roused the metaphysical genius of Clarke in their defence. In Edwards, the gratification of the logical faculty, by the attainment of a regularly developed, comprehensive, and exhaustive body of science, was entirely subordinate to the gratification of the religious principle, through means of a conciliation of the theory of human activity and responsibility, with the more awful and mysterious doctrines of the Christian revelation.
It is desirable, for the sake of the common good, that society should in each generation possess at least a few men in whom the habit of speculation, and the love of comprehensive thinking and speculative completeness, occupy a very predominant place among the motives which keep the mind in a state of activity. And although a desire for knowledge is a common profession, it cannot be doubted that this sort of mental development is really of extremely rare occurrence. “The abstract love of truth,” it has been well said, “is a principle with those only who have made it their study, who have applied themselves to the pursuit of some art or science in which the intellect is severely tasked, and learns by habit to take a pride in, and set a just value on its conclusions. To have a disinterested regard for truth, the mind must have contemplated it in abstract and remote questions, whereas the ignorant and vulgar are conversant only with those things in which their own interest is concerned. All their interests are local, personal, and consequently gross and selfish.” In a word, men usually attend to those
