peculiar mental temperament of the individual, can not be resolved in three hours, or even three days, still it may perhaps in three years; and if three years be too little, then thirty years may probably suffice. While in spite of this inward doubt we follow uninterruptedly our vocation in outer life, many a silent change is effected in our minds, and so at length with altered views and enlarged experience we attain to a calm and clear conviction on the points which at an earlier period had appeared to us obscure, had held us in suspense, and oppressed us with perplexing difficulties. This is the only road that can be safely trod by those who desire above all things to retain a divine faith, but at the same time not to renounce the pursuit of higher science. And is not this the difficult position in the present day of every well-disposed person who is in any way connected with science, or whose pursuits in life require him to occupy himself with it? But now, in the case of physical science, we are all content to observe this law of tardy progress; indeed we think it quite natural, and hold it to be the only correct method. And it is only by following a similar course in the internal investigations of philosophy that we shall ever arrive at a stable position and the firm ground of eternal truth. By any other method, we shall most assuredly lose ourselves among the ever-shifting systems which change with the fashions of the day, or be carried away by the baseless hypotheses of this or that sect or school, which, like the sterile blossoms in the spring, fall fruitless to the ground.