Only the philosophic domain which that new road in philosophy leads to, appears to be very considerably broader, as 'Tom' takes it, than that very vivid, but narrow limitation of its fields, which Mr. Macaulay has set down in our time, would make it. Indeed, this 'philosopher,' that _Lear_ so much inclines to, appears to have included in his investigations the two _extremes_ of the new science of practice. He has sounded it apparently 'from its lowest note to the top of its key.' 'What is your study?' says the king to him, eyeing him curiously, and apparently struck with the practical result--anxious to have a word with him in private, but obliged to conduct the examination on the stage. 'How to prevent THE FIEND,' is Tom's reply. 'How to prevent the fiend _and_ to kill vermin.' This is the Poet who says elsewhere, 'that without _good_ nature, _men_ are themselves but a nobler kind of vermin.' One cannot but observe, however, that Poor Tom's researches in this quite new field of a practical philosophy, do not appear to have been followed up since his time with any very marked success. _One_ of these departments of 'his _study_' has indeed been seized, and is now occupied by whole troops of modern philosophers; but their inquiries, though very interesting and doubtlessly useful, do not appear to exhibit that direct and palpable bearing on practice, to which Tom's programme so severely inclines. For he is one who would make 'the art and practic part of life, the mistress to his theoric.' And as to that other mysterious object of his inquiries, Mr. Macaulay is not the only person who appears to think, that that does not come within the range of anything human. Many of our scholars are still of the opinion that, 'court holy water' is the best application in the world for _him_; and the fact that he does not appear to get '_prevented_' with it; it is a fact which of course has nothing to do with the logical result. For our philosophers are still determined to reason it 'thus and thus,' without taking into account the circumstance, that 'the sequent effect' with which 'nature finds itself scourged,' is not touched by their _reasons_. King Lear's own inquiries seem also to include with great distinctness, the two great branches of the new philosophical inquiry. His mind is indeed very eagerly bent on the pursuit of _causes_. And though in the paroxysms of his mental disorder, he is apt to confound them occasionally, this very confusion, as it is managed, only serves to develop the breadth of the philosophic conception beneath it.