Page:An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798).djvu/410

 or a Shakespear, or even by a Socrates, a Plato, an Aristotle, or a Homer.

If a revelation from heaven, of which no person could feel the smallest doubt, were to dispel the mists that now hang over metaphysical subjects; were to explain the nature and structure of mind, the affections and essences of all substances, the mode in which the Supreme Being operates in the works of the creation, and the whole plan and scheme of the Universe; such an accession of knowledge, so obtained, instead of giving additional vigour and activity to the human mind, would, in all probability, tend to repress future exertion, and to damp the soaring wings of intellect.

For this reason I have never considered the doubts and difficulties that