merely passive reception of images and ideas which
in that case are likely to pass out of the mind as soon as they have
entered it. Let him once gain this habit of method, of starting from fixed
points, of making his ground good as he goes, of distinguishing what he
knows from what he does not know, and I conceive he will be gradually
initiated into the largest and truest philosophical views, and will feel
nothing but impatience and disgust at the random theories and imposing
sophistries and dashing paradoxes, which carry away half-formed and
superficial intellects.

Such parti-coloured ingenuities are indeed one of the chief evils of the
day, and men of real talent are not slow to minister to them. An
intellectual man, as the world now conceives of him, is one who is full of
"views" on all subjects of philosophy, on all matters of the day. It is
almost thought a disgrace not to have a view at a moment's notice on any
question from the Personal Advent to the Cholera or Mesmerism. This is
owing in great measure to the necessities of periodical literature, now so
much in request. Every quarter of a year, every month, every day, there
must be a supply, for the gratification of the public, of new and luminous
theories on the subjects of religion, foreign politics, home politics,
civil economy, finance, trade, agriculture, emigration, and the colonies.
Slavery, the gold fields, German philosophy, the French Empire,
Wellington, Peel, Ireland, must all be practised on, day after day, by
what are called original thinkers. As the great man's guest must produce
his good stories or songs at the evening banquet, as the platform orator
exhibits his telling facts at mid-day, so the journalist lies under the
stern obligation of extemporizing his lucid views, leading ideas, and
nutshell truths for the breakfast table. The very nature of periodical
literature, broken into small wholes, and demanded punctually to an hour,
involves the habit of this extempore philosophy. "Almost all the
Ramblers," says Boswell of Johnson, "were written just as they were wanted
for the press; he sent a certain portion of the copy of an essay, and
wrote the remainder while the former part of it was printing." Few men
have the gifts of Johnson, who to great vigour and resource of intellect,
when it was fairly roused, united a rare common-sense and a conscientious
regard for veracity, which preserved him from flippancy or extravagance in
writing. Few men are