380 
GEOGRAPHICAL SYSTEMS* 
uncertainty to the attainment of extensive and 
accurate knowledge. Africa having at all times 
presented the grand field for speculation and opi- 
nion, is peculiarly calculated 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 ex- 
pected, that man should be liable to imperfection 
only ; that, having explored to a certain extent 
the world around him, he should tranquilly await 
the results of further discovery. Such a course, 
however, is ill suited to the active impatience of 
the human mind. Besides the natural effects of 
exaggeration 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 always a painful void when its survey over 
any subject is visibly broken and imperfect. 
This, which in itself is a noble principle, and 
highly instrumental in carrying forward the hu- 
man mind in the career of science, is, in the 
earlier stages of its progi'ess, pregnant with per- 
petual error. To relieve the uneasy feehng 
which it occasions, the geographer 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 made 
