a void within himself. It was his
favourite resource against the visits of ennui, to catch spiders and
teach them to fight; and when he had so far made himself master of the
nature of these animals, that he could get them as angry as game cocks,
he would, all thin and feeble as he was, break out into a roar of
laughter, and chuckle to see his champions engage, as if they, too, were
fighting for honour.

Poor Spinoza! It may indeed be questioned, whether his whole philosophy
was not a sort of pastime with him. It may be, that after all he was
ingenious because he could not be quiet, and wrote his attacks on
religion from a want of something to do. At any rate it has fared
strangely with his works. The world had well nigh become persuaded, that
Spinoza was but a name for a degraded atheism, and now we have him
zealously defended, and in fact we have seen him denominated a saint.[5]
So near are extremes: the ridiculous borders on the sublime; and the
same man is denounced as a parricide of society, and again extolled as a
model of sanctity.

But we have a stronger example than either of these. The very
philosopher, who first declared experience to be the basis of knowledge,
and found his way to truth through the safe places of observation, gives
in his own character some evidences of participation in the common
infirmity. He said very truly, that there is a foolish corner even in
the wise man's brain. Yet, if there has ever appeared on earth, a man
possessed of reason in its highest perfection, it was Aristotle. He had
the gift of seeing the forms of things, undisturbed by the confusing
splendour of colours; his mind, like the art of sculpture, represented
objects with the most precise outlines and exact images; but the world
in his mind was a colourless world. He understood and has explained the
secrets of the human heart, the workings of the human passions; but he
performs all these moral dissections with the coolness of an anatomist,
engaged in a delicate operation. The nicety of his distinctions, and his
deep insight into the nature of man, are displayed without passion,
while his constant effort after the discovery of new truth, never for
one moment betrays him into mysticism, or tempts him to substitute
shadows for realities. One would think, that such a philosopher was the
personification of self-possession; that his unruffled mind would always
dwell in the serene regions of intelligence; that his step would be on