Vacation Evenings

Vacation Evenings

  

  "Our minds are formed for research, and truth ought ever to be the object. The infant no sooner speaks, but it reasons; Why? what for? are its simple, but intelligent interrogatories. Since, then, even babes think and reason, ere speech fully confirms the creative powers of the soul -- it is surely laudable to stamp the impressive wax at once. Error imbibed in youth, confirms with age, and we remain, during life, the dupes of sophistry, superstition, and folly.

     "The greatest pleasure the mind ever receives results from the conviction of truth, which, when demonstrated to reason, either by being contrasted with falsehood, or rendered visible by experiment, leaves doubt in the rear, and banishes altercation.

   

  "How pleasing it is to reflect that we have obtained knowledge by our own immediate application; with what satisfaction we dwell on the remembrance of it; and rejoice in the hope, that we shall attain still further perfection, from every future endeavor. "The brightest, and most valuable diamond in the world," says Voltaire, "was once a grain of sand."

    "What can we seek that is so valuable as truth? Let me intreat the youthful reader to commit to memory, as an infallible axiom, that "opinion is the result of instruction or example: but that what can be demonstrated to reason, as truth, must abide so for ever." It will incite the mind to such researches as will amply reward the labour.

     "Superstition and ignorance magnify every thing into the marvellous; on the contrary, demonstrative truth will not admit of disguise; the only auxiliary it ever seeks is ornament; a superfluous aid, for truth, like beauty, is ---

                      "When unadorn'd --- adorn'd the most."

--- Catharine Bayley, 1809