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in art or philosophy, where alone the highest genius finds a field. But
we think his failure--if one can fail who does not make an attempt--was
not for want of opportunity. He did not possess any imagination. He was
so deficient in that respect as to be singular. The imagination seems to
assist the mental vision as the telescope does that of the eye; he saw
with his unaided powers only.

He says, "Nature intended him for the tranquil pursuits of science," and
it is impossible to assign any reason why he should not have attained
great eminence among scientific men. The sole difficulty might have
been, that, from very variety of power, he would not give himself up to
any single study with the devotion which Nature demands from those who
seek her favors.

Within his range his perception of truth was as rapid and unfailing as
an instinct. Without difficulty he separated the specious from the
solid, gave great weight to evidence, but was skeptical and cautious
about receiving it. Though a collector of details, he was never
incumbered by them. No one was less likely to make the common mistake of
thinking that a particular instance established a general proposition.
He sought for rules of universal application, and was industrious in the
accumulation of facts, because he knew how many are needed to prove the
simplest truth. The accuracy of his mental operations, united with great
courage, made him careless of authority. He clung to a principle because
he thought it true, not because others thought it so. There is no
indication that he valued an opinion the more because great men of
former ages had favored it. His self-reliance was shown in his
unwillingness to employ servants. Even when very feeble, he refused to
permit any one to assist him. He had extraordinary power of
condensation, and, always seeing the gist of a matter, he often exposed
an argument of hours by a single sentence. Some of his brief papers,
like the one on Banking, contain the substance of debates, which have
since been made, filling volumes. He was peculiar in his manner of
stating his conclusions, seldom revealing the processes by which he
arrived at them. He sets forth strange and disputed doctrines as if they
were truisms. Those who have studied "The Prince" for the purpose of
understanding its construction will not think us fanciful when we find a
resemblance between Jefferson's mode of argumentation and that of
Machiavelli. There is the same mann