The province of science lies in truths that are universal and immutable; that of prudence in second causes that are transient and subordinate. What is universally true is alone necessarily true--the knowledge that rests in particulars must be accidental. The theorist disdains experience--the empiric rejects principle. The one is the pedant who read Hannibal a lecture on the art of war; the other is the carrier who knows the road between London and York better than Humboldt, but a new road is prescribed to him and his knowledge becomes useless. This is the state of mind La Fontaine has described so perfectly in his story of the "Cierge." "Un d'eux, voyant la brique au feu endurcie Vaincre l'effort des ans, il eut la même envie; Et nouvel Empédocle, aux flammes condamné Par sa pure et propre folie, Il se lança dédans--ce fût mal raisonné, Le Cierge ne savait grain de philosophie." The mere chemist or mathematician will apply his truths improperly; the man of detail, the mere empiric, will deal skilfully with particulars, while to all general truths he is insensible. The wise man, the philosopher in action, will use the one as a stepping-stone to the other, and acquire a vantage-ground from whence he will command the realms of practice and experience. History teems with instances that--although the general course of the human mind is marked out, and each succeeding phasis in which it exhibits itself appears inevitable--the human race cannot be considered, as Vico and Herder were, perhaps, inclined to look upon it, as a mass without intelligence, traversing its orbit according to laws which it has no power to modify or control. On such an hypothesis, Wisdom and Folly, Justice and Injustice, would be the same, followed by the same consequences and subject to the same destiny--no certain laws establishing invariable grounds of hope and fear, would keep the actions of men in a certain course, or direct them to a certain end; the feelings, faculties, and instincts of man would be useless in a world where the wise was always as the foolish, the just as the unjust, where calculation was impossible, and experience of no avail. Man is no doubt the instrument, but the unconscious instrument, of Providence; and for the end they propose to themselves, though not for the result which they attain, nations as well as individuals are responsible. Otherwise, why should we read or speak of history? it would be the feverish dream of a distempered imagination, full of incoherent ravings, a disordered chaos of antagonist illusions-- ----"A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing."