LECTURE I. 17 



or judgments. I shall by this means at 

 once unfold what it is that, in my estim- 

 ation, gives currency and value to the 

 opinions of any individual, and entitles them 

 to the attention of others. The human 

 mind has the power of holding as it were 

 in review, a series of facts or propositions, 

 and steadily contemplating them so as to 

 arrange, assort, or compare them till we 

 form some deduction respecting them. 

 This power seems to belong exclusively to 

 man, and is the basis of his reason- 

 ing faculty. That mind is the strongest 

 which can contemplate the greatest number 

 of facts or propositions with accuracy ; and 

 his judgments are generally the most cor- 

 rect, who omits to review none of the facts 

 belonging to the subject under his con- 

 sideration. It was this power of mind that 

 so eminently distinguished Newton from 

 other men. It was this power that en- 

 abled him to arrange the whole of a 

 treatise in his thoughts, before he com- 

 mitted a single idea to paper. In the 

 exercise of this power, he was known 

 occasionally to have passed a night or 



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