290 STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 
sn 
when skilfully and consistently employed, brings 
with it, is probably less owing to any other advan- 
tage resulting from its use, than to this in particular, 
that it invests the learner with the character of self- 
instructor. It holds up to him some acknowledged 
fact, in which, as in a mirror, he may behold the 
truth in question; and leaves him to deduce it, 
almost by observation rather than by reasoning, 
from that which is brought before him. The mind 
which is thus illumined, instead of being alienated 
by the dogmatism of its teacher, or repelled by an 
assumption of superiority on his part, recognises in 
its own former conviction the truth which is intro- 
duced under a new garb, and accepts it as a just 
extension of a conclusion in which it has already 
acquiesced. Itseems, indeed, to be exerting an act 
of recollection, instead of making fresh acquisitions 
of knowledge. That false pride, which recoils from 
the humiliating confession of error, and renders the 
intellect obdurate against the better reason, is thus 
‘beguiled into compliance with the arguments of an 
opponent; and the mind, thus relieved of the bur- 
then of resistance to the truth, seems to say in secret 
to itself (as Aristotle observes of the effect of meta- 
phor in some instances), ds aAybac, ty 9° jucproy, 
recanting its error, while it confesses the truth.* 
(201.) Such are the general effects and advan- 
tages produced by analogy in the elucidation of 
truth. Things which in their essential nature are 
totally opposite, are found, on closer investigation, to 
possess mutual relations, and to be governed by the 

* Hampden, Essay on the Phil. Evid. of Christ., p. 211 
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