husk in bulk. From eight thousand miles of geology the tree takes a few
drops of water and distils from these its own again. Vigor of mind is
judgment, which divides the meat from the shell, that which cumbers from
that which thrills. The act is simple, inevitable; let it be energetic
and final. We say, "This is valuable, it quickens me; the rest is
nonsense." A feeble mind needs now chiefly to be rid of rubbish, of
cheap admirations, an awe before the hair-pins and shoe-ties of society,
before the true church, the scholastic learning, dead languages, the
Fathers and the fashion. To set the savage of civilization free from his
superstition, these idols must be insulted before his face.

A little energy of demand displaces them from regard. The scholars are
busy with punctuation, chronology, and the lives of the little great, so
that their visit is a vastation, and I must turn them out of doors.
Genius will continue unable to spell, to read the German, to count the
Egyptian kings. There is royal ignorance, the preoccupation of gods. For
the wise, if no object is trifling, yet part of every object is foreign
to its best intent. Every nut is inwardly a man and a miracle, but
outwardly a shell. If it be a book, the thought is a shell, though God
be in the thought. The book is another thing, another world of power and