The limited nature of my
education in general, and more especially my ignorance on subjects
connected with natural philosophy, so far from rendering me
diffident of my own ability to comprehend what I had read, or inducing
me to mistrust the many vague notions which had arisen in consequence,
merely served as a farther stimulus to imagination; and I was vain
enough, or perhaps reasonable enough, to doubt whether those crude
ideas which, arising in ill-regulated minds, have all the
appearance, may not often in effect possess all the force, the
reality, and other inherent properties, of instinct or intuition;
whether, to proceed a step farther, profundity itself might not, in
matters of a purely speculative nature, be detected as a legitimate
source of falsity and error. In other words, I believed, and still
do believe, that truth, is frequently of its own essence, superficial,
and that, in many cases, the depth lies more in the abysses where we
seek her, than in the actual situations wherein she may be found.
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