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when the mind passes on from mere formal action upon its body's wants to self-inspection, it discovers its imperfection as a merely fragmentary intelligence; it discovers itself as God in chains; and thenceforth the world seems darkened while it struggles to be free. This discovery awakens discontent, ambition, and metaphysical hope and fear : and although this knowledge is in truth an advance over man's former position, yet inasmuch as man hereby discovers that which is the occasion of all intellectual discontent, the advance has been counted to his disadvantage, and called a Fall, and a Curse.

It is one of the oldest theories in the world, that man was pure and happy as a brute, and that he fell by reason of forbidden knowledge. Afterward came the theory that through vice, error and misery, he should grow to perfect purity and happiness, through knowledge itself.

We read of human progress until man shall attain a perfect being. This we cannot understand. Shall he who knows little ever know all? Shall the finite comprehend the infinite?—a part the whole? As long as one secret lies beyond us, that secret is the key of the universe, and hangs at the girdle of the Almighty. We read of perfect being as a man, though not as God. This also we cannot understand. Is a fragment perfect, though it fit the block it fell from? Though man be a portion of a perfect system, filling his place perfectly, yet what is man? In those attributes which are his chief distinguishments—the powers of apprehension and will, he is of necessity imperfect, by any ideal standard of perfection. And

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