8 DISCOURSE ON THE STUDY 



fetters the mind from prejudices of every kind, and 

 leaves it open and free to every impression of a higher 

 nature which it is susceptible of receiving, guarding 

 only against enthusiasm and self-deception by a 

 habit of strict investigation, but encouraging, rather 

 than suppressing, every thing that can offer a pros- 

 pect or a hope beyond the present obscure and 

 unsatisfactory state. The character of the true 

 philosopher is to hope all things not impossible, 

 and to believe all things not unreasonable. He 

 who has seen obscurities which appeared impenetra- 

 ble in physical and mathematical science suddenly 

 dispelled, and the most barren and unpromising 

 fields of enquiry converted, as if by inspiration, 

 into rich and inexhaustible springs of knowledge 

 and power on a simple change of our point of view, 

 or by merely bringing to bear on them some prin- 

 ciple which it never occurred before to try, will 

 surely be the very last to acquiesce in any dispirit- 

 ing prospects of either the present or future des- 

 tinies of mankind; while, on the other hand, the 

 boundless views of intellectual and moral as well as 

 material relations which open on him on all hands 

 in the course of these pursuits, the knowledge of 

 the trivial place he occupies in the scale of creation, 

 and the sense continually pressed upon him of his 

 own weakness and incapacity to suspend or modify 

 the slightest movement of the machinery he sees in 

 action around him, must effectually convince him 

 that humility of pretension, no less than confidence 

 of hope, is what best becomes his character. 



(6.) But while we thus vindicate the study of na- 

 tural philosophy from a charge at one time formid- 



