e least
comprehend sensation--cannot even conceive how sensation is possible.
Inward and outward things he thus discovers to be alike inscrutable in
their ultimate genesis and nature. He sees that the Materialist and
Spiritualist controversy is a mere war of words; the disputants being
equally absurd--each believing he understands that which it is
impossible for any man to understand. In all directions his
investigations eventually bring him face to face with the unknowable;
and he ever more clearly perceives it to be the unknowable. He learns at
once the greatness and the littleness of human intellect--its power in
dealing with all that comes within the range of experience; its
impotence in dealing with all that transcends experience. He feels, with
a vividness which no others can, the utter incomprehensibleness of the
simplest fact, considered in itself. He alone truly _sees_ that absolute
knowledge is impossible. He alone _knows_ that under all things there
lies an impenetrable mystery.

[1] _Westminster Review_, April 1857.

[2] For detailed proof of these assertions see essay on "Manners and
Fashion."

[3] The idea that the Nebular Hypothesis has been disproved because what
were thought to be existing nebulae have been resolved into clusters of
stars is almost beneath notice. _A priori_ it was highly improbable, if
not impossible, that nebulous masses should still remain uncondensed,
while others have been condensed millions of years ago.

[4] _Personal Narrative of the Origin of the Caoutchouc, or India-Rubber
Manufacture in England._ By Thomas Hancock.

ON MANNERS AND FASHION[1]

Whoever has studied the physiognomy of political meetings, cannot fail
to have remarked a connection between democratic opinions and
peculiarities of costume. At a Chartist demonstration, a lecture on
Socialism, or a _soiree_ of the Friends of Italy, there will be seen
many among the audience, and a still larger ratio among the speakers,
who get themselves up in a style more or less unusual. One gentleman on
the platform divides his hair down the centre, instead of on one side;
another brushes it back off the forehead, in the fashion known as
"bringing out the intellect;" a third has so long forsworn the scissors,
that his locks sweep his shoulders. A considerable sprinkling of
moustaches may be observed; here and there an imperial; and occasionally
some courageous breaker of conventions exhibits a full-grown beard.[2]
Th