even of wishes rather prompts to new exertions than allows repose under acquired laurels. The impetus felt by highly gifted natures is akin to that which Bossuet has so eloquently described as characteristic of our mortal career. "La loi est prononcée: il faut avancer toujours. Je voudrois retourner sur mes pas; Marche, Marche!' Un poids invincible nous entraine; il faut sans cesse avancer vers le précipice. On se console pourtant, parce que de tems en tems on rencontre des objets qui nous divertissent, des eaux courantes, des fleurs qui passent. On voudroit arrêter; Marche, Marche!""

GRASPING THE PITH OF SUBJECTS.

EW positions perhaps would be more readily admitted, though few appear to be less understood

or practically regarded, than that of Plato: Tò ἀληθὲς κεῖσθαι ảλŋlès év ßpaxeî xeîσoat — “Truth lies in a small compass." Philosophers have long alleged that no limits can be assigned to the compressibility of matter; and the theory of Boscovich is now pretty well established, that the constituent portions of the densest objects in reality never touch each other; a circumstance which at first seems more curious than the fact, that neither the waters of the sea, nor those of fresh rivers or lakes, ever come in contact with their living tenants. The reflection, however, is not less true than wonderful, that the particles composing the most solid masses, as the hardest granite or marble, are separated by interstices which nothing but the structure of our organs prevents us from regarding as in a sense equivalent to the space occupied by oceans or continents:-an approximation to which effect, if not mystically presented in certain states of sleep, or in certain abnormal or diseased conditions of the brain, that seem to exclude opaqueness, is perhaps an organic law with myriads of infinitesimally minute orders of being, to which the progress of the shadow on the sun-dial, or even that of leaves in their growth, would be as perceptible, and appear as rapid, as the motion of ships or carriages does to ourselves. Be this as it may, analogy

might lead us to conjecture that the products or thoughts of the mind, though bearing so great a multiplicity of forms, are susceptible of indefinite condensation, or capable of being resolved into a few primary and comprehensive principles. Thus the whole phenomena of the material universe, as well as those presented by the world of intellect, may resemble the infinitely varied appearances exhibited by the kaleidoscope, all of which are dependent on the simplest mechanism and laws.

PERHAPS the leading distinction of superior intellect, as a perceptive, not creative or poetic endowment, is a power of compression; a faculty which presupposes that of generalization. A subordinate understanding never perceives more than certain fragments or mutilated portions of a topicsurveying the field of thought as a landscape through a tube; or, bewildered amid the maze of details and appendages, attaching as much importance to these as to the fundamental and most decisive elements. A vigorous genius discriminates the essence of a question, and by its rapid operations reduces the necessary particulars to a very minute compass.

CONDENSATION results from the mastery of a subject. It is but imperfection of view or imbecility that occasions diffuseness; and to such a cause, rather than amplitude of resources or invention, that we owe the generality of bulky tomes; for great books, like large skulls, have often the least brains.

WHAT may appear a paradox to some, is in reality but simple truth, that not only a chief part of learning, but the higher operation of thought, is closely connected with the art of rejection: on which account original fruits of mind seldom show themselves at an early season, or before it acquires sufficient courage and self-dependence to cast off the errors or artificial impressions it has received.

THE very appropriation of what is valuable, and the rejection of what is worthless or indifferent, in things relating to mind, argue no slight intellectual superiority. Many persons read books in the way the multitude hear sermons, who, provided the tinkling of the bell continues, are satisfied; or somewhat as mere scholars study the Iliad, which, being alike Greek and the composition of Homer, is all conned with equal fondness or assiduity. Yet few even of the best productions but may be compared to certain antique figures that have come down to us, part of which represents a living if not beautiful object; the rest a piece of dead mechanical matter.*

Or ten thousand reflections that arise, and for a while perhaps mingle with imagination in creating a vivid interest, not one may be entitled to the slightest record. Even in a professed treatise or dissertation, it is rare to find more than two or three prominent ideas, which may be considered as the basis of the production, and to which the other parts are only subordinate. In most instances those ideas might be comprised in a remarkably brief space; but to give them a certain form, they are generally mixed up with much connecting or extraneous matter, are elucidated or expanded, supported by arguments, protected against objections, or compared with collateral topics; so that out of few particulars as at first conceived by the fancy, a book is at length elaborated. It has been alleged by an acute philosophical critic, that the whole system of Reid is presented in a page of Pascal, and Beattie's Essay in one sentence: "L'unique fort des dogmatistes, c'est qu'en parlant de bonne foi, on ne peut douter des principes naturels." Butler's Analogy,

* Several specimens of the kind will be found in the learned Montfaucon, "L'Antiquité Expliquée," especially in the delineations of the ancient Lamps, tome v. partie 1.

† Memoirs of Sir James Mackintosh, vol. i. p. 410.

The citation, in reference at least to the views of the writer, should be seen in its connexion, as given in the correct and truly critical edition

which none will accuse of extraordinary diffuseness, appears to have been suggested by a remark of Origen, quoted in the preface, and which certainly contains the germ of the performance. In like manner Brown's views on Causation, to which he has devoted an entire disquisition, and which tincture most of his metaphysical speculations, had been substantially expressed by Edwards in a single sentence.* The latter author's celebrated work on the Will consists chiefly in the developement and application of two simple principles; that in moral inquiries necessity is another word for certainty, and inability for disinclination.

of the Pensées by M. Havet, article viii.; where the sentiment, so tersely described, is alternately combated and defended: though in no way can assent to it be fairly predicated of Pascal; as, whatever the apparent or momentary expressions of approval, his writings again and again pronounce the "natural principles" alluded to utterly untrustworthy. Indeed the great object of the treatise which he meditated in support of Christianity, and of which the fragments compose the work just mentioned, was to induce the persuasion that there is no truth or certainty in the testimony of the senses, in the primary or axiomatic principles of belief, or in the operations of the ratiocinative faculty; in any thing, in short, outside the region of what he calls faith-(hors de la foi.) It is scarcely surprising that the pyrrhonism of Pascal, quite equal, by the way, to that of Montaigne, which he delineates and applauds in a comparison of that writer and Epictetus, should be found in conjunction with adherence to a Church whose dogmas reason is peremptorily forbidden to scan.

For a further notice of the subject, the reader is referred to a few paragraphs in the section of this work entitled, "Colours and Rules of Belief." Perhaps it is unnecessary to say that all the editions of the Pensées anterior to that of M. Faugère, in 1844, after the original manuscripts, are more or less spurious, being mutilated, interpolated, and not seldom falsified both in sense and phraseology, by the first editors; while the piece on Epictetus and Montaigne is given correctly in no modern edition before that of M. Havet, in 1852.

"Cause is that, after or upon the existence of which, or the existence of it after such a manner, the existence of another thing follows." -Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. i. ed. 1834. Appendix to the Memoirs, p. cclviii.

This definition would seem to have been penned by Edwards about the commencement of his college life, or in the former part of the last century. The circumstance, therefore, may be added to the instances