So many indeed are the practical illustrations of the different manner in which the same object is viewed by knowledge and by ignorance, that it is difficult to make a first choice. All around us there are objects, the nature and qualities of which are known to the few, unknown to the many, and hence either overlooked or misunderstood by the latter, studied and understood by the former. Each portion, however minute, of our own body, and of that of every other organic being, has in it wherewithal to exercise the ingenuity and reflection of the wisest; and yet how many thousands live and die without having even desired much less sought after such knowledge! Nor is the inorganic world less fruitful in subjects of inquiry, nor less neglected. The ploughman “whistles as he goes for want of thought,” not because nature has failed to spread around him inexhaustible food for thought, but because his mind has not been trained to think. By each movement of his ploughshare, page after page, as it were, is opened to his view of new and interesting matter--and yet he sees before him nothing but silent and unmeaning clods. By each movement of his foot he disturbs those pebbles which, speechless to him because he questions not, return to the interrogations of knowledge wonder-stirring answers, when asked,
For the present we shall pass over these more humble whisperers of things curious and strange, and turn to those massive fragments of rocks which, far removed from their original site, are now scattered either singly or in groups over a large portion of the earth’s surface, resting sometimes on the slopes of hills composed of materials totally different from their own, seen sometimes on the sand and gravel of extensive plains, and distant from the mountains of which they were once a part, sometimes from one to three hundred miles: they are Boulders. Can we not picture to ourselves, in that remote period of our island’s history when forest and morass occupied the place of its bogs, and when the winds sighed over comparative desolation, an ancient inhabitant, imbued with nature’s living poetry, pausing before one of those grey lichen-covered masses which had withstood the warrings of the elements for perhaps thousands of years, and, as the awe of the surrounding solitude came like a charm over his soul, gazing with growing veneration at the venerable rock?--to him it would appear as if cast down from heaven, or planted where it now stands by some supernatural or giant hand. What spot, then, more fitted for the simple worship of nature’s child?--what temple, what altar more suited to his simple rites?