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that we had some right to speak in deprecation of a style 

 of discussion which would reduce them to a level with the 

 flimsiest conjectures. And if from the little we have anim- 

 adverted upon, we have not shown that Dr. Hickok's 

 system of teaching the laws of nature is totally futile and 

 unreliable, it is only from the deficiency of the reviewer 

 and not from any want of evidence in this book. 



If this system is in the least valuable and useful as a means 

 for obtaining a knowledge of the laws of matter, how hap- 

 pens it that no law of matter was ever so discovered? The 

 human mind has been laboring, struggling and inventing 

 for six thousand years,. and it never yet discovered a law of 

 matter, a priori; not one. The laws of falling bodies, the 

 law of gravitation, the laws of light, the laws of chemistry, 

 all have been the result of induction. Step by step man is 

 conquering the domain of the unknown and unrevealed; 

 but it is by the slow, laborious and perplexing process of 

 induction. Why in this important struggle has science re- 

 ceived no aid from metaphysicians? We had supposed it 

 was because they had none to give. But if they have pos- 

 sessed all this time the secret of an easier and rapider pro- 

 gress, and have failed to reveal it, a heavy responsibility 

 lies at their door. 



We humbly submit, if the a priori method is sufficient to 

 the discovery of the laws of nature, that a fair test of this 

 sufficiency would be, that our author should reveal some 

 new law heretofore unknown. No man pretends that the 

 secrets of nature are all exhausted. Let Dr. Hickok reveal 

 by his a priori method some of the hid treasures which have 

 eluded the researches of the disciples of Bacon. Strange 

 as it may seem, Dr. Hickok has developed by his reasoning 

 the laws of nature only so far as already known. The laws 

 of this book, so far as they are not sheer absurdities, are 

 the laws as known in 1858. Is not this somewhat suspi- 

 cious ? Does it not at first sight appear, that the author's 

 investigations were not after all a priori investigations. We 



