that certainty. It may be, or it may not be, that there are some who already hold our views, and many who are prepared for them, and needing them. It is no part of our business to calculate or conjecture the reception that our correspondence is likely to meet with. The one of us has earned, and the other has received, some knowledge, and both of us have thence come to entertain views which we value ; and the first duty belonging to the privilege is to impart what we believe to be true.

It will at once occur to every considerate reader, that to establish by evidence and argument the facts and conclusions contained in these Letters would require many volumes. If we put out only one, its contents must be merely expository; and such, and nothing more, is the character of this volume. It has neither the compass, nor the order, nor the relative proportion, of a treatise. I believe that it has substance and connection enough to make it of value in its actual shape. Such as it is, we send it forth in the hope that we shall be corrected where we are wrong, enlightened where we are dim or blind, and sympathized with by those who estimate truth and freedom as we do.

AMBLESIDE,
November, 1850.

HARRIET MARTINEAU.

MOTTOES.

"To generate and superinduce a new nature, or new natures, upon a given body, is the labour and aim of human power: whilst to discover the form or true difference of a given nature, or the nature to which such nature is owing, or source from which it emanates (for these terms approach nearest to an explanation of our meaning), is the labour and discovery of human knowledge.”—Bacon: Novum Organon, A. 1, Book 2nd.

"It is our office, as faithful secretaries, to receive and note down such (laws) as have been enacted by the voice of Nature herself and our trustiness must stand acquitted, whether they are accepted, or by the suffrage of general opinion rejected. Still, we do not abandon the hope that in times yet to come, individuals may arise who will both be able to comprehend and digest the choicest of those things; and solicitous also to carry them to perfection."-Bacon: Anticipations of the Second Philosophy.

"The true end, scope, or office of knowledge, I have set down to consist not in any plausible, delectable, reverend, or admired discourse, or any satisfactory arguments, but in effecting and working, and in discovery of particulars not re

vealed before, for the better endowment and help of Man's life."-Bacon: Interpretation of Nature.

"Concerning the publication of novel facts, there can be but one judgment; for facts are independent of fashion, taste and caprice, and are subject to no code of criticism. They are more useful, perhaps, even when they contradict, than when they support, received doctrines; for our theories are only imperfect approximations to the real knowledge of things."-Sir H. Davy.

"The state of the speculative faculties, the character of the propositions assented to, essentially determines the moral and political state of the community, as we have already seen that it determines the physical. Every considerable change historically known to us in the condition of any portion of mankind, has been preceded by a change of proportional extent in the state of their knowledge, or in their prevalent beliefs."-Mill: System of Logic.

"The deep philosopher sees chains of causes and effects so wonderfully and strangely linked together, that he is usually the last person to decide upon the impossibility of any two series of events being independent of each other; and in Science, so many natural miracles, as it were, have been brought to light,. . . . that the physical inquirer is seldom disposed to assert, confidently, on any abstruse subjects belonging to the order of natural things; and still less so, on those relating to the more mysterious relations of moral events and intellectual natures."-Sir H. Davy: On Omens.

"The Ancients, whose genius was less limited, and whose philosophy was more extended, wondered less than we do at facts which they could not explain. They had a better view of Nature, such as she is: a sympathy, a singular correspondence, was to them only a phenomenon, while to us it is a paradox, when we cannot refer it to our pretended laws of motion."-Buffon.

"It does not become the spirit which characterises the present age, distrustfully to reject every generalization of views, and every attempt to examine into the nature of things, by the process of reason and induction."-Humboldt: Introduction to Cosmos.

"With regard to authority, it is the greatest weakness to attribute infinite credit to particular authors, and to refuse his own prerogative to Time, the author of all authors, and, therefore, of all authority. It is not wonderful, therefore, if the bonds of antiquity, authority, and unanimity have so enchained the power of Man, that he is unable (as if bewitched) to become familiar with things themselves."-Bacon: Nov. Org., Aph. 84.

"Moreover, in these mixtures of divinity and philosophy, the received doctrines only of the latter are included; and any novelty, even though it be an improvement, scarcely escapes banishment and extermination.”—Bacon : Nov. Org., Aph. 89.

"For if they mean that the ignorance of a second cause doth make men more devoutly to depend upon the Providence of God, as supposing the effect to come immediately from his hand, I demand of them, as Job demanded of his friends, Will you lie for God, as man will for man, to gratify him?""-Bacon: Interpretation of Nature.

"It is to Philo Judæus that we owe the doctrine that nothing can subsist without certain properties. It is only the metaphysical theologians that have embraced the error that all activity and all action is owing to a spiritual being, and that inertia is the essence of matter."-Gall.

In regard to Astronomy, "Almost all its conclusions stand in open and striking contradiction with those of superficial

and vulgar observation, and with what appears to every one, till he has understood and weighed the proofs to the contrary, the most positive evidence of his senses."-Sir John Herschel.

"The opinions of men are received according to the ancient belief, and upon trust, as if it were religion and law." "Another religion, other witnesses, and like promises and threats, might by the same way imprint a quite contrary belief."-Montaigne.

"Is our faith on the sand or on a rock? bear touching?"—Archbishop of Dublin.

Is it too brittle to 1850.

"Hobbes mentions the true revelation; but clearly shows he does not believe it. Hallam considers him an Atheist. I have equal right to consider Bacon so. Descartes, Hallam says, professed a belief in the motion of the sun, to save himself with the priests. And Hobbes thinks Aristotle did not speak as he really thought. It is surely time all this lying and counterlying should be put a stop to, or a help be rendered to so worthy an end,—that men's minds may expand as freely as any other growth of nature. But in our time,— The honey is not for us, but to work the cell;-to work in faith and hope, in the love of truth, and for justice' sake. This is enough ;-enough for the strong. And for the weak, they should not leave their mother's side.”—Private Letter.

no.

"Add to the power of discovering truth, the desire of using it for the promotion of human happiness, and you have the great end and object of our existence. This is the immaculate model of excellence that every human being should fix in the chambers of his heart; which he should place before his mind's eye from the rising to the setting of the sun,-to strengthen his understanding that he may direct his benevolence, and to exhibit to the world the most beautiful spectacle the world can behold,-of consummate virtue guided by consummate talents."-Sydney Smith: Moral Philosophy, p. 94.