must be acquired, like that about body, or the extended substance, within the bounds of their province, and by the means they employ, particular experiments and observations.  Nothing can be true of mind, any more than of body, that is repugnant to these; and an intellectual hypothesis which is not supported by the intellectual phenomena is at least as ridiculous as a corporeal hypothesis which is not supported by the corporeal phenomena.

If I have said thus much in this place concerning natural philosophy, it has not been without good reason.  I consider theology and ethics as the first of sciences in pre-eminence of rank.  But I consider the constant contemplation of Nature—­by which I mean the whole system of God’s works as far as it lies open to us--as the common spring of all sciences, and even of these.  What has been said agreeably to this notion seems to me evidently true; and yet metaphysical divines and philosophers proceed in direct contradiction to it, and have thereby, if I mistake not, bewildered themselves, and a great part of mankind, in such inextricable labyrinths of hypothetical reasoning, that few men can find their way back, and none can find it forward into the road of truth.  To dwell long, and on some points always, in particular knowledge, tires the patience of these impetuous philosophers.  They fly to generals.  To consider attentively even the minutest phenomena of body and mind mortifies their pride.  Rather than creep up slowly, a posteriori, to a little general knowledge, they soar at once as far and as high as imagination can carry them.  From thence they descend again, armed with systems and arguments a priori; and, regardless how these agree or clash with the phenomena of Nature, they impose them on mankind.

It is this manner of philosophising, this preposterous method of beginning our search after truth out of the bounds of human knowledge, or of continuing it beyond them, that has corrupted natural theology and natural religion in all ages.  They have been corrupted to such a degree that it is grown, and was so long since, as necessary to plead the cause of God, if I may use this expression after Seneca, against the divine as against the atheist; to assert his existence against the latter, to defend his attributes against the former, and to justify his providence against both.  To both a sincere and humble theist might say very properly, “I make no difference between you on many occasions, because it is indifferent whether you deny or defame the Supreme Being.”  Nay, Plutarch, though little orthodox in theology, was not in the wrong perhaps when he declared the last to be the worst.