t seems to have been written in the year _two_
thousand eight hundred and forty-eight. As for the passages I am about
to transcribe, they, I fancy, will speak for themselves.

"Do you know, my dear friend," says the writer, addressing, no doubt, a
contemporary--"Do you know that it is scarcely more than eight or nine
hundred years ago since the metaphysicians first consented to relieve
the people of the singular fancy that there exist _but two practicable
roads to Truth_? Believe it if you can! It appears, however, that long,
long ago, in the night of Time, there lived a Turkish philosopher called
Aries and surnamed Tottle." [Here, possibly, the letter-writer means
Aristotle; the best names are wretchedly corrupted in two or three
thousand years.] "The fame of this great man depended mainly upon his
demonstration that sneezing is a natural provision, by means of which
over-profound thinkers are enabled to expel superfluous ideas through
the nose; but he obtained a scarcely less valuable celebrity as the
founder, or at all events as the principal propagator, of what was
termed the _de_ductive or _a priori_ philosophy. He started with what he
maintained to be axioms, or self-evident truths:--and the now well
understood fact that _no_ truths are _self_-evident, really does not
make in the slightest degree against his speculations:--it was sufficient
for his purpose that the truths in question were evident at all. From
axioms he proceeded, logically, to results. His most illustrious
disciples were one Tuclid, a geometrician," [meaning Euclid] "and one
Kant, a Dutchman, the originator of that species of Transcendentalism
which, with the change merely of a C for a K, now bears his peculiar
name.

"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 _in_ductive. His plan
referred altogether to sensation. He proceeded by observing, analyzing,
and classifying facts--_instantiae Naturae_, as they were somewhat
affectedly called--and arranging them into general laws. In a word, while
the mode of Aries rested on _noumena_, that of Hog depended on
_phenomena_; and so great was the admiration excited by this latter
system that, at its first introduction, Aries fell into general
disrepute. Finally, however, he recovered ground, and was permitted to
divide the empire of Philosophy with his more modern rival