Page:Repository of Arts, Series 1, Volume 01, 1809, January-June.djvu/509



.

PREFACE TO THE INTELLECTUAL COMPASS. the present revolutionary and awful crisis of the moral world, the fable of Hercules and the carter should be strongly impressed upon the recollection and attention of mankind, in which Jupiter, when called upon for his aid to extricate man from misery, declared that he had given to man competent powers for every purpose of his existence, and directed the carter to put his shoulders to the wheel, and lift it from the rut of impediment.

Modern authors, in their progress of science beyond the ancients, have made a most momentous discovery of a fact, of whose nature and consequences they seem to have had but a very obscure glimpse, which is the important distinction between sense and science. Pope says,

Good sense, the precious, fairest gift of Heaven,

Tho’ no one science, fairly worth the seven.

Young calls it the solar light of sense, which fructifies with its heat of genius; and the lunar light of science, which shines in borrowed effulgence, without fructifying heat.

Many of the French authors take notice of the same important distinction of the bel eprit from bon esprit; but none of these have suggested any character of the distinction, or any of the momentous consequences to be drawn from it.

Reflecting upon the above circumstances, it occurred to my thoughts, that man had stopped short in the developement [sic] of his intellectual powers, and resembled nearly the Sow state of the developement [sic] of his physical powers, as when creeping on all fours like the brute; and if Jupiter in the fable was now to command him to use his understanding to extricate himself from the present awful moral catastrophe, he would be as  ''Sup. Vol. I.'' H