overlooked with respect to man himself, who is so deeply interested in the formation of a race in which all the fundamental properties of the species should be most fully and perfectly exhibited.

But then, in the second place, this merely physical improvement of the species, if carried to its utmost extent, would necessarily be attended with a corresponding advancement in their intellectual and sentient properties;-for by the physical structure we of course understand the entire compass of that structure, and not merely those aspects or portions of it which are externally exposed to observation--and when a finer instrument of thought or of perception was produced, there can be no question, that the thinking or percipient power itself would be proportionally increased or refined.

Then, in the third place, having obtained a more perfectly formed physical and intellectual being, the lower propensities of that being would necessarily, by the very same process of amelioration, be modified in their influence, or contracted in their operation, so as to render them not hurtful, but assistant to the exercise of those moral sentiments on which they have at all times so important an influence ;-and thus a being, morally as well as physically and intellectually improved, would be generated by the fundamental amelioration on the

supposition of which we are now proceeding. In fact, all the sentiments of the human being would partake of the same happy change;-and thus a race would be produced vastly superior in all its attainments and endowments to the very imperfect and erring species with whose frailties, and errors, and sufferings, our past experience has made us chiefly or only acquainted.

And, in the last place, it is obvious, that such a race would naturally require better social and political institutions, and would be at once more disposed to form them, and better adapted for their enjoyment, when formed ;--so that the whole aspect of life would thus gradually be changed, and a far nearer approach made to the realization of the dreams of poetry or philanthropy-though by a process very different from theirs, since our improvements would all depend not on extraordinary or sudden and violent causes, but on a wise observation and well-regulated use of the arrangements of nature herself-than the cold calculations of philosophical speculation have generally, at least, yet ventured to accredit.

And if all this should still appear to some to be but an enthusiastic and extravagant dream, propounded in the language and made plausible by the employment of the ideas of philosophy, rather

than by the more vague and questionable terms and ideas which mere religious or political enthusiasm has been accustomed to employ for a similar purpose-it is a sufficient answer to the allegation to state, that if what we have thus represented be not inconsistent with the laws and order of nature ---but quite in unison with a due, and well-regulated, and perseveringly continued use of her provisions, then, it is not beyond our purpose to state as something which at least may be conceived to be attainable-or for which there is provision made in the arrangements of nature, if these be wisely taken advantage of---and which is important, and indeed, indispensable to be proposed, as a standard to be aimed at-whether in the actual progress and destined history of the human race, this blessed consummation is ever indeed to be realized.

But then, for the actual production of this result, or of any thing, even approaching to it, we demand an indefinite extent of time for the existence of the species--and such a gradual change in their condition favourable to this issue, as that indefinite extent may be supposed to bring forth -for it must never be forgotten, that we consider what is past of the history of mankind to comprise but the very earliest years of the infancy of our species-and to have furnished us

;

with scarcely any thing that can be considered as a fair specimen of what---in its matured condition, and with all the advantages which that condition may be supposed to embrace-it is destined to exhibit.

All hasty attempts, therefore, to realize this issue, must be as hurtful in their effect, as they are erroneous in their design and mode of procedure;— for all such attempts are out of the appointed plan and progress of nature, who wills only that her purposes should be brought forth gradually and on a slowly progressive scale-and, therefore, we again revert to the maxim of Bacon, quoted under the preceding title, but with a certain modification of its meaning, which, however, we have no doubt would have received the full sanction of the author, as it is in perfect harmony with the scope of all his other speculations, viz. that the power of man, at any one stage or moment of his course, is limited to a due use and observation of the order of nature, as manifested to him at that moment-and that if he attempts to step beyond that, he only obstructs his own progress, and does harm to the cause he had it in view to forward.

3. Explaining the mystery, or solving the riddle of the Universe. This also is a mode of expression which has frequently of late found a place in the

speculations especially of continental writers, and to which considerable ridicule has been attachednor can it be denied that there is something in the boldness of the phraseology itself, as well as in the extravagant speculations with which it has been connected-and in the presumptuous expressions to which they have occasionally given rise, that must be admitted as justifying that ridicule.

Yet there are some occasions on which even a bold phraseology has its advantages, and in some measure indeed is not easily avoided—nor is it to be expected that philosophers, when exploring new tracks of thought, should always guard against those extravagancies of speculation, or of expression, which are the combined result of the limited powers with which man is endowed, and of the heated state into which the imagination is apt to be brought, when new and hitherto unexplored fields of thought are suddenly presented to it.

And surely it could never have been seriously intended, by this mode of speaking, to insinuate that it was in the power of the human mind, even by its most magnificent or widely comprehensive, or finely conducted speculations, to explain the whole of that vast scheme which is comprehended within the realm of universal nature-for that scheme is evidently in relation to the human mind and its