in the supersensible forms of thought, he resolves the actual into the ideal; and thence, in a different direction, reaches practically the very scepticism from which his previous course was a seeming divergence. Faith is, on the one side, lost in the dark abyss of doubt: on the other, it evaporates in the sunny haze of the empyrean of transcendentalism. In either case, a pretended philosophy, instead of guiding the perplexed labourers who are pressing on with their work below, only adds to the fogs which already darken their atmosphere.
It is, notwithstanding, evident that the perfect philosophy must recognise and include a body of first principles, resting on faith, by which all knowledge of things divine and human must be regulated. As, in the material world, the lever needs a fulcrum before it can work, so, in the world of thought, these mysteries are the indispensable fulcrum of intellectual exertion. To obtain a refuge from doubt, and a sure and rational foundation on which knowledge and action may be based, must always be the aim of the higher philosophy. The tendency of men of earnestness and reflection in this direction, depends on the maxim involved in the very act of reflecting; for the root of reflex thinking is the consciousness which we feel, that in rigorous search for truth or decisive controversy, we are called to labour for the attainment of an ultimate principle which shall either itself explain that about which we speculate, or else supply a self-evident reason that to us it is inexplicable. Reason would be interminable, if it did not find its ultimate limit in truths which it cannot
