e are
no longer puzzled with the strange phantoms, the wild speculations which
occupied the giant minds of a Descartes, a Malebranch, a Locke, a Reid,
a Stewart, and hosts of others, whose shining talents would have
qualified them for the brightest ornaments of literature, real
benefactors of mankind, had not their education lead them into dark and
metaphysical reasonings, a continued tissue of the wildest vagaries, in
which they became entangled, till, at length, they were entirely lost in
the labyrinth of their own conjectures.

The occasion of all their difficulty originated in an attempt to
investigate the faculties of the mind without any means of getting at
it. They did not content themselves with an adoption of the principles
which lay at the foundation of all true philosophy, viz., that the
facts to be accounted for, _do exist_; that truth is eternal, and we are
to become acquainted with it by the means employed for its development.
They quitted the world of materiality they inhabited, refused to examine
the development of mind as the effect of an existing cause; and at one
bold push, entered the world of thought, and made the unhallowed attempt
to reason, a priori, concerning things which can only be known by their
manifestations. But they soon found themselves in a strange land,
confused with sights and sounds unknown, in the _explanation_ of which
they, of course, choose terms as unintelligible to their readers, as the
_ideal realities_ were to them. This course, adopted by Aristotle, has
been too closely followed by those who have come after him.[2] But a new
era has dawned upon the philosophy of the mind, and a corresponding
change in the method of inculcating the principles of language must
follow.[3]

In all our investigations we must take things as we find them, and
account for them as far as we can. It would be a thankless task to
attempt a change of principles in any thing. That would be an
encroachment of the Creator's rights. It belongs to mortals to use the
things they have as not abusing them; and to Deity to regulate the laws
by which those things are governed. And that man is the wisest, the
truest philosopher, and brightest Christian, who acquaints himself with
those laws as they do exist in the regulation of matter and mind, in the
promotion of physical and moral enjoyment, and endeavors to conform to
them in all his thoughts and actions.

From this apparent digression you will at once disco