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    advantage ( for a man ' s profit is secondary to hk private fatifay ) ? s by a certain inaptitude in him far the study of thB latter * ¦ - ft * gives it up from a consciousness fhaihe can never arrive at eoAvfetion , far less at practical application , and of course ooaektdestiiat nobody else can . He then says , * I wish to know what ttus bobe is composed of * ' The component parts are easily ascertained aad

    proved , and this is satisfactory . What stones are these ; and what is their natural history ? The question is soon set at rest , and he exults in his petrified knowledge . The metaphysician would not cross the way to know anything about the stonespartly because he would most likely forget all he had learned in a few weeks—and walks over them to study human nature , which he considers the only object worthy of interest . He is thus far wrong : everything affecting human nature is worthy of propor tionate interest . It is well for the world that we are not all bent

    on one particular course of study , as we might each become in process of time so wise on the given subject that it would be quite ridiculous . He , however , who leaves metaphysics had never advanced very far . To understand passion , imagination , and will , is something : to know how the reciprocally interpenetrating excess of the two former are apt . to absorb all practical volition , leaving the mental volition active and entire , and to apply this

    principle demonstrably to a characters-Hamlet , for instance , who though an apparent anomaly is nevertheless a class , —to be able to do this is something more ; and it may be taken for granted that too much of the life of the individual has been passed in such contemplations to suffer him ever to alter their course . ' Who steals my puree steals trash '; but ' a theory / as Hazlitt says , ' is a possession for life . ' i

    At the present day , when the tide of politics runs so high a * to absorb ahnost every other subject ; when the merchant and tradesman devote as eager an attention to the . proceedings of ministers as to the balance of their ledgers ; when the sunny swarav of ladies and gentlemen are gracefull y taking up their pens to write of gad-flies and the Court ; while periodical literature is fast swallowing up all substantive works ; it may seem

    sufficiently futile labour to endeavour to gain the least attention to one of the most abstruse . arguments that was ever propounded . That it will receive no popular attention is of course plain enough ; but I think differently with respect to ths olass to whom this disquisition is addressed . A great many people ore r 0 * Uy very fond of the study of metaphysics ; they find a

    peculiarintcrest in analyzing the faculties of their own minds and tbost of others , and derive a satisfaction from arriving at conviction , ( proportioned to the labyrinthine labour preceding the rewiiW and to the key it gives them to other puzsiiag questions which pmvioiisljr appealed anomalies and solecisms in human i nature , Tbspe in * dividual * , though oompamiiv « ly few * sue sufficiently namwoua to

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• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1835, page 747, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2651/page/55/