sophistry, and not reason, that leads the human mind astray; and we
believe that reason, in all cases, is competent to detect and expose the
impositions of sophistry. We do not believe that one guide which the
Almighty has given us, can, by the legitimate exercise of it, lead us to a
different result from that of another guide. We are persuaded that if
reason seems to force us into any system which is contradicted by the
testimony of our moral nature, or by the truths of revelation, this is
unsound speculation: it is founded either on false premises, or else
springs from false conclusions, which reason itself may correct, either by
pointing out the fallacy of the premises, or the logical incoherency of
the argument. We do not then intend to abandon speculation, but to plant
it, if we can, on a better foundation, and build it up according to a
better method.

Section XI.

The true conclusion from the foregoing review of opinions and arguments.

All the mighty logicians we have yet named have yielded to "the
demonstration" in favour of necessity, but we do not know that one of them
has ever directed the energies of his mind to pry into its validity. They
have all pursued the method so emphatically condemned by Bacon, and the
result has verified his prediction. "The usual method," says he, "of
discovery and proof by first establishing the most general propositions,
then applying and proving the intermediate axioms according to these, is
the parent of error and the calamity of every science."(58) They have set
out with the universal law of causality or the principle of the sufficient
reason, and thence have proceeded to ascertain and determine the actual
nature and processes of things. We may despair of ever being able to
determine a single fact, or a single process of nature, by reasoning from
truisms; we must begin in the opposite direction and learn "to dissect
nature," if we would behold her secrets and comprehend her mysteries.

By pursuing this method it will be seen, and clearly seen, that "the great
demonstration" which has led so many philosophers in chains, is, after
all, a sophism. We have witnessed their attempts to reconcile the great
fact of man's free-agency with this boasted demonstration of necessity.
But how interminable is the confusion among them? If a few of them concur
in one solution, this is condemned by others, and not unfrequently by the
very authors of the