360 DISCOURSE ON THE STUDY 



we remain in the situation in which he figured him- 

 self, standing on the shore of a wide ocean, from 

 whose beach we may have culled some of those innu- 

 merable beautiful productions it casts up with lavish 

 prodigality, but whose acquisition can be regarded as 

 no diminution of the treasures that remain. 



(392.) But this consideration, so far from repressing 

 our efforts, or rendering us hopeless of attaining any 

 thing intrinsically great, ought rather to excite us to 

 fresh enterprise, by the prospect of assured and ample 

 recompense from that inexhaustible store which only 

 awaits our continued endeavours. " It is no detrac- 

 tion from human capacity to suppose it incapable of 

 infinite exertion, or of exhausting an infinite sub- 

 ject." * In whatever state of knowledge we may con- 

 ceive man to be placed, his progress towards a 

 yet higher state need never fear a check, but must 

 continue till the last existence of society. 



(393.) It is in this respect an advantageous view 

 of science, which refers all its advances to the dis- 

 covery of general laws, and to the inclusion of what 

 is already known in generalizations of still higher 

 orders ; inasmuch as this view of the subject repre- 

 sents it, as it really is, essentially incomplete, and 

 incapable of being fully embodied in any system, or 

 embraced by any single mind. Yet it must be re- 

 collected that, so far as our experience has hitherto 

 gone, every advance towards generality has at the 

 same time been a step towards simplification. It is 

 only when we are wandering and lost in the mazes 

 of particulars, or entangled in fruitless attempts to 

 work our way downwards in the thorny paths of 

 * Jackson, The Four Ages, p. 90. 



