270 The Progress of Physical Discovert/. MARCH, 



the study of nature ? we say, 1st. enthusiasm of imagination ; arid 

 2nd. patience and caution in investigation. That large stores of know- 

 ledge may be possessed by those who have the latter quality only, is 

 undeniable, but it is the union of the two that mark the possessor of the 

 Philosophia Prima. We need only refer to the Baron Humboldt, whose 

 enlightened sentiments are only equalled by the immense mass of his 

 experimental observations on nature to Schelling, whose name will 

 long live in the annals of physics as well as metaphysics, and whose sys- 

 tem of natural philosophy demands so much attention in the state of the 

 present age ; and, as a more familiar example, to the late Sir Humphry 

 Davy, whose researches were uniformly conducted in that enthusiastic 

 tone and temper, and that ardent love of nature, the influence of which 

 will, we trust, be widely extended. 



If this spirit were more generally diffused among men of science, there 

 seems little wanting, but that we should tend continually more and 

 more to the perfection of the knowledge of nature. The zeal for in- 

 quiry is absolutely amazing ; and if the experimentalists should become 

 convinced that it is necessary that the whole of their moral being 

 their sentiment as well as their understanding should be employed in 

 this inquiry, we think we see the time approaching when the world 

 will be peopled by a race worthy of being styled philosophers indeed, 

 before whom the wisdom of even the present generation shall appear as 

 foolishness. The human mind moves forward with a velocity con- 

 tinually increasing, as it were, in geometrical progression ; and we should 

 be extremely rash in forming our judgment of the extent of knowledge 

 at the end of another century from the progress that has been made dur- 

 ing that which is past. If we pride ourselves that our generation is 

 wiser than our forefathers, let us not pretend to assign limits to the su- 

 periority which our posterity may attain over ourselves ; let us console 

 ourselves for our ignorance of what is still withheld from us, by the 

 hope, that the veil will be one day removed by our successors ; and let 

 us pray for the advent of that glorious period when all mankind shall 

 possess that intellectual greatness, that sublime capacity of thought, 

 through which, (in the words of an eloquent transatlantic writer,) " the 

 soul, smitten with the love of the true and the beautiful, essays to com- 

 prehend the universe, soars into the heavens, penetrates the earth, pene- 

 trates itself, questions the past, anticipates the future, traces out the 

 general and all-comprehending laws of Nature, binds together by innu- 

 merable affinities and relations, all the objects of its knowledge, and not 

 satisfied with what exists, and with what is finite, frames to itself ideal 

 excellence, loveliness, and grandeur !" 



