And as the mind makes its own call so always it makes audience and occasion for itself. True pertinence is deep thought. The superficial man is always impertinent, the profound man never. Poor Tom never knew the time when the present occurrence was so trivial that he could tell what was passing in his head without being checked for unseasonable speech. But let Bacon speak, and wise men would rather listen though the revolution of kingdoms was going on.

That which engages our attention is the absolute inviolability of its laws which are not anywhere recorded in words but which execute themselves all around us with a precision and energy of which the laws of matter are only faint symbols. These are the laws which cannot be added or detracted from. Man is ever led by his material nature to attempt to limit and elude this spiritual nature and ever in vain. But any man who sees that all men are but several porches into one mind will see how futile must be all attempts at the dissembling or concealing of character or opinions.

If a teacher have any opinion which he wishes to conceal, his pupils will become as fully indoctrinated into that, as into any that he publishes. If you pour water into a vessel ever so twisted into coils and angles, it is in vain for you to say, I will pour it only into this or that; it will find its level in all. Men feel and act the consequences of your doctrine without being able to show how they follow. Show us an arc of the curve and a good mathematician will find out the whole figure. We are always reasoning from the seen to the unseen. Hence the perfect intelligence that subsists between the wise men of remote ages. A man cannot bury his meanings so deep in his book but time and like-minded men will find them. Plato had a secret doctrine, had he? What secret can he conceal from the eyes of Bacon, of Montaigne, of Kant?

And as you publish all that you strive to conceal, so another property of your nature is that what you have within that only can you see without.

What can we see, read, acquire but what we are? You have seen a skilful man reading Plutarch. Well, that author is a thousand books to a thousand persons. Take the book into your two hands and read your eyes out. You will never find there what the other finds. If the wise man would have a monopoly of the wisdom or delight he gets he is as secure now the book is Englished as if it were imprisoned in the Pelews’ language. Or do you think you can possibly hear and bring away from any conversation more than is already in your mind born or ready to be born?