ause you no little astonishment; yet they are not the
product of a sceptical caprice. I could lay before you the foundations
on which they rest, but this would require, as prelude, a somewhat dry
examination into the nature of human knowledge,--and I prefer to reserve
this for a time when you will feel the want of it. You have not yet
arrived at that state of mind when humiliating truths on the limits of
human knowledge can have any interest for you. Make a first essay with
the system which has supplanted your own in your mind. Examine it with
the same impartiality as severity. Proceed in the same manner with other
theories with which you have recently become acquainted; and if none of
them can fully satisfy your requirements, you will ask yourself if, after
all, these requirements are reasonable.

Perhaps you will tell me this is a poor consolation. You will infer that
resignation is your only refuge after so many brilliant hopes had been
raised. "Was it worth while," you will say, "to challenge me to a full
exercise of my reason in order to set bounds to it at the very moment
when it was beginning to bear the noblest fruit? Was I only to become
acquainted with a higher enjoyment in order to feel with a double
keenness how painful it is to be thus bounded?"

Nevertheless, it is this very feeling of discouragement that I expressly
wish to banish from your soul. My aim is this: to remove all that places
an obstacle to the free enjoyment of your being, to bring to life in you
the germ of all lofty inspiration--the consciousness of the nobility of
your soul. You have been awakened from the slumber in which you were
rocked by the slavery of others' opinions; but you would never reach the
degree of grandeur to which you are called if you dissipated your
strength in the pursuit of an unattainable end. This course was all
proper up to the present time; it was the natural consequence of your
recently acquired freedom. It was necessary that the ideas which had
most engaged you previously should give the first impulse to the activity
of your mind.. Among all possible directions that your mind could take,
is its present course the most fertile in results? The answer would be
given, sooner or later, by your own experience. My part was confined to
hastening, if possible, this crisis.

It is a common prejudice to take as a measure of the greatness of man
that matter on which he works, and not the manner of his work. But it is
certa