We cannot concur with these celebrated writers, and we would deduce a far different conclusion from the speculations of necessitarians. This sort of scepticism or despair is more common in Germany than it is in this country; for there, speculation pursuing no certain or determinate _method_, has shown itself in all its wild and desolating excesses. But it is sophistry, and not reason, that leads the human mind astray; and we believe that reason, in all cases, is competent to detect and expose the impositions of sophistry. We do not believe that one guide which the Almighty has given us, can, by the legitimate exercise of it, lead us to a different result from that of another guide. We are persuaded that if reason seems to force us into any system which is contradicted by the testimony of our moral nature, or by the truths of revelation, this is unsound speculation: it is founded either on false premises, or else springs from false conclusions, which reason itself may correct, either by pointing out the fallacy of the premises, or the logical incoherency of the argument. We do not then intend to abandon speculation, but to plant it, if we can, on a better foundation, and build it up according to a better method. Section XI. The true conclusion from the foregoing review of opinions and arguments. All the mighty logicians we have yet named have yielded to “the demonstration” in favour of necessity, but we do not know that one of them has ever directed the energies of his mind to pry into its validity. They have all pursued the method so emphatically condemned by Bacon, and the result has verified his prediction. “The usual method,” says he, “of discovery and proof by first establishing the most general propositions, then applying and proving the intermediate axioms according to these, is the parent of error and the calamity of every science.”(58) They have set out with the universal law of causality or the principle of the sufficient reason, and thence have proceeded to ascertain and determine the actual nature and processes of things. We may despair of ever being able to determine a single fact, or a single process of nature, by reasoning from truisms; we must begin in the opposite direction and learn “to dissect nature,” if we would behold her secrets and comprehend her mysteries.