as we fear that the preceding disquisitions may thus appear, except to persons previously familiar with such thoughts, to be addressed only to those “small hooks of the mind” which catch at and apprehend mere illusive abstractions, and to have little or no connexion with that knowledge which penetrates nature, and finds real inductive axioms in her phenomena.
We have reason to offer our cordial thanks to the distinguished author of these Notes and Dissertations, for providing among them so many paths and recesses in which the inquisitive student may reflect on phases of our knowledge, there presented to him, that will very greatly add to the number of his queries, on such topics as those which have occupied our attention in the greater part of this Essay, and where he may also gather no slight contribution to his stock of answers to such queries. The pages of this volume supply ample evidence that the graspings of the mind of man, after the first principles of physical, theological, and self-knowledge, are not confined to one generation of the history of the world. These are founded on tendencies which are permanent as the race of man. They are the seeds of a nature fallen from its high original and destiny, but which was not adapted only or chiefly for this earthly life between two eternities. From Thales, Xenophanes, and Pythagoras in the Greek philosophy, and the still older inspired complaints of the patriarch of Idumea, down to our own century, the apparent discord of the
