O youthful reader! (for such _The Friend_ dares anticipate), thou, that in my mind's eye, standest beside me, like my own youth! Fresh and keen as the morning Hunter in the pursuit of Truth, glad and restless in the feeling of mental growth! O learn early, that if the Head be the Light of the Heart, the Heart is the Life of the Head: yea, that Consciousness itself, that Consciousness of which all reasoning is the varied modification, is but the Reflex of the Conscience when most luminous; and too often a fatuous vapour, a warmthless bewildering mockery of Light, exhaled from its corruption or stagnation. Mark the inevitable result of all _consequent_ reasoning, when the intellect refuses to acknowledge a higher and deeper ground than itself can supply, and weens to possess within itself the centre of its own system! From Zeno the Eleatic to Spinoza, and from Spinoza to Schelling, Oken, and the German "_Natur-philosophen_" of the present day, the Result has been, and ever must be, PANTHEISM, under some one or other of its modes or disguises: and it is of awful importance to the speculative Inquirer to be aware, that the seemliest of these modes differs from the most repulsive, not in its consequences, which in all alike are Atheistic, but only as far as it evinces the efforts of the individual to hide these consequences from his own consciousness.
This, then, I again repeat, is our ultimate conclusion. All _speculative_ disquisition must begin with _Postulates_, authorised and substantiated by the conscience exclusively. From whatever point the reason may start, whether from the _Things that are seen_ to the One Invisible, or from the idea of the ABSOLUTE ONE to the _things that are seen_, it will in either case find a chasm, which the moral being, the _spirit_ and the _religion_ of man, can alone fill up or overbridge. "THE LIFE IS THE LIGHT OF MAN:" and "WE LIVE BY FAITH."
May I venture to obtrude on you what I cannot intrust to a messenger, much less to the post. Sackville-street is not I hope more than fifteen or twenty minutes' walk from your house. It is to inquire if Mr. Caldwell is _in town_; if he be, then to leave the letter, and that is all; but if not, to learn whether he is at his living, and if so, then to transfer his present address to the letter, and put it into the nearest General Post Office box. It is of serious importance to Derwent that the inclosed should reach Mr. Caldwell with as little delay as possible, or I need not say that I should not have taxed your time and kindness merely to make a letter-carrier of you.