there lived a Turkish philosopher (or Hindoo possibly), called Aries Tottle. This person introduced or at all events propagated what was termed the deductive or _a priori_ mode of investigation. He started with what he maintained to be _axioms_, or "self-evident truths," and thence proceeded "logically" to results. His greatest disciples were one Neuclid, and one Cant. Well, Aries Tottle flourished supreme until the advent of one Hog, surnamed the "Ettrick Shepherd," who preached an entirely different system, which he called the _a posteriori_ or inductive. His plan referred altogether to Sensation. He proceeded by observing, analyzing, and classifying facts--_instantiae naturae_, as they were affectedly called--into general laws. Aries Tottle's mode, in a word, was based on _noumena_; Hog's on _phenomena_. Well, so great was the admiration excited by this latter system that, at its first introduction, Aries Tottle fell into disrepute; but finally he recovered ground and was permitted to divide the realm of Truth with his more modern rival. The _savans_ now maintained the Aristotelian and _Baconian_ roads were the sole possible avenues to knowledge. "Baconian," you must know, was an adjective invented as equivalent to Hog-ian and more euphonious and dignified. Now, my dear friend, I do assure you, most positively, that I represent this matter fairly, on the soundest authority; and you can easily understand how a notion so absurd on its very face must have operated to retard the progress of all true knowledge--which makes its advances almost invariably by intuitive bounds. The ancient idea confined investigations to _crawling_; and for hundreds of years so great was the infatuation about Hog especially, that a virtual end was put to all thinking, properly so called. No man dared utter a truth to which he felt himself indebted to his _Soul_ alone. It mattered not whether the truth was even _demonstrably_ a truth, for the bullet-headed _savans_ of the time regarded only the road by which he had attained it. They would not even look at the end. "Let us see the means," they cried, "the means!" If, upon investigation of the means, it was found to come under neither the category Aries (that is to say, Ram), nor under the category Hog, why then the savans went no farther, but pronounced the "theorist" a fool, and would have nothing to do with him or his truth.