compels the investigation of evidence, the verifying of proofs, the sifting of testimony, for the attaining of certainty and the confirmation of belief. But for its influence, the world would be to man a mass of unconnected objects or facts: he would be to himself a mere embodiment of inconsistent elements, unintelligible and destitute of purpose.

Examples of the spirit of Investigation.-Incited by this principle, the naturalist explores the remotest regions of earth, to contemplate the productions of nature, to survey the great features of the globe, its various aspects of scenery, its mountains and rivers, its atmospheric phenomena, its mineral, vegetable, and animal products, and the mutual relations of cause and effect which all these bear to each other.

The scientific voyager and traveler, impelled by the irrepressible desire to prosecute his favorite researches, patiently endures fatigue, and sickness, and exhaustion, through every extreme of heat or cold; he exiles himself from society, for months and years, to pursue his solitary investigations; regardless of danger and difficulty, he bravely encounters every obstacle, and patiently endures every form of pain and privation. He goes forth with the spirit and hardihood of an invader, to extend the domain of science, and returns laden with the trophies of victory, in discoveries which enlighten and enrich the human race.

In the same spirit of investigation, the astronomer secludes himself, for successive months and years, to contemplate and record the phenomena of the heavens, and to immure himself in those labyrinths of computation by which the sublime truths of his noble science are investigated and revealed.

Actuated by the same principle, the historian pursues his laborious researches in the records of remotest time, in the half-effaced carving on the crumbling monument, or the dim characters on the decaying parchment, in the obscure tradition or superstitious myth,--whereever a gleam or a spark of truth is to be found regarding the past life of man on earth. From his devotion to such investigations, no fresh charm of nature, or invitation of social delight, can induce him to withdraw, till he has sifted every alledged fact, verified every event, dispersed the clouds of fable, and let in the pure light of truth upon the historic page.

The philologist, in quest of a particle of meaning or significant value in the component elements of a word, is another impressive example of the spirit of inquiry leading to profoundest research. Whole years, nay, a long life, are joyfully devoted by him to such pursuits. Language after language, by his slow but sure processes of mining and sapping, is forced to give way to his irresistible energy and persevering

toil. Nothing can divert his attention, or turn him from his course of persistent indagation. A syllable or a letter, he feels assured, contains a secreted gem of meaning, the investigation of which will put him in possession of wealth untold; and that element he will trace, at whatever cost of persevering investigation, through libraries and through languages, till the lustre of the intellectual diamond beams full upon his mind. His personal acquisition, purchased at such a price, becomes, in due season, through the instrumentality of his devoted labors, the common property of the intellectual world.

The investigations of the mechanician into the laws and forces of nature, again exemplify the power which the spirit of inquiry exerts over the human mind, and the value of the results to which it leads. The long and complicated processes of computation by which the devoted servant of science pursues his study of its principles, when occupied with the intricate combinations involved in the invention of some device of mechanism, by which the well-being of mankind may be promoted for ages; the unabating ardor with which, in spite of every discouragement, he continues to consume fortune and life in the prosecution of his purpose ;—all indicate the moving force of the mental principle by which his own interior world of invention and contrivance is actuated; and the results ultimately obtained reveal the value of the intellectual habits which are concerned in the processes of investigation.

The chemist, interrogating nature, as he investigates the constitution of her elements, is yet another forcible example of the same spirit. At the risk, sometimes, of life itself, he pursues his inquest of hidden relations, perplexing facts, and hitherto undiscovered elements and undeveloped forces, till he is enabled to enlighten the world by the revelation of a new material in the construction of the physical universe, and an invaluable aid to the welfare of man.

Investigation, in all the relations of mental action, is, in brief, the just price of labor, which man is doomed to pay for value received. The noblest of all intellectual acquirements, the grandest discoveries and most useful inventions, are due alike to this process by which the mind is enabled to read, whether in the world of matter or that of spirit, the laws instituted by the Creator; coöperating with which, man becomes possessed of a portion of divine power, and unaided by which, every attempt of human force or skill must be baffled. The tendency and the ability to penetrate into the depths of causation, constitute the mental prerogatives of man; they lift him up to the rank of nobility, in the orders of intelligence, and make his mind the well-spring of a stream which is destined to flow on forever,-not with

the mere casual or limited contributions of observation, but ever enlarging itself by the broad and deep affluents of profoundest thought and reflective reason, and richly laden with all the treasures of discovery, which have been accumulated by laborious and successful investigation.

IV. THE RESULT OF THE ACTION OF THE REFLECTIVE FACULTIES: TRUTH.

The successive stages of intellectual progress.-Furnished with the interior principle of intelligence, invested with the organized apparatus of sensation, and provided with the physical material for the exercise of his powers, the child, under the guidance of Creative wisdom, sets out on the career of intellectual progress, actuated by the impulse of curiosity, whose tendency is to insure the habit of observation and that discipline of his perceptive faculties by which he is ultimately enabled to win the prize of KNOWLEDGE. He thus accomplishes his first curriculum in the great school established by the benignant universal Providence which careth for humanity, and under whose discipline the law of progressive intellection secures, to a given extent, the welfare of man, whether more or less favored by intelligent human culture. To this first stage of development gradually succeeds that other, in which, through the inward action of the divinely-implanted principle of intelligence, man's own inner, mental world of conscious condition, act, cause, effects, tendency, and power,-of memory, reason, imagination, feeling, and will, is revealed and explored, as a theatre of comparatively unlimited expansion and ceaseless action. Within himself, he finds, at once, the power, the springs, the scope, the materials of this new career of activity, in which he is impelled by the same earnest irrepressible desire to discover and to know, as before, but now working in a Prompted by inquiry, and

higher sphere, and with a higher aim. impelled to investigation, he is thus led onward to that higher goal of intellectual progress, where, by the disciplined action of the reflective faculties, knowledge is consummated in TRUTH, and where man discovers, and learns to reverence and obey, the highest law of his being,— subordination to the sway of the Reason which reigns supreme in the universe of thought.

