they had chosen, lest their understanding should be implicated in the acknowledgment of their errors. Ignorance and inexperience have no small influence in producing this self-confidence. It is natural for those whose minds are beginning to open to be somewhat intoxicated with the new pleasures which they feel in the exercise of their faculties, and to be apt to think that in following their boldest conceptions, they will acquire to themselves the honour and the reputation of genius. They overlook the fact, that their judgment is not yet matured, that it is for the greater part under the impulse of their feelings, and that men of wisdom and of age are diffident on those topics on which they so fearlessly dogmatize. The imagination throws its own illusive light over all the prospects that open up before them, and the friendly counsel of experience that would dispel the charm, so far as its influence is injurious, is too often regarded as the stern voice of years, proceeding from the absence of all generous and kindly affection. They are little aware how much this rashness prepares them to embrace the most dangerous errors, and how much it exposes them to a thousand perplexities which the experience of a friend could prevent, but which their own ignorance and pride of understanding render it impossible to avoid.

Let me not be understood by these remarks as if I intended in the slightest degree to discountenance freedom of inquiry. I only wish to show that our inquiries cannot be free, unless accompanied with humility and an habitual love of truth. In pursuing any branch of knowledge these accompaniments are

desirable; but they are essentially necessary when we attempt to ascertain those laws by which the Creator of the universe conducts his operations. We then place ourselves in the very attitude of scholars, prepared to receive all the communications of eternal wisdom: and our reason can never be more nobly employed, nor exercised more agreeably to the ends for which it has been given, than when contemplating with profound reverence the counsels and the works of Him whose judgment is unsearchable, and whose ways are past finding out. Our reason forms one of the fairest gifts of the Creator to the beings that he has formed after his own likeness, and to allow it to remain fettered by the prejudices of folly and of superstition, and not to place a due confidence in its cautious and enlightened deductions, is to treat ourselves with injustice, and the Divine Giver with ingratitude.

In the second place, I may observe that in the successful prosecution of our philosophical pursuits in connexion with moral science, it will be of great use to us to take enlarged views of the boundaries of human knowledge. The possible boundaries of human knowledge are so widely distant, and so much removed from our present conceptions, that the ages are yet far distant that are to fix them. There is so much comprehended even in one branch of science, that a whole life-time is necessary for its thorough attainment. Astronomy forms but a very limited portion of natural philosophy; and yet how much study does it require to know all that astronomy teaches, and how numerous and continuous are the advances that must be made

before a man is entitled to the reputation of an accomplished astronomer. What a wide field does even one of the branches of moral philosophy open for the labours of the most industrious and persevering student;-a field which extends into infinity, and on which our researches are bounded only by the points of view in which we consider it. The speculations connected with either logic or belles lettres, or natural religion, or ethics, or political economy, seem to be interminable; and one of these divisions of the philosophy of mind will afford more than ample scope for all the energies and the application of the most laborious student.

But though the limits of human knowledge are placed far beyond the reach of our present attainments, there are many advantages resulting from our taking a wide and comprehensive view of all the sciences to which the progress of actual discovery has given rise. We can afford many of them only a superficial glance; but there is an useful expansion and elevation communicated to the mind by the exercise of its surveying the treasures of wisdom which the efforts of successive generations have amassed; and while raised above the level of other men, we look beyond their horizon, and satiate ourselves with the goodly prospects that on every hand surround us, we become more deeply impressed with the littleness of vulgar pursuits, and are led away with the charms of those lovely regions whose glories lie all before us.

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Quid enim ei videatur magnum in rebus humanis, cui æternitas omnis, totiusque mundi nota fit magnitudo?"It is thus that the thirst for knowledge is

created and kept alive in the mind: we see how much we have yet to acquire, and the desire of making the acquisition becomes more ardent and habitually operative; and by prompting us to aim at a higher and a more distant standard than that to which we would otherwise conform, we are able by a sure, though gradual advancement, to make attainments which at one period it might be deemed presumption in us tó anticipate.

A wide survey of human knowledge is useful in this and in many other respects, after we restrict our attention to the study of one branch. It gives so much enlargement to the mind as sets it free from the influence of prejudices; and as prevents it especially from giving way to that fruitful source of error, to which professional men are peculiarly liable, of deducing important conclusions from slight and fanciful analogies. The proneness of men to judge of things of which they are perfectly ignorant, from the rules that are applicable to subjects with which they are familiar, has been one of the greatest obstacles to the progress of science; and its universal prevalence, embracing men of every order and of every profession, has rendered it a matter of common remark. To this disposition of human nature may be traced nearly all the hypothetical systems that from the remotest ages downwards have been substituted for knowledge; and it is to this copious source of error more especially that we ascribe the attempts of physiologists to materialize the affections of mind, and to maintain that there is nothing but matter in the universe. We smile at the ancient chemists who were accustomed to ex

plain all the mysteries of nature, and of religion, by salt, sulphur, and mercury; and at the musician, mentioned by Mr. Locke, who believed that God created the world in six days and rested the seventh, because there are seven notes in music; but there are mistakes committed every day in common life, of still greater consequence, arising from the same prejudice. Hence the aphorism, that all men judge of others by themselves. "The selfish man thinks all pretences to benevolence and public spirit to be mere hypocrisy or self-deceit. The generous and open-hearted believe fair pretences too easily, and are apt to think men better than they really are. The abandoned and profligate can hardly be persuaded that there is any such thing as real virtue in the world. The rustic forms his notions of the manners and characters of men from those of his country village, and is easily duped when he comes into a great city."

"When men of confined scientific pursuits," says Bacon," afterwards betake themselves to philosophy, and to general contemplations, they are apt to wrest and corrupt them with their former conceits." The same remark has been made by all our most distinguished philosophers. "Let a man," says Locke, "be given up to the contemplation of one sort of knowledge, and that will become every thing. The mind will take such a tincture from a familiarity with that object, that every thing else, how remote soever, will be brought under the same view. A metaphysician will bring ploughing and gardening immediately to abstract notions; the history of nature will signify nothing to him. An alchemist, on the contrary, will reduce divinity to the