more, in the first instance, than a spirit of prying observation and incessant curiosity, there seems to be no impossibility, though there may be a greatly increased difficulty, in generating it after the period above assigned.

There seems to be a case, more frequent than that of post-dated genius, though not so much remarked; and not dissimilar to it in its circumstances. This is the case of genius, manifesting itself, and afterwards becoming extinct. There is one appearance of this kind that has not escaped notice; the degradation of powers of mind sometimes produced in a man, for the remainder of his life, by severe indisposition.

But the case is probably an affair of very usual Occurrence. Examine the children of peasants. Nothing is more common than to find in them a promise of understanding, a quickness of observation, an ingenuousness of character, and a delicacy of tact, at the age of seven years, the very traces of which are obliterated at the age of fourteen. The cares of the world fall upon them. They are enlisted at the crimping-house of oppression. They are brutified by immoderate and unintermitted labour. Their hearts are hardened, and their spirits broken, by all that they see, all that they feel, and all that they look forward to. This is one of the most interesting points of view in which we can consider the present order of

society. It is the great slaughter-house, of genius and of mind. It is the unrelenting murderer of hope and gaiety, of the love of reflection and the love of life.

Genius requires great care in the training, and the most favourable circumstances to bring it to perfection. Why should it not be supposed that, where circumstances are eminently hostile, it will languish, sicken, and die?

There is only one remark to be added here, to guard against misapprehension. Genius, it seems to appear from the preceding speculations, is not born with us, but generated subsequent to birth. It by no means follows from hence, that it is the produce of education, or ever was the work of the preceptor. Thousands of impressions are made upon us, for one that is designedly produced. The child receives twenty ideas per diem perhaps from the preceptor; it is not impossible that he may have a million of perceptions in that period, with which the preceptor has no concern. We learn, it may be, a routine of barren lessons from our masters; a circumstance occurs perhaps, in the intercourse of our companions, or in our commerce with nature, that makes its way directly to the heart, and becomes the fruitful parent of a thousand projects and contemplations.

ESSAY IV.

OF THE SOURCES OF GENIUS.

TRUE philosophy is probably the highest improvement and most desirable condition of human understanding.

But there is an insanity among philosophers, that has brought philosophy itself into discredit. There is nothing in which this insanity more evidently displays itself, than in the rage of accounting for every thing.

Nature well known, no prodigies remain,
Comets are regular, and Wharton plain.

It may be granted that there is much of system in the universe; or, in other words, it must be admitted, that a careful observer of nature will be enabled by his experience, in many cases, from an acquaintance with the antecedent, to foretel the consequent.

If one billiard-ball strike another in a particular manner, we have great reason to suppose that the result will be similar to what we have already observed in like instances. If fire be applied to gunpowder, we have great reason to expect an explosion. If the gunpowder be compressed in a tube, and a ball of lead be placed over it nearer the mouth of the tube, we have great reason to sup

pose that the explosion will expel the ball, and cause it to move in the air in a certain curve. If the event does not follow in the manner we expected, we have great reason to suppose that, upon further examination, we shall find a difference in the antecedents correspondent to the difference in the consequents.

This uniformity of events, and power of prediction, constitute the entire basis of human knowledge.

But there is a regularity and system in the speculations of philosophers, exceeding any that is to be found in the operations of nature. We are too confident in our own skill, and imagine our science to be greater than it is.

We perceive the succession of events, but we are never acquainted with any secret virtue by means of which two events are bound to each other,

If any. man were to tell me that, if I pull the trigger of my gun, a swift and beautiful horse will immediately appear starting from the mouth of the tube; I can only answer that I do not expect it, and that it is contrary to the tenor of my former experience. But I can assign no reason, why this is an event intrinsically more absurd, or less likely, than the event I have been accustomed to witness.

This is well known to those who are acquainted

with the latest speculations and discoveries of philosophers. It may be familiarly illustrated to the unlearned reader by remarking, that the process of generation, in consequence of which men and horses are born, has obviously no more perceiv able correspondence with that event, than it would have for me to pull the trigger of a gun.

It was probably this false confidence and presumption among philosophers, that led them indiscriminately to reject the doctrine of instinct among the animal tribes. There is a uniformity in some of the spontaneous actions of animals, and a promptitude in others, which nothing that has yet been observed in the preceding circumstances would have taught us to expect. It is this proposition, that the term instinct, accurately considered, is calculated to express. Instinet is a general name for that species of actions in the animal world, that does not fall under any series of intellectual processes with which we are acquainted.

Innumerable events are in like manner daily taking place in the universe, that do not fall under of those rules of succession that human science has yet delineated.

any

The world, instead of being, as the vanity of some men has taught them to assert, a labyrinth of which they hold the clue, is in reality full of