But the most right sort of thought, after all, is thought about what
lies nearest us; not always, but surely once in a way, that we may
understand something of everyday objects. And therefore it may be
well worth our while to go once into a gravel-pit, and think about
it, till we have learnt what a gravel-pit is.
Learnt what a gravel-pit is? Everybody knows.
If it be so, everybody knows more than I know. We all know a
gravel-pit when we see one; but we do not all know what we see. I
do not know. I know a little; a few scraps of fact about these pits
round here, though about no others. Were I to go into a pit a
hundred miles, even fifty miles off, I could tell you nothing
certain about it; perhaps might make a dozen mistakes. But what I
know, with tolerable certainty, about the pits round here, I wish to
tell you to-night.
But why? You do not need, one in ten of you, to know anything about
gravel, unless you be highway surveyor, or have a garden-walk to
make; and then someone will easily tell you where the best gravel is
to be got, at so much a load.
Very true; but you come here to-night to instruct yourselves; that
is, to learn, if you can, something more about the world you live
in; something more about God who made the world.
And you come here to educate yourselves; to educe and bring out your
own powers of perceiving, judging, reasoning; to improve yourselves
in the art of all arts, which is, the art of learning.
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