PEEFACE. IX 



all mankind, if he only knew how. But, now, when 

 in the like strait of having important but difficult truth 

 to communicate to the general intelligence, what did the 

 prophets and religious founders, and what the great 

 poets in all ages ? They spake in parables and simili- 

 tudes to make the general truth or moral they would 

 inculcate more easily apprehensible. They gave the 

 results of their meditations and speculations, suppressing 

 the too intricate or profound reasonings by which they 

 reached them; or, if they gave them, they translated them 

 into the concrete, and they helped out their meaning by 

 illustration. 



Now, I conceive that by a method not wholly unlike 

 this the high philosopher's thoughts might be brought 

 down to the understanding of the people at least, of 

 fairly educated people. The general principle might be 

 stated, and then given in the concrete; the abstract or 

 abstruse might have its illustration alongside. For the 

 comprehension of the general principle there is nothing 

 like the concrete example, as for the rendering the 

 abstruse clear there is nothing but the aptly chosen 

 image or figure, notwithstanding certain dangers of 

 misapprehending to which their employment may lead. 

 Whoever has successfully caught the' central thought 

 of a great thinker like Spinoza, Kant, or Berkeley is 

 enabled thereby to see the universe from his position, 

 to follow the central thought into its necessary corol- 

 laries; and such are able, if they have the faculty of 

 exposition, including some imagination, to communicate 

 and explain this central thought to others. The person 



