METAPHYSICAL SPECULATION. II 



their own mind and spirit — its phenomena 

 and its methods of procedure — must be the 

 ground most open to their search, and must 

 afford results most comprehensible to the 

 understanding. And so they plunged into all 

 the problems of Metaphysics. But there are 

 no mysteries so deep as these — none in which 

 the human mind reaches so soon the limit of 

 its powers — none in which the temptation is 

 stronger to strain after knowledge which is 

 shrouded in impenetrable darkness. The 

 greatest intellects which the world has ever 

 seen have laboured at such problems, and, 

 in respect at least to many of them, have 

 left them as they found them. The same 

 tendency of metaphysical speculation, blend- 

 ing, through the school of Alexandria, with 



