M. Extracts from a letter to Warner Search, and from his answer.-ΠΝΕΥΜΑ, ΨΥΧΗ a JUVENAL. Cretice in the original, Pelluces may be translated I b Horace, Book 3, Ode 7. Perhaps fes should be rendered snarl. INTRODUCTION. "To be, or not to be," exclaimed the Dane : Is not means is; and immaterial Nay, as how pleasantly!-Addresses sing,- PROBABLY my readers have seen a picture, by the justly celebrated Hogarth, in which a professor is engaged in lecturing a crowded audience of Caps and Gowns. The theme is-Datur Vacuum? and none, who "look upon this picture," can hesitate to give the question an * And every thing is nought; and nought is everything. Rejected Addresses. affirmative decision. The lecturer, too, points very significantly at his own head; as much as to say," what I am treating of, is there." In contemplating such a group (of Metaphysicians, let us suppose,) I cannot avoid asking myself the following questions.-Is a head, full of immateriality, distinguishable from an empty one?-Can a pate, filled with emptiness, be other than a mortal dull one ?—Or is it desirable that such immaterial mentality should be immortal? Sumite MATERIAM,—vestris, qui scribitis, æquam Such is the advice of Horace; and his prescription much resembles the proverbial one, of " cut your coat according to your cloth." Where a man has no cloth, his case appears to come within the equity of the adage; and he must borrow from others, instead of vainly trying to manufacture for himself. For, humanly speaking, ex nihilo, nihil fit. Such, at least beyond the pale of Metaphysics, is the sublunary rule. But again I proceed to ask myself a |
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