be a beast in the forest. The same weakness and want, on a higher
plane, occurs daily in the education of ardent young men and women.
"Ah! you don't understand me; I have never met with any one who
comprehends me:" and they sigh and weep, write verses, and walk
alone,--fault of power to express their precise meaning. In a month
or two, through the favor of their good genius, they meet some one so
related as to assist their volcanic estate; and, good communication
being once established, they are thenceforward good citizens. It is
ever thus. The progress is to accuracy, to skill, to truth, from blind
force.

There is a moment, in the history of every nation, when, proceeding
out of this brute youth, the perceptive powers reach their ripeness,
and have not yet become microscopic: so that man, at that instant,
extends across the entire scale; and, with his feet still planted on
the immense forces of night, converses, by his eyes and brain, with
solar and stellar creation. That is the moment of adult health, the
culmination of power.

Such is the history of Europe, in all points; and such in philosophy.
Its early records, almost perished, are of the immigrations from Asia,
bringing with them the dreams of barbarians; a confusion of crude
notions of morals, and of natural philosophy, gradually subsiding,
through the partial insight of single teachers.

Before Pericles, came the Seven Wise Masters; and we have the beginnings
of geometry, metaphysics, and ethics: then the partialists,--deducing
the origin of things from flux or water, or from air, or from fire,
or from mind. All mix with these causes mythologic pictures. At last,
comes Plato, the distributor, who needs no barbaric paint, or tattoo,