To Miss Grace Norton.

[January, 1874.]

Thanks for your notes on -----’s pamphlet. If you say you find it “easy to understand,” I shall have something to say, when we meet, on the subject of understanding, — on the subtle distinction between understanding an author, or why he said so and so, what facts he had in mind, what divisions or distinctions he makes, or tries to magnify, in his subject, or what his motives were to the effort; and the understanding of his theory and of his statements in detail, with the degree of precision which analytic habits of thought demand. There is ease and ease — two kinds — in understanding. Mathematics is easy in one way, —cannot be misunderstood, except by gross carelessness; is no more vague than a boulder; is either out of, or in, the mind entirely. To make progress among a heap of boulders is, you know, far from easy, in one way; but it is easier than walking on water, or than clearing the rough ground by flight. It is easy to dream of making such a flight, and to have every thing else in our dream as rational as real things; and it is easy to be actually carried on the made ways of familiar phraseology over difficulties which we are interested in only as a picturesque under-view, but which do not tempt us to explore them with the chemist’s reagents, the mineralogist’s tests, or the geologist’s hammer. But I am running on to say what I

have promised to discuss with you in talk about this scientific understanding.

. . . My prime motive in writing, in disobedience to your commands, is my impatience to make known to you before the light of this bright day wanes, why you failed, as I at first did, yesterday, to see the black letters red. Wright had been surprised, one day in the horse-car, by seeing the large black letters of a title, printed on the dark-blue cover of a pamphlet, have the color of gold when the light struck them aslant; and he had endeavored to reproduce the appearance. ⁷⁴ I took a copy of the same blue book, on which I saw in the horse-car (and made others see) the black letters gleam with the color of gold; but, in the light that enters my sanctum, I could only see a faint dark red tint. The humiliating suggestion then occurred to me that perhaps the red curtains of the car-windows, though not golden in tint, might have contributed to the effect. If I had yielded to this suggestion, I should have punished myself unjustly. (Peccavi, let me add, ought to be only a general and comprehensive confession, or a presumption to be particularly applied only after judicial trial.) So I queried: What were all the differences of circumstances yesterday and the day before? I did not have to make a very long catalogue; only this: (1) Yesterday’s light was brighter. This I diminished, but without the expected effect. (2) The book I saw the day before was a fresh one; its cover had not lost the polish of pressed paper, as a handled book soon does; the black letters had perhaps a smoother surface, and reflected white or surface light more perfectly. It was easy to restore this surface to the letters of my copy by rubbing them with a hard, smooth body, — the end of a knife-handle or paper-knife. This I did, — and beheld the letters gleam in the reflected daylight with a brighter hue of gold than I had seen before. Even the gaslight, in the evening, was sufficient to produce this effect, which I then took pains to guard from illusion by submitting it to other eyes.

There are morals to be drawn from science as well as a science from morals. It is tame bathos, perhaps, instead of vague sublimity, to rest from scientific' effort in the following reflection, — but I make it nevertheless: How much better for truth is patient induction and the use of judgment, than obedient deduction,  humility , and submission to judgment? . . . Such patient, busy dealing with truth is sometimes falsely called humility . It is properly a reasonable pride; though if a metaphysician were to come down to it , it might be regarded as an act of humility . It is not humility to walk and climb   when one sees clearly that he cannot fly; it is simply good sense. But of this anon.