The examination of this feature in the history of the human mind is important for us, in consequence of its influence upon the employments and the thoughts of the times now under our notice. This tendency materially affected both men's speculations and their labours in the pursuit of knowledge. By its direct operation, it gave rise to the newer Platonic philosophy among the Greeks, and to corresponding doctrines among the Arabians; and by calling into a prominent place astrology, alchemy, and magic, it long occupied most of the real observers of the material world. In this manner it delayed and impeded the progress of true science; for we shall see reason to believe that human knowledge lost more by the perversion of men's minds and the misdirection of their efforts, than it gained by any increase of zeal arising from the peculiar hopes and objects of the mystics. It is not our purpose to attempt any general view of the progress and fortunes of the various forms of Mystical Philosophy; but only to exhibit some of its characters, in so far as they illustrate those {212} tendencies of thought which accompanied the retrogradation of inductive science. And of these, the leading feature which demands our notice is that already alluded to; namely, the practice of referring things and events, not to clear and distinct relations, obviously applicable to such cases;--not to general rules capable of direct verification; but to notions vague, distant, and vast, which we cannot bring into contact with facts, because they belong to a different region from the facts; as when we connect natural events with moral or historical causes, or seek spiritual meanings in the properties of number and figure. Thus the character of Mysticism is, that it refers particulars, not to generalizations homogeneous and immediate, but to such as are heterogeneous and remote; to which we must add, that the process of this reference is not a calm act of the intellect, but is accompanied with a glow of enthusiastic feeling.