enough to be despised) he has extracted from a chaos of casual
observations, detached hints--from the principles concealed in the
intricate system of Roman jurisprudence, or exposed in the rules which
barely held together the barbarous tribes of Gaul and Germany--from the
manners of the polished Athenian, and from the usages of the wandering
Tartar--from the rudeness of savage life, and the corruptions of refined
society--a digest of luminous and coherent evidence, by which the
condition of man, in the different stages of his social progress, is
exemplified and ascertained. The loss of the History of Louis XI.--a
work which he had projected, and of which he had traced the outline--is
a disappointment which the reader of modern history can never enough
deplore.

The province of science lies in truths that are universal and immutable;
that of prudence in second causes that are transient and subordinate.
What is universally true is alone necessarily true--the knowledge that
rests in particulars must be accidental. The theorist disdains
experience--the empiric rejects principle. The one is the pedant who
read Hannibal a lecture on the art of war; the other is the carrier who
knows the road between London and York better than Humboldt, but a new
road is prescribed to him and his knowledge becomes useless. This is
the state of mind La Fontaine has described so perfectly in his story of
the "Cierge."

"Un d'eux, voyant la brique au feu endurcie
Vaincre l'effort des ans, il eut la même envie;
Et nouvel Empédocle, aux flammes condamné
Par sa pure et propre folie,
Il se lança dédans--ce fût mal raisonné,
Le Cierge ne savait grain de philosophie."