400 CONSTITUTION OF THE INTELLECT. [CHAP. XXII. 



2. The particular question of the constitution of the intellect 

 has, it is almost needless to say, attracted the efforts of speculative 

 ingenuity in every age. For it not only addresses itself to that 

 desire of knowledge which the greatest masters of ancient thought 

 believed to be innate in our species, but it adds to the ordinary 

 strength of this motive the inducement of a human and personal 

 interest. A genuine devotion to truth is, indeed, seldom partial 

 in its aims, but while it prompts to expatiate over the fair fields of 

 outward observation, forbids to neglect the study of our own fa- 

 culties. Even in ages the most devoted to material interests, 

 some portion of the current of thought has been reflected in- 

 wards, and the desire to comprehend that by which all else is 

 comprehended has only been baffled in order to be renewed. 



It is probable that this pertinacity of effort would not have 

 been maintained among sincere inquirers after truth, had the 

 conviction been general that such speculations are hopelessly 

 barren. We may conceive that it has been felt that if something 

 of error and uncertainty, always incidental to a state of partial 

 information, must ever be attached to the results of such in- 

 quiries, a residue of positive knowledge may yet remain ; that 

 the contradictions which are met with are more often verbal than 

 real ; above all, that even probable conclusions derive here an in- 

 terest and a value from their subject, which render them not 

 unworthy to claim regard beside the more definite and more 

 splendid results of physical science. Such considerations seem 

 to be perfectly legitimate. Insoluble as many of the problems 

 connected with the inquiry into the nature and constitution of 

 the mind must be presumed to be, there are not wanting others 

 upon which a limited but not doubtful knowledge, others upon 

 which the conclusions of a highly probable analogy, are attain- 

 able. As the realms of day and night are not strictly contermi- 

 nous, but are separated by a crepuscular zone, through which the 

 light of the one fades gradually off into the darkness of the other, 

 so it may be said that every region of positive knowledge lies sur- 

 rounded by a debateable and speculative territory, over which it 

 in some degree extends its influence and its light. Thus there 

 may be questions relating to the constitution of the intellect 

 which, though they do not admit, in the present state of know- 



