LECTURE XI. 



IT may appear strange that mankind from the very 

 earliest times, have turned their minds so readily to 

 nothing, nothing so amply developed, and of nothing so 

 circumstantially taught and written, as of that whereof Man 

 neither does nor can know anything. However, the 

 circumstance is very naturally accounted for, by human 

 indolence on the one hand and vanity on the other. So 

 soon as the first stage of sensual excitement and mere life 

 of habit is overpassed, Man in general begins to find 

 pleasure in intellectual movement ; the ambition, too, 

 awakens to know more, to look deeper, than others. But 

 the true road to this point, comprehensive knowledge and 

 persevering, earnest and definite reflection, is far too 

 painful, and therefore not everybody's business ; and instead 

 of striving along this path toward the actually comprehen- 

 sible, Man prefers to use his imagination, a power, the 

 activity of which, on account of its half-sensual nature, 

 seemingly finds an incomparably greater delight in those 

 regions, where inconvenient facts and surely-judging logic 

 cannot interpose, where the imagination, not subject to the 



