rounding scenes. Just so, those who have formed a habit of subordination to a single mind, are disqualified for the hopeful exercise of their own."
Such was the spirit of Leibnitz; yet, probably the prevailing impression on the minds of any who have studied his writings, is a feeling of the remarkable contrast between the splendid intellectual exertions and enormous learning of this philosopher (combined as these are in him to an unprecedented degree), and the small positive contributions he has made to the register of permanently recognised truths. The vastness of his general principles occasions a corresponding vagueness in the rules for their application. They extend so widely as to comprehend only a few of the qualities of each of the objects that they include. The fact is, they reached too far to become at once familiar to the minds of men. The real spirit of the Leibnitzian philosophy slumbered for more than half a century, during which his nominal scholars under Wolff were starving on the subtleties of a severe yet profitless dialectic, and were evincing that dislike for really vigorous thought which is indicated by the pedantry of an empty imposing philosophical nomenclature. In this period, the earlier Teutonic metaphysics perished as a System, to revive as a Spirit in the later German philosophy, and then to develop fully that germ, in the earlier system, of a perverted speculative idealism, which has shewn itself incompetent to realize in its expositions that positive adjustment for mysteries to which it aspires.
It is impossible here to plunge into the depths to
