372 GEOGRAPHICAL SYSTEMS 
its first state of glimmering uncertainty, to the at- 
tainment of extensive and accurate knowledge. 
Africa having, at all times, presented the grand 
field for speculation and opinion, is peculiarly cal- 
culated for illustrating these early steps of the 
science. 
In an inquiry, all the objects of which are ob- 
vious to the senses, it might at first sight be expect- 
ed, that man should be liable to imperfection on- 
ly ; that, having explored to a certain extent the 
world around him, he should tranquilly await the 
results of further discovery. Such a course, how- 
ever, is ill suited to the active impatience of the 
human mind. Besides the natural effects of ex- 
aggeration and poetical illusion, sources of error 
arise from operations of the mind that are strictly 
scientific. One deeply rooted principle is the love 
of completeness, which causes the mind to feel al- 
ways a painful void, when its survey over any sub- 
ject is visibly broken and imperfect. This, which 
in itself is a noble principle, and highly instrumen- 
tal in carrying forward the human mind in the ca- 
reer of science, is, in the earlier stages of its pro- 
gress, pregnant with perpetual error. To relieve 
the uneasy feeling which it occasions, the geogra- 
pher seeks, with the most imperfect means, to fill 
up the whole of that space, of which he conceives 
the habitable world to consist. Yet will it not be 
found, on examination, that these delineations were 
