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without the advantages of experiment, and availingthemselves but in a limited degree of the rude observ-ations of their predecessors, they should, by a sort ofgifted intuition, have struck out those grand conceptionsof many of the leading analogies of the natural world, towhich all the exact enquiries of after ages have admi-nistered increasing demonstration. Such happy com-binations of intellectual character are, however, of themost extreme rarity in the course of ages. And nothingcan be less a matter of surprise, however it may be ofregret, than that these lofty imaginings were not fol-lowed out by the succeeding philosophers.

There was soon evinced a disposition towards thesublime but unsubstantial mysticism which sought toconnect every thing in nature with some high and ima-ginary archetype existing in another intellectual world,whence emanated the essence of unity, order, and har-mony. So long as this sort of speculation was confinedto its own elevated region, and the philosopher whomight indulge in it, yet did not suffer it to intrude onthe province of physical observation, or the exactness ofmathematical demonstration, it did not impede the pro-gress of physical truth: perhaps even exercised a salu-tary influence in tending to keep it unmixed with objectsand pursuits of a merely mechanical kind. Such, weapprehend, was the genius of the Platonic school. Themischievous effect produced by such a principle wasrather that of withdrawing men from the more laboriousstudy of facts by the fascinations of its eloquent mys-ticism, than of perverting the course of physical enquiry,or corrupting its methods with technical fallacies. Itwas altogether too much involved in the regions ofmystery to mix itself up with researches connected onlywith the world of matter.

The classification of the innumerable objects presentedto our view is an indispensable step towards enabling themind to grapple with their examination at all. Thus,species, genera, and orders, become the fixed and per-manent objects of knowledge, though individuals areg 3