e precepts of knowledge it is
difficult to extricate from error but, once discovered, they gradually
pass into maxims; and thus what the sage's life was consumed in
acquiring becomes the acquisition of a moment to posterity. Knowledge
is like the atmosphere: in order to dispel the vapour and dislodge
the frost, our ancestors felled the forest, drained the marsh, and
cultivated the waste, and we now breathe without an effort, in the
purified air and the chastened climate, the result of the labour of
generations and the progress of ages! As to-day, the common mechanic may
equal in science, however inferior in genius, the friar [Roger Bacon]
whom his contemporaries feared as a magician, so the opinions which now
startle as well as astonish may be received hereafter as acknowledged
axioms, and pass into ordinary practice. We cannot even tell how far
the sanguine theories of certain philosophers [See Condorcet "On the
Progress of the Human Mind," written some years after the supposed date
of this conversation, but in which there is a slight, but eloquent and
affecting, view of the philosophy to which Mordaunt refers.] deceive
them when they anticipate, for future ages, a knowledge which shall
bring perfection to the mind, baffle the diseases of the body, and even
protract to a date now utterly unknown the final destination of life:
for Wisdom is a palace of which only the vestibule has been entered;
nor can we guess what treasures are hid in those chambers of which the
experience of the past can afford us neither analogy nor clew."

"It was, then," said Clarence, who wished to draw his companion into
speaking of himself, "it was, then, from your addiction to studies not
ordinarily made the subject of acquisition that you date (pardon me)
your generosity, your devotedness, your feeling for others, and your
indifference to self?"

"You flatter me," said Mordaunt, modestly (and we may be permitted to
crave attention to his reply, since it unfolds the secret springs of
a character so singularly good and pure), "you flatter me: but I will
answer you as if you had put the question without the compliment; nor,
perhaps, will it be wholly uninstructive, as it will certainly be new,
to sketch, without recurrence to events or what I may call exterior
facts, a brief and progressive History of One Human Mind."

"Our first era of life is under the influence of the primitive feelings:
we are pleased, and we laugh; hurt, and we weep: we v