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the human mind itself, we shall soon find reason to humble our pride, and check our boastings. Man's innate, intellectual capacities, have not increased to that degree that his works would seem to imply, and at last we are led to the conclusion, that all the boasted improvements of the present time, are little more than the aggregate, and necessary results of former discoveries. The mind still gropes in metaphysical darkness, and becomes an easy prey to delusions. Man himself is an enigma which he can never fully understand. Ushered into life, he looks around him and beholds much to admire, yet little that he can comprehend. Himself a mere atom in the universe—confined to a single point—shut in on all sides—every where surrounded by high impervious walls—endowed with a brief existence, and limited intellectual capacities, and yet possessing an insatiable thirst for knowledge; the mind like a caged bird, is ever striving to break through the barriers that are placed around it, and to expand its wings in boundless intelligence. A strong desire to peep through the meshes of that veil, which hides everything future from mortal ken, has always everywhere existed, and led to numerous devices for the attainment of that great object. Not satisfied with the light of Revelation, nature has been put upon the rack to make her disclose her arcana. Dreams and visions, the flight of birds and the motions of animals, and the ever varying phenomena, of the natural world, have all been regarded as exponents of future events. From evening till morning, night after night, and year after year, the devoted Egyptians gazed upon the Heavens, and watched the stars. Upon that cerulean scroll astrology thought to find inscrib-
