Chapter XXIX

., some one observed the fact that the sugar was whitened wherever the tracks were, and thought about this fact; and the result was that moistened clay came to be used in every sugar refinery in whitening sugar.

One that is in the habit of thinking while he looks will find something interesting wherever he goes. He will not be obliged to go to some museum to see wonderful things, but he will find them all about him. In the most common plants and animals, which most people do not think of much, he will see many things to interest and astonish him; and to him the air and the water, and even the stones under his feet, will be full of wonders.

[Sidenote: Much to be learned that is not in books.]

You see by what I have said that there is a great deal to be learned that is not in books. Indeed, books will not do you much good if they do not wake up in you a disposition to learn more than they tell you. People that know much are not content with learning merely what they find in books, but learn what they can from every body and from every thing. They use books only as helps, and the most of what they know they learn by observing--that is, seeing and thinking upon what they see.

[Sidenote: Knowing the reasons of things.]

It is very pleasant to know the reasons of things. I have therefore told you in this book, as I have gone along, as much as I could do, why things are as I have described them; but you will remember that I have now and then said about some things that you are not old enough yet to understand them. As you grow older you can learn more and more, and so the things that you will be interested in will be all the time increasing. But, though you may keep on learning all your lives, there are some things that you never can understand. God understands the reasons of every thing, but there are many, very many things that the wisest of men can not explain.

[Sidenote: What Newton said about what he knew.]

Very wise men are not apt to be proud of their wisdom. They commonly feel that what they know is very little when it is compared with what they do not know. Newton was one of the wisest men that ever lived. He was so wise that he discovered more things than any other man ever has. But he was very humble about his knowledge. He said this about it: He felt that what he knew was like a few pebbles that he had picked up on the sea-shore, and that there was so much of what he did not know that it was like the great ocean that was before him.

[Sidenote: Our knowledge in another world.]

You remember that I told you in Part Second that all that we know we learn by the senses of our bodies--the sight, the hearing, etc. But the glorified bodies which the Bible says that we shall have in another life will be fitted with better means of getting knowledge. Some things that are mysterious to us now we shall then understand. We shall know more than Newton and all the wise men of this world ever knew here, and we shall ever be learning more and more of the wonders of God’s power, and wisdom, and goodness.

_Questions._--What is said about learning all that is in the world? How can you learn about things for yourselves? What is said about Newton and Franklin? Can you make some discoveries? What is said about the value of facts? What about finding wonders all around us? How can books help you to learn more than is in them? What is said about understanding the reasons of things? What is said about the feelings of very wise men? Tell what Newton said about his knowledge. What is said about our getting knowledge in another world?

THE END.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Child's Book of Nature, by Worthington Hooker