TO THE REV. LEWIS CAMPBELL.

                                                                                  129 Union Street,
                                                                        Aberdeen, 6th February 1857.

     I got your letter this morning at breakfast. I was somewhat seedy from being up late, but the perusal seemed  to clear up everything, and I got on better with explaining the properties of elastic fluids than I had any   reason to hope. So when I have doubts about the best mode of explaining anything, I must consult your letter, only  it will not do for ever. I must have a new one now and then.

     But I have not been so glad for long. Knowing you of old, I can see how things are by the way you write, and it is   not always that similar announcements have given me similar satisfaction.

     So I am glad that you do not know what "it" was. Avoid the neuter pronoun. "It" is unworthy of beasts that perish.  "He" and "She" are for ever and ever. What the form of the pronoun may be after this I cannot tell, but I think   more is meant in the distinction than is fully expressed in this life.

     The Sadducees on the one side, and the ascetics on the other, point out the errors. Solomon, Prov. viii., et   passim, and Eph. vi., indicate matter of contemplation not unallied to action, which in good ground bears good   fruit.

     But as Urania remarked to Melpomene, I am but displaying the fact of any belonging to a lower stage in the scale   of things, so I must for the present go down beside my native rill.

     With respect to this "northern hermitage," my cell is pretty commodious. In quitting the cœnobitic cloister of Trinity   for the howling wilderness of Union Street, I have not been made an anchoret. It is quite consistent with the   eremitic life to modify one's fast in friends' houses 4 days per week or so.

     One thing I am thankful for, though perhaps you will not believe it.—Up to the present time I have not even been  tempted to mystify any one.

     I have made out who were most likely to excite my passion that way, and I have avoided some, and broken the    ice with others. I am glad B—— is not here; he would have ruined me. I once met him. I was as much astonished   as he was at the chaotic statements I began to make. But as far as I can learn I have not been misunderstood   [266] in anything, and no one has heard a single oracle from my lips. Of course I do not mean that my class do not   mistake my meaning sometimes. That is found out and remedied day by day. I speak of professors, ministers,
     doctors, advocates, matrons, maidens, and phenomenal existences (Chimeræ bombylantes in vacuo). We are    through mechanics. I had an exn. on bookwork on 24th Jan. I got answers to all the questions and riders, though    no one floored them all right. I have now to be brewing experiments on Heat, as well as determining the form of  doctrine to be presented to the finite capacities of my men.