They may now and then, perhaps, have affected to examine it; but their examination has been merely formal, like that of a customs-house officer, who passes a portmanteau, which he has only opened.

They have been as tender with it as Don Quixote was with his mended helmet, when he would not put his card-paper vizor to the test of the steel sword.

I propose to supply this deficiency in their investigations.

I propose to apply exact thought to the only great subject to which it has not been applied already.
To numbers, as I have just said, this will of course seem useless.

They will think that the question never really was an open one; or that, if it ever were so, the common sense of mankind has long ago finally settled it.