340 RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



such a philosopher may have been cultivated. 

 And our apprehensions of injury to mankind 

 from the influence of such examples will dimi- 

 nish, when we consider, that those mathematicians 

 whose minds have been less partially exercised, 

 the great discoverers of the truths which others 

 apply, the philosophers who have looked upwards 

 as well as downwards, to the unknown as well as 

 to the known, to ulterior as well as proximate 

 principles, have never rested in this narrow and 

 barren doctrine ; but have perpetually extended 

 their view forwards, beyond mere material laws 

 and causes, to a First Cause of the moral and 

 material world, to which each advance in philo- 

 sophy might bring them nearer, though its 

 highest attributes must probably ever remain 

 indefinitely beyond their reach. 



It scarcely needs, perhaps, to be noticed, that 

 what we here represent as the possible source of 

 error is, not the perfection of the mathematical 

 habits of the mind, but the deficiency of the 

 habit of apprehending truth of other kinds ; not 

 a clear insight into the mathematical conse- 

 quences of principles, but a want of a clear view 

 of the nature and foundation of principles ; not 

 the talent for generalizing geometrical or me- 

 chanical relations, but the tendency to erect such 

 relations into ultimate truths and efficient causes. 

 The most consummate mathematical skill may 

 accompany and be auxiliary to the most earnest 



