Modern _savans_ shrink from using the materials which, for several centuries, thousands of laborious literary ants have been collecting. Like the unhappy Psyche, doomed by the inexorable Venus to arrange and sort into respective heaps a confused mass of wheat, barley, rye, millet and other kinds of grain, they sit down in despair of accomplishing the apparently hopeless task. Frightened at the gigantic labour, they not only fly from it themselves but condemn every one who attempts to arrange systematically the grains which, assorted, would afford valuable seed for fresh crops of food, but which, while thus intermingled, are utterly useless and unproductive. With an insane determination _not_ to see the work which it is the duty imposed on the soul (Psyche) by the prolific powers of nature (Venus) to accomplish, they go on adding to the heterogeneous heap, and endeavour, by loud and clamorous applauses of those who are mere collectors like themselves, to drown the voice of those who would incite them to the enjoined and higher duty of assorting and arranging. Should any one, like the able but mistaken author of the “Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation,” endeavour to bring Thought to bear upon these dry bones and make them live, to generalize and build up a system from them, great is the outcry and terrible are the denunciations. The modern Prometheus who would animate with the celestial fire of forethought the clay which lies a dead and useless mass at his feet, is clamourously damned by his timid brethren the Epimethei, the after or past-thinkers; and, unless he is endowed with more than mortal power, he must submit to have his heart daily devoured by the racking fiends—envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness.