182 EXPLANATIONS. 



it has no advantage over the notion of the cei 

 trality of the earth, or any other of the first im- 

 pressions of mankind respecting natural pheno- 

 mena. As a system, moreover, which finds none 

 of the previous labours of science shaped or directed 

 in favour of its elucidation, but all in the contrary 

 way, our theory obviously calls for every reasonable 

 allowance being made for its defects. It may prove 

 a true system, though one half of the illustrations 

 presented by its first explicator should be wrong. 

 For any mind competent to judge of it by the 

 facts and arguments on which it is founded, 

 there can be little need to insist upon the su- 

 periority of the conclusions to which it points, 

 over the results which arise from more limited 

 views of ordinary science. Existing philosophy, 

 halting between the notions of the enlightened 

 and the unenlightened man, leaves us only 

 puzzled. We know not how to regard the phe- 

 nomena of the world, and our own relation to 

 them. Many sink into a kind of fatalism which 

 paralyzes the faculties; others ascend into fantas- 

 tic dreams which exercise a not less baleful influ- 

 ence. Some of the disastrous consequences are 

 sufficiently conspicuous ; but many more blaze 

 and expend themselves in privacy, known only in 

 the circles where they have been so fatally felt. 



