read Chrysostom for his recreation, is full of
history, runs over with statistics right and left, and withal is
strong in mother-wit. But the mother-wit proves not strong enough,
perhaps, to push forth and show itself over the ponderous debris above
it, the enormousness, or, if you please, the enormity of his
knowledge.

"It requires a first-class mind to carry a vast load of scientific
facts. Hence the many eminent observers who have been the most
illogical of reasoners. What a contrast between Hugh Miller and his
friend Francia; the mind of the latter, as Miller describes it, 'a
labyrinth without a clew, in whose recesses was a vast amount of
book-knowledge that never could be used, and was of no use to himself
or any one else;' the former wielding all his stores as he swung his
sledge. What is wanted is the comprehensive hand, and not the
prehensile tail.

"Involved in such an equipoise is the decisiveness, the willforce,
that not only holds, but holds the balance. Common as it may be, it is
none the less pitiable to be just acute enough constantly to question,
but not to answer--forever to raise difficulties, and never to solve
them. Wakeful, but the wakefulness of weakliness. Fine-strung minds
are they often, acquisitive, subtle, and sensitive, able to look all
around their labyrinth and see far into darkness, but not out to the
light. It is by nature rather a German than an Anglo-Saxon habit. It
is not always fatal even there. De Wette, 'the veteran doubter,'
rallied at the last, and, like Bunyan's Feeble-mind, went over almost
shouting. In this country, youth often have it somewhat later than the
measles and the small-pox, and come through very well, without even a
pock-mark. Sometimes it becomes epidemic, and assumes a languid or
typhoidal cast,--not Positivism, but Agnosticism. It is rather
fashionable to eulogize perplexity and doubt as a mark of strength and
genius. But whatever may be the passing fashion, the collective
judgment of the ages has settled it that the permanent state of mental
hesitancy and indecision, in whatever sphere of thought and action, is
and must be a false condition. It indicates the scrofulous diathesis,
and calls for more iron in the blood. It is a lower type of manhood.
It abdicates the province of a human intelligence, which is to seek
and find truth. It abrogates the moral obligation to prove all things,
and hold fast that which is good. It revolts from the great problem of
lif