He can only take his foot from the saddle of one thought and put it on that of another.
-- What is the saddle of a thought?
Why, a word, of course .-- Twenty years after you have dismissed a thought, it suddenly wedges up to you through the press, as if it had been steadily galloping round and round all that time without a rider.
The will does not act in the interspaces of thought, for there are no such interspaces, but simply steps from the back of one moving thought upon that of another.
-- I should like to ask,--said the divinity-student,--since we are getting into metaphysics, how you can admit space, if all things are in contact, and how you can admit time, if it is always now to something?
-- I thought it best not to hear this question.
-- I wonder if you know this class of philosophers in books or elsewhere.
One of them makes his bow to the public, and exhibits an unfortunate truth bandaged up so that it cannot stir hand or foot,--as helpless, apparently, and unable to take care of itself, as an Egyptian mummy.

He then proceeds, with the air and method of a master, to take off the bandages.

Nothing can be neater than the way in which he does it.

But as he takes off layer after layer, the truth seems to grow smaller and smaller, and some of its outlines begin to look like something we have seen before.

At last, when he has got them all off, and the truth struts out naked, we recognize it as a diminutive and familiar acquaintance whom we have known in the streets all our lives.