impassable barriers, and does not suppose that he is working by charm. It is said of Hannibal that he dissolved obstructions in the Alps by vinegar; in the moral world, barriers are not to be removed either by acetic acid or by honey.

[PREJUDICES DUE TO PERSONAL DIGNITY.]

II. The question of Free-will might be a text for discoursing on some of the most inveterate erroneous tendencies of the mind.

For one thing, it gives occasion to remark on the influence exerted over our opinions by the feeling of Personal Dignity. Of sources of bias, prejudices, "Idola," "fallacies a priori" this may be allowed precedence. For example, the maxim has been enunciated by some philosophers, that, of two differing opinions, preference is to be given (not to what is true, but) to what ennobles and dignifies human nature. One of the objections seriously entertained against Darwin's theory is that it humbles our ancestral pride. So, to ascribe to our mental powers a material foundation is held to be degrading to our nobler part. Again, a philosopher of our own day—Sir W. Hamilton—has placed on the title-page of his principal work this piece of rhetoric: "On earth, there is nothing great but man; in man, there is nothing great but mind". Now one would suppose that there are on earth many things besides man deserving the appellation of "great"; and that the mechanism of the body is, in any view, quite as remarkable a piece of work as the mechanism of the mind. There was one step more that Hamilton, as an Aristotelian, should have made: "In mind, there is nothing great but intellect". Doubtless, we ought not to dissect an epigram; but epigrams brought into a perverting contact with science are not harmless. Such gross pandering to human vanity must be held as disfiguring a work on philosophy.