To raise up scenes, in which her own desires
Contented may repose,—when things which are
Pall on her temper like a twice told tale.”[56]
It is sufficient, that we are endowed with powers of discovery. Our gratitude is due to Heaven for the gift; and the more due for that gracious wisdom, which has known how to limit the powers which it gave, so as to produce a greater result of good by the very limitation. Our prejudices, which sometimes forbid reasoning, and the errors, to which our imperfect reasoning often leads us, we should consider, when all their remote relations are taken into account, as indirect sources of happiness; and though we may wish, and justly wish, to analyse them, and to rise above their influence,—for, without this exertion, and consequent feeling of progress, on our part, they would be evil rather than good,—we must not forget, that it is to them we owe the luxury, which the immediate analysis affords, and the acquisition of the innumerable truths, which the prevalence of these errors, in past ages, has left to be discovered by the ages which succeed.
In this, and in every thing which relates to man, Nature has had in view, not the individual or the single generation only, but the permanent race. She has therefore, not exhausted her bounty on any one period of the long succession; but, by a provision, which makes our very weakness instrumental to her goodness, she has given to all, that distant and ever-brightening hope, which, till we arrive at our glorious destination,
“Leads from goal to goal,
And opens still, and opens on the soul.”
With enough of mental vigour to advance still farther in the tracks, of science that are already formed, and to point out new tracks to those who are to follow, we have enough of weakness to prevent us from exploring and exhausting, what is to occupy, in the same happy search, the millions of millions that are to succeed us. Truth itself, indeed, will always be progressive; but there will still, at every stage of the progress, be something to discover, and abundance to confute. “In 24,000 years,” to borrow the prediction of a very skilful prophet,—“In 24,000 years, there will arise philosophers, who will boast, that they are destroying the errors which have been reigning in the world for 30,000 years past; and there will be people who will believe, that they are then only just beginning to open their eyes.”
In these remarks, on the nature of our varied consciousness, and on the unity and identity of the mind in all its varieties,—we have considered the mental phenomena in their general aspect. We have now to consider them as arranged in kindred classes,—or rather to attempt the difficult task of the classification itself.
To this I shall proceed in my next Lecture.