Plain sailing enough till we come to the last sentence. We dare not say that "we do not understand this"--these writers tell us so often that the critic fails in understanding simply from his own want of apprehension--but we may venture to hint that whatever meaning it contains might have been more clearly expressed. The hapless critic, by the way, is severely dealt with by this school of philosophers. He is told that "Coleridge's golden rule--_Until you understand an author's ignorance, presume yourself ignorant of his understanding_-- should be borne in mind by all writers who feel an itching in their forefinger and thumb to be carping at their wisers and betters." (P. 161) Our _wisers_ should have informed the critic how he is to fathom an author's ignorance except by examining the accuracy and intelligibility of the positive statements he makes. "A Reviewer's business," we are assured in another part, "is to have positive opinions upon all subjects, without need of steadfast principles or thoroughgoing knowledge upon any: and he belongs to the hornet class, unproductive of any thing useful or sweet, but ever ready to sally forth and sting." Hard measure this. But we must not be judges in our own cause. Meanwhile nothing pleases our amiable writers so much as to gird at the times in which they live, and find error in every general belief. "Another form of the same materialism, which cannot comprehend or conceive any thing, except as the product of some external cause, is the spirit so general in these times, which attaches an inordinate importance to mechanical inventions, and accounts them the great agents in the history of mankind. It is a common opinion with these exoteric philosophers that the invention of printing was the chief cause of the Reformation--that the invention of the compass brought about the discovery of America--and that the vast changes in the military and political state of Europe since the middle ages have been wrought by the invention of gunpowder. It would be almost as rational to say that the cock's crowing, makes the sun rise. U." (P. 85.)