有上千种简单的方式可供我们检视自己的生活，譬如说，促使我豆子成熟的太阳，不正是那颗顷刻间照亮地球的恒星吗。要是我意识到这点，就能少犯一些错误了。可惜在我锄地时并未沐浴那等灵光。繁星点点连成了多么美妙的三角！宇宙中的生灵相隔多么遥远、形态多么迥异，却在同一时刻从各自的寓所里凝望着同一颗星！人类的本性与生活就同我们的构成一般纷繁多样。谁人敢说自己知晓他人生命的前景？还有比我们瞬间透视彼此双眸更伟大的奇迹吗？我们应当花一个钟头去纵览世界的各个年代；没错，还要遍观各个年代之所有的世界。历史、诗歌、神话！——若论阅览他人的经历，我不知道还有什么比这三者更加惊艳且深刻。
We might try our lives by a thousand simple tests; as, for instance, that the same sun which ripens my beans illumines at once a system of earths like ours. If I had remembered this it would have prevented some mistakes. This was not the light in which I hoed them. The stars are the apexes of what wonderful triangles! What distant and different beings in the various mansions of the universe are contemplating the same one at the same moment! Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant? We should live in all the ages of the world in an hour; ay, in all the worlds of the ages. History, Poetry, Mythology!—I know of no reading of another’s experience so startling and informing as this would be.