THE COMMENTATORIAL SPIRIT. 283 



for mere laws of nature, there is nothing of mental 

 intercourse with the great spirits of the past, as 

 there is in studying Aristotle or Plato. More- 

 over, a large portion of this employment is of 

 a kind the most agreeable to most speculative 

 minds; it consists in tracing the consequences of 

 assumed principles : it is deductive like geometry ; 

 and the principles of the teachers being known, 

 and being undisputed, the deduction and applica- 

 tion of their results is an obvious, self-satisfying, 

 and inexhaustible exercise of ingenuity. 



These causes, and probably others, make cri- 

 ticism and commentation flourish, when invention 

 begins to fail, oppressed and bewildered by the 

 acquisitions it has already made ; and when the 

 vigour and hope of men's minds are enfeebled by 

 civil and political changes. Accordingly 1 , the Alex- 

 andrian school was eminently characterized by a 

 spirit of erudition, of literary criticism, of inter- 

 pretation, of imitation. These practices, which 

 reigned first in their full vigour in the Museum, 

 are likely to be, at all times, the leading propen- 

 sities of similar academical institutions. 



How natural it is to select a great writer as 

 a paramount authority, and to ascribe to him ex- 

 traordinary profundity and sagacity, we may see, 

 in the manner in which the Greeks looked upon 

 Homer ; and the fancy which detected in his poems 

 traces of the origin of all arts and sciences, has, 



1 Degerando, Hist, des Syst. de Philos. iii. p. 134. 



