taught with the ancient documents before them, and at length delivered judgment in the following terms:—
"The matters to which the implicated doctrines relate are confessedly not comprehensible, or very imperfectly comprehensible, by the human understanding; the province of reasoning as applied to them is therefore very limited, and the terms employed have not, and cannot have, that precision of meaning which the character of the argument demands;—therefore, the defendant is at liberty to maintain that the habits of the unknown people are aquatic, for though the books nowhere say they are, it is equally certain that they nowhere say they are not."
This judgment created quite a consternation among the conservative party, and did not please the innovators, who half expected that their novel views would have been authoritatively declared to be the only sound ones, the only ones in consonance at once with the ancient books and with the spirit of the age. The general dissatisfaction that prevailed after the declaration of this judgment convinced me that the professors did not value the perfect liberty accorded to them of teaching their own views unless it were accompanied by the right to impose them on their neighbours.
One remarkable feature about transcendental geography is the opinion obstinately held by the professors and their most zealous partisans, that all the education of the country ought to be confided to the professors of transcendental geography only. Now, though the principles of this science are, if not exactly antagonistic, certainly extremely unlike any that regulate the exact and natural sciences, still these curious people hold
