in human nature
is truly noble, however fruitless. But it is not altogether fruitless.
Though the intellectual world has really come no nearer the object
of its search, it has advanced far beyond its starting-point, and
made valuable progress, which a lower motive could never have
prompted. The wisest of mean men, as he was the meanest of wise ones,
did very well to check the metaphysical modes and tendencies of
human study, and advise the previous comprehension of facts within
reach. This worldly wisdom has already made us all wonderfully rich
in the chariots and horses of thought. The consequence is, we now
rush forth into the infinite in various directions, and, from
inconceivable distances of time and space, bring home marvels that
are truly sublime.

Mr. Ewbank's "Suggestions" are of this sort, though the turn-out
with which he has been exploring the boundless is not, perhaps,
quite up to the latest improvements in the Baconian carriage-factory,
There can be no doubt of the boldness with which his really modest
and unpretending little book grapples with the largest of all
subjects, whatever we may think of its success. Postulating, for the
purpose of his cosmogony, two, and only two, absolute entities,
--matter and spirit,--Mr. Ewbank makes force a property or attribute
of the former, which the latter can only direct or make use of, not
originate. He does not admit that spirit can overcome the inertia of
matter. Whatever inertia may be, it is superable or destructible only
by the force or motion of matter itself,--matter being incapable of
rest. "Instead of matter being innately inert," says Mr. Ewbank,
"as many think, motion is its natural condition." How the spiritual
direction--or shall we call it _bossing_?--of motion or force
(which only, according to Mr. Ewbank, produces results) applies
itself,--what is its _point d'appui_, its mode of modifying, its
why of causing,--he does not attempt to explain to us. He recognizes
the universal gravitating or contractile force, from which, as
successive sequences, proceed heat and expansion; but he does not
suggest that spirit has any more to do with the first than with any
succeeding term in the series. It exerts no force, moves nothing;
yet spirit produces all the results. "No regular or useful form,"
says our author, "can be produced by unbridled force. Intelligence
must be present." So it is the business of the spirit to bridle force,
--or matter's motion,--mount