The modern system of philosophy has one great advantage, which makes it difficult to attack it with any hopes of success, namely, that it is not founded on any of the prevailing opinions or natural feelings of mankind. It rests upon a single principle—its boasted superiority over all prejudice. Unsupported by facts or reason, it is by this circumstance alone enabled to trample upon every dictate of the understanding or feeling of the heart, as weak and vulgar prejudices. In this alone it is secure and invulnerable. To this it owes its giant power and dreaded name. Let the contradictions and fallacies contained in the system be proved over and over again, still the answer is ready:—all the objections made to it are resolved into _prejudice_. Destitute of every other support, it staggers our faith in received opinions by the hardihood of its assertions, and derives its claim to implicit credence by the boldness of its defiance of all established authority. Common sense is brought to the bar like an old offender, and condemned without a hearing. Under the shelter of this presumption there is no absurdity so great as not to be advanced with impunity. There is no hypothesis, however gratuitous, however inadequate, or however unfounded, that is not held up as the true one, if it is but contrary to all observation and experience. The grossest credulity succeeds to the most extravagant scepticism. From being the slaves of authority we become the dupes of paradox. Every opinion which is so absurd as never to have been affirmed before is converted into an undeniable truth. Whoever dares to question it, unawed by the authority on the one hand, and undazzled by the novelty on the other, is considered as a person of a narrow and bigoted understanding, and as relinquishing all claim to the exercise of his reason. We are effectually deterred from protesting against any of these ‘wise saws and modern instances’ by the dread of being mixed up with the vulgar, and we dare not avoid the common feelings of humanity lest we should be ridiculed as the dupes of self-love, or of the whining cant of moralists. There is however no bigotry so blind as that which is founded on a supposed exemption from all prejudice. The mind in this case identifies every opinion of its own with reason itself: and regarding the objections made to it as proceeding from a jaundiced and distorted view of the case, it converts them into the strongest confirmations of the depth and comprehensiveness of its own views. There are accordingly no people so little capable of reasoning as those who make the loudest pretensions to it: and having assumed the name of Philosophers, are astonished that any one should call their title in question.