In Place Of Practising Wholesome Self-abnegation, We

A Man Who Is Certain He Is Right Is Almost Sure To Be Wrong.

Your Remarks Upon Chemical Notation With The Variety Of Systems Which Have Arisen, &c., &c., Had Almost Stirred Me Up To Regret Publicly That Such Hindrances To The Progress Of Science Should Exist. I Cannot Help Thinking It A Most Unfortunate Thing That Men Who As Experimentalists & Philosophers Are The Most Fitted To Advance The General Cause Of Science & Knowledge Should By Promulgation Of Their Own Theoretical Views Under The Form Of Nomenclature, Notation, Or Scale, Actually Retard Its Progress.

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.

As When On Some Secluded Branch In Forest Far And Wide Sits Perched An Owl, Who, Full Of Self-conceit And Self-created Wisdom, Explains, Comments, Condemns, Ordains And Order Things Not Understood, Yet Full Of Importance Still Holds Forth To Stocks And Stones Around - So Sits And Scribbles Mike.

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.