14 Wisconsin Academy of Scienc'es, Arts and Letters. 



of life. Indeed, hasty reasoners often come to this con- 

 clusion. 



A restriction closely concurrent with this of primitive dis- 

 position is that of habit. We all become increasingly aware 

 of this restraint as we advance. We are not simply ham- 

 pered by physical habits, but by intellectual ones also. The 

 lines of thought we have taken up we pursue with increas- 

 ing ease, but we are at the same time more and more reluct- 

 ant to accept new ones. In youth we were adepts in 

 mathematics or quick in languages; in middle life we dis- 

 cover we have much narrowed these powers by disuse. We 

 have passed the point of indifference in reference to any 

 class of a.ttainments, and find them all positively easy or 

 positively hard. 



The convictions we have reached, especially those touch- 

 ing action and character, personal, social and religious, 

 though they themselves may have grown up in the exercise 

 of liberty, are still limitations upon it. Especially is this 

 true if a dogmatic spirit enters into them and we regard our 

 opinions as finalities. 



What Lanfrey says of Napoleon is capable of much wider 

 application. He is speaking of wilfulness — which is really 

 the want of well-ordered will — as united with very great 

 intellectual powers. " The studied frenzy of a calculating 

 mind is without remedy, because it does not depend on a 

 sentiment, but on the very form of the intellect itself." This 

 is true of all mental activity in proportion as it becomes deep 

 and narrow. The life flows on in it as a river in a canon, 

 not merely beyond flexion, but for the most part beyond ob- 

 servation. A dogmatic intellect does not simply open before 

 us one way, it systematically closes up all other ways. 

 Dogmatism is a universal loss of liberty, and most of all in 

 the inner life of the mind. 



The remoteness of primary principles from the truths 

 which flow from them leads to the same result. Most of the 

 discussion by which the current of empirical philosophy is 

 resisted in our day goes for little or nothing. It lies far out 

 among marginal truths, and can find no acceptance with 

 minds adversely disposed, and rarely leads to a fundamental 



