Of my country and of my family I have little to say. Ill usage
and length of years have driven me from the one, and estranged me
from the other. Hereditary wealth afforded me an education of no
common order, and a contemplative turn of mind enabled me to
methodize the stores which early study very diligently garnered
up.—Beyond all things, the study of the German moralists gave me
great delight; not from any ill-advised admiration of their
eloquent madness, but from the ease with which my habits of rigid
thought enabled me to detect their falsities. I have often been
reproached with the aridity of my genius; a deficiency of
imagination has been imputed to me as a crime; and the Pyrrhonism
of my opinions has at all times rendered me notorious. Indeed, a
strong relish for physical philosophy has, I fear, tinctured my
mind with a very common error of this age—I mean the habit of
referring occurrences, even the least susceptible of such
