important
subjects. There is a greatness and simplicity, a closeness of thought, a
glance keen and wide, a play of the entire nature, and a truthfulness
and downrightness, with an amount, and accuracy, and vivification of
learning, such as we know of in no one other writer, ancient or
modern--not even Leibnitz; and we know no writings which so wholesomely
at once exalt and humble the reader, make him feel what is in him, and
what he can and may, as well as what he cannot, and need never hope to
know. In this respect, Hamilton is as grand as Pascal, and more simple;
he exemplifies everywhere his own sublime adaptation of
Scripture--unless a man become a little child, he cannot enter into the
kingdom; he enters the temple stooping, but he presses on, intrepid and
alone, to the inmost _adytum_, worshipping the more the nearer he gets
to the inaccessible shrine, whose veil no mortal hand has ever rent in
twain. And we name after him, the thoughtful, candid, impressive little
volume of his pupil, his friend, and his successor, Professor Fraser.

The following passage from Sir William Hamilton's _Dissertations_,
besides its wise thought, sounds in the ear like the pathetic and
majestic sadness of a symphony by Beethoven:--

"There are two sorts of ignorance: we philosophize to escape
ignorance, and the consummation of our philosophy is ignorance;
we start from the one, we repose in the other; they are the
goals from which, and to which, we tend; and the pursuit of
knowledge is but a course between two ignorances, as human life
is itself only a travelling from grave to grave.

{Tis bios?--Ek tymboio thoron, eti tymbon hodeuo.}

The highest reach of human science is the scientific recognition
of human ignorance; 'Qui nescit ignorare, ignorat scire.' This
'learned ignorance' is the rational conviction by the human mind
of its inability to transcend certain limits; it is the
knowledge of ourselves,--the science of man. This is
accomplished by a demonstration of the disproportion between
what is to be known, and our faculties of knowing,--the
disproportion, to wit, between the infinite and the finite. In
fact, the recognition of human ignorance, is not only the one
highest, but the one true, knowledge; and its first-fruit, as
has been said, is humility. Simple nescience is not proud;
consummated science is positively humble. For this knowledge it