for anything, the profit which they would find in so doing. Nor, with
the certainty that I am anticipating much in my little volume, can I
refrain from quoting some words which were not present with me during
its composition, although I must have been familiar with them long ago;
words which express excellently well why it is that these studies
profit so much, and which will also explain the motives which induced
me to add my little contribution to their furtherance:

'A language will often be wiser, not merely than the vulgar, but even
than the wisest of those who speak it. Being like amber in its efficacy
to circulate the electric spirit of truth, it is also like amber in
embalming and preserving the relics of ancient wisdom, although one is
not seldom puzzled to decipher its contents. Sometimes it locks up
truths, which were once well known, but which, in the course of ages,
have passed out of sight and been forgotten. In other cases it holds
the germs of truths, of which, though they were never plainly discerned,
the genius of its framers caught a glimpse in a happy moment of
divination. A meditative man cannot refrain from wonder, when he digs
down to the deep thought lying at the root of many a metaphorical term,
employed for the designation of spiritual things, even of those with
regard to which professing philosophers have blundered grossly; and
often it would seem as though rays of truth, which were still below the
intellectual horizon, had dawned upon the imagination as it was looking
up to heaven. Hence they who feel an inward call to teach and enlighten
their countrymen, should deem it an important part of their duty to
draw out the stores of thought which are already latent in their native
language, to purify it from the corruptions which Time brings upon all
things, and from which language has no exemption, and to endeavour to
give distinctness and precision to whatever in it is confused, or
obscure, or dimly seen'--_Guesses at Truth, First Series_, p. 295.