I Am No Poet, But If You

Now I Must Take You To A Very Interesting Part Of Our Subject-to The Relation Between The Combustion Of A Candle And That Living Kind Of Combustion Which Goes On Within Us. In Every One Of Us There Is A Living Process Of Combustion Going On Very Similar To That Of A Candle, And I Must Try To Make That Plain To You. For It Is Not Merely True In A Poetical Sense-the Relation Of The Life Of Man To A Taper; And If You Will Follow, I Think I Can Make This Clear.

Magnetic Lines Of Force Convey A Far Better And Purer Idea Than The Phrase Magnetic Current Or Magnetic Flood: It Avoids The Assumption Of A Current Or Of Two Currents And Also Of Fluids Or A Fluid, Yet Conveys A Full And Useful Pictorial Idea To The Mind.

If The Term Education May Be Understood In So Large A Sense As To Include All That Belongs To The Improvement Of The Mind, Either By The Acquisition Of The Knowledge Of Others Or By Increase Of It Through Its Own Exertions, We Learn By Them What Is The Kind Of Education Science Offers To Man. It Teaches Us To Be Neglectful Of Nothing - Not To Despise The Small Beginnings, For They Precede Of Necessity All Great Things In The Knowledge Of Science, Either Pure Or Applied.

Whereas, According To The Declaration Of That True Man Of The World Talleyrand, The Use Of Language Is To Conceal The Thoughts; This Is To Declare In The Present Instance, When I Say I Am Not Able To Bear Much Talking, It Means Really, And Without Any Mistake, Or Equivocation, Or Oblique Meaning, Or Implication, Or Subterfuge, Or Omission, That I Am Not Able; Being At Present Rather Weak In The Head, And Able To Work No More.

You Will Be Astonished When I Tell You What This Curious Play Of Carbon Amounts To. A Candle Will Burn Some Four, Five, Six, Or Seven Hours. What, Then, Must Be The Daily Amount Of Carbon Going Up Into The Air In The Way Of Carbonic Acid! ... Then What Becomes Of It? Wonderful Is It To Find That The Change Produced By Respiration ... Is The Very Life And Support Of Plants And Vegetables That Grow Upon The Surface Of The Earth.