fine, the one confers on its votary the most sincere, permanent, and exalted delight; the other continual disappointment, and unceasing molestation. ----------------- [14] That this must be the tendency of experiment, when prosecuted as the criterion of truth, is evident from what Bacon, the prince of modern philosophy, says in the 104th Aphorism of his Novum Organum, that "baseless fabric of a vision." For he there sagely observes that wings are not to be added to the human intellect, but rather lead and weights; that all its leaps and flights may be restrained. That this is not yet done, but that when it is we may entertain better hopes respecting the sciences. "Itaque hominum intellectui non plumae addendae, sed plumbum potius, et pondera; ut cohibeant omnem saltum et volatum. Atque hoc adhuc factum non est; quum vero factum fuerit, melius de scientiis sperare licebit." A considerable portion of lead must certainly have been added to the intellect of Bacon when he wrote this Aphorism. ----------------- If such then are the consequences, such the tendencies of experimental inquiries, when prosecuted as the criterion of truth, and daily experience[15] unhappily shows that they are, there can be no other remedy for this enormous evil than the intellectual philosophy of Plato. So obviously excellent indeed is the tendency of this philosophy, that its author, for a period of more than two thousand years, has been universally celebrated by the epithet of divine. Such too is its preeminence, that it may be shown, without much difficulty, that the greatest men of antiquity, from the time in which its salutary light first blessed the human race, have been more or less imbued with its sacred principles, have been more or less the votaries of its divine truths. Thus, to mention a few from among a countless multitude. In the catalogue of those endued with sovereign power, it had for its votaries Dion of Siracusian, Julian the Roman, and Chosroes the Persian, emperor; among the leaders of armies, it had Chabrias and Phocion, those brave generals of the Athenians; among mathematicians, those leading stars of science, Eudoxus, Archimedes[16] and Euclid; among biographers, the inimitable Plutarch; among physicians, the admirable Galen; among rhetoricians, those unrivaled orators Demosthenes and Cicero; among critics, that prince of philologists, Longinus; and among poets, the most learned and majestic Virgil. Instances, though not equally illustrious, yet approximating to these in splendour, may doubtless be adduced after the fall of the Roman empire; but then they have been formed on these great ancients as models, and are, consequently, only rivulets from Platonic streams. And instances of excellence in philosophic attainments, similar to those among the Greeks, might have been enumerated among the moderns, if the hand of barbaric despotism had not compelled philosophy to retire into the deepest solitude, by demolishing her schools, and