ployment in religion and in law; and from their exclusive possession of all that was excellent in literature. And we seem ourselves to have followed the steps of our forefathers more from habit, and want of thought, and dislike to innovation, than from a cool and deliberate conviction, that the path which they pursued, was the best. Still it is not impossible, that we have commenced by accident, and continued, without knowing it, the very best method of all to fulfil the objects of intellectual education. And the enquiry whether this has been the case, is one of sufficient importance to justify a minute examination. If we have erred in making the study of dead languages the main branch of our early instruction, let us substitute for it some other which will more fully answer our purpose. If we are right, let us adhere to our present system, nor be driven from it by the tendency of the age to calculate the utility of a pursuit solely by its immediate advantages. And if, though employing a proper instrument, we have failed hitherto to derive from it its maximum of utility, let us resolve at once to modify our method, and gain from it all the good of which it is evidently susceptible.

The solution, however, of this problem, important as it is in itself, will become more interesting, if we

strike at once to the bottom of the subject; and, instead of contenting ourselves with vague, scattered, and general notions of the human understanding, endeavour fairly to ascertain with precision, the real nature of its operations, and the ultimate object of its faculties. To know whether an instrument is fitted to answer its purpose, we must find what that purpose is: and although in the resolute attempt to clear away the mists which have floated so long over all our speculations on the intellect, and to avoid the common error of substituting sounds for things, and playing with words as children play with counters, we may find many agreeable illusions disappear as we advance; the recompense to all sober minds will be sufficiently great in the acquisition of solid truth, and the certainty of our subsequent proceedings. To discover that the figure which we deemed to be full of life, and instinct with motion, is but a mechanical automaton; to see the clouds clear off from the side of a mountain, and leave nothing but a barren rock, these are painful disappointments to the fancy. But if the figure be an idol which we worship, it will be a good thing to break it in pieces, and lay bare the springs on which it moves. And if the mountain be land for cultivation, we

had better set actively to work on it, than sit down at a distance, in the belief that its sides are clothed already with verdure, and its soil spontaneously fertile. And of all the erroneous opinions which have laid waste the happiness of mankind, there is none more destructive and general, than that which has invested the operations of the intellect with a mysterious spirituality and life, and shown it to us through a veil, as an idol to its ignorant worshippers, till obscurity has heightened our veneration; and we gaze on it with a kind of stupid wonder, full of awe at its wildest caprices, and not daring to censure even the vices and mischiefs which it creates.

It is scarcely necessary at the present day to refute the principle so vaunted by the ancient philosophy, that the end of human life, or even of our intellectual powers, is the abstract contemplation of truth. And it may even be doubted whether the words are capable of bearing any precise and definite meaning. That the mind does feel a peculiar satisfaction in certainty, that is, in the absence of all hesitation and doubt, when connecting two ideas together, or to speak more philosophically, in passing from one state to another, is a fact confirmed by the experience of every mi

nute. And this satisfaction is one of the simple and primary pleasures of our nature, which blends itself through innumerable combinations with the business and amusements of life. But that this feeling (and the pleasure resulting from the contemplation of truth, if the expression be accurately examined, can mean nothing else) should constitute our highest and ultimate happiness, is a position totally opposed to reason, experience, and revelation. It is essentially attached to an imperfection in our nature: first, because it cannot exist without previous ignorance; and, secondly, because it results from a feature in our constitution, which differs from the attributes of the Deity, instead of resembling them; since minds which think by a succession only of ideas, must be essentially different from one in which they are all co-existent. Again, it is faint and almost imperceptible, unless rendered acute, either by previous disappointment or anticipation, protracted to a certain length. But both these states of mind are states of uneasiness, and that happiness must be very imperfect, which, to be felt, must be preceded by pain. Moreover, if we consider that scarcely any pleasure is so transient, and requires to be so constantly renewed. by the stimulus of new discoveries that the pro

:

cess by which we arrive at these discoveries, though tempered with much that delights us, takes its rise originally in an uneasiness of mind, and is accompanied throughout with a painful impatience and restlessness; that even this process, in the present state of the world, is open to very few minds, whereas the ultimate happiness of man must be universally accessible to all, and probably be the same in this world as it will be in the next; that it is fully attainable in one class only of Truths, which occupy but a very small space in our field of enquiry, which are totally abstracted from our business and our bosoms, and are all of them resolvable into identical expressions; and that a superior Being, to whom all the possible relations of things are already developed, must compassionate us as much when we cry out with rapture at discovering that the square of the hypothenuse is equal to the squares of the two sides, as we should look with pity upon an emmet, triumphantly exclaiming, that the straw on which it crawled, was hollow; if, I say, we take these and other considerations of the same kind, together, it will be very difficult to believe that our supreme happiness can consist in what is called the contemplation of truth.