Appropriate application of the term Truth.-The sense in which the word "truth" is properly used in general discussions connected with mental processes, is, of course, wider than that in which it is employed in relations strictly or exclusively pertaining to the science. of logic. In the latter case, it implies no more than the exact conformity of the terms of a proposition to the fact which it is obviously meant to announce. But, in well-sanctioned forms of expression on

general topics, truth is, with equal justice, predicated of the correspondence of language to thought, of art to nature, of action to intention, of antitype to type,-in any relation whatever.

In the working of the mind, the term applies, with not less propriety, to the correspondence of perception to object, of conception to idea, of word to thing, of language to relation, of action to conscience, of habit to character, of aim to end, of opinion to sentiment or statement to fact, of expression or representation to reality or actuality. The word "truth," in brief, covers, properly, the whole ground of intellectual, æsthetic, or moral conformity of thought, expression, or action, to an exact and recognized standard, sanctioned by the canons of criticism or of conscience. It stands opposed, therefore, equally to falsity of conception, of expression, or of action. As a quality, it characterizes alike the habits of the correct thinker, of the exact artist, whether in the use of pencil, pen, or tongue, and those of the sincere and honest man. It secures the individual from the unintentional defects of error, and guards him against the voluntary deviations of design.

In relation, however, to the subject of human culture, and, in particular, to the discipline of the mental powers, truth is regarded as a result of voluntary and studious application,―as a product of the exercise of the reflective faculties, in the quest of ultimate principles in science, physical, intellectual, or moral. Examples in point are furnished in the process of tracing the great laws of physics, in the demonstrations of geometry, in the verification of history, in logical ratiocination, in the discussion of moral obligations, in the scrutiny of evidence. In such investigations, the quest of truth, conducted by well-disciplined reflective faculties, is steadily, skillfully, and successfully pushed onward to the grand crowning result of certainty and conviction. Unaided by the skill which culture and discipline insure, the mind has no security against the involuntary illusions of error, or the intentional misrepresentations of deceit; it discovers no stability in the outward universe, has no confidence in its own conclusions, no just reliance on itself, no firm conviction of duty, no enlightened faith in testimony; but blown about by every plausible assumption of theory, and every shifting phase of circumstance,-a prey to every reigning delusion, unsettled on any sure foundation of moral principle,— skeptical as to every vital truth, plunging into every approaching fog-bank of error, and drifting, without chart or compass, on the great ocean of uncertainty, suffers, at length, an intellectual and moral wreck.

Most justly, as well as beautifully, has Bacon said, "truth, which

only doth judge itself, teacheth that the inquiry of truth, which is the love-making, or wooing, of it,-the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature."

Guided by his own unassisted reflective reason, man does unquestionably attain to great results, both intellectual and moral. But, enlightened by the knowledge which science and education shed on every relation of his being, what a vast expansion, what a wondrous elevation is he capable of attaining ;--all resulting from the faithful application and skillful exercise of the reason with which his Creator has crowned his intellectual faculties! How noble, in this view, becomes the office of the educator, whose daily endeavor it is to cherish, and strengthen, and vivify this master principle of all intelligence! V. EDUCATIONAL PROCESSES For the DevelOPMENT AND DISCIPLINE OF THE REFLECTIVE FACULTIES.

Defective Methods.-If we look at what is professedly and formally done, in our common modes of education, for the exercise and discipline of the reflective faculties; and if we found our estimate on the number of branches of knowledge or of science, and the number and variety of books nominally employed for the purpose, we might be inclined to suppose that, in this important part of culture, much is effected. But, on examining the actual state of things, errors and oversights, in this respect, are found to be numerous, and methods comparatively ineffectual.

Exclusive reliance on exactness of recollection.- Memory, the appointed servant of the reflective faculties, whose office it is to collect and keep and furnish the materials for their action, is, indeed, amply laden with the semblance and show of matter;-but most of it in the form of Hamlet's book of "words, words, words." The too exclusive use of manuals, the mere records of knowledge, instead of the actual study of objects, facts and relations, the observation and the understanding of which constitute knowledge itself, leads to the cultivation of a verbal and mechanical memory, instead of a living and intelligent one. The fact is still too generally overlooked, that memory is not so much a separate faculty, which can be trained and disciplined by itself, as the mind,--in virtue of its spiritual nature and exemption from limits of time and space,-retaining or recalling what it has once observed or conceived; that the vigor of this retention, or the force of this recurrence, must always be as that of the original impression, and that the only rational reliance for the healthy and effective action of memory, must therefore be the freshness, the force, and the depth of attention. But, obviously, no impression made on the mind through