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 is sufficiently exact for our purpose; and we may term the former of the two classes we have referred to Observational, and the latter Speculative Metaphysicians.

Leibnitz is the type, in modern times, of an abstract thinker of the purely speculative school. It is curious to trace the connexion between the secluded and seemingly ineffective study of what Bacon calls the philosophia prima, in the form in which it appears in this school, and the great external and social changes in the world. The "Advancement of the Sciences" is obviously connected with the astronomy of Newton and Herschel. The "Wealth of Nations" is an acknowledged cause of many recent alterations in modern society. The "Essay on Human Understanding" has plainly influenced the subsequent current of British thought. Not less surely, though less obviously, has the more purely speculative philosophy of that school, in which Leibnitz is one of the most illustrious names, been connected, for good and evil, with important modifications of those minds by which public opinion must be formed. The intimate relation between the labours of men of this class, and that meditative style of Christianity which is displayed in the writings of some of the great names in the Christian Church, is also manifest. The influence of Idealism and the higher Metaphysics as operative forces in society, becomes more apparent when we observe how efficacious their spirit has been to neutralize a vulgar sensationalism.

The study of the systems of Philosophy in all their variety, and of the lives and labours of various philosophers, is to be encouraged for many reasons. It