Page:Passages from the Life of a Philosopher.djvu/502

486 whatever success I may have had. Probably a still more important element was the intimate conviction I possessed that the highest object a reasonable being could pursue was to endeavour to discover those laws of mind by which man's intellect passes from the known to the discovery of the unknown.

This feeling was ever present to my own mind, and I endeavoured to trace its principle in the minds of all around me, as well as in the works of my predecessors.