There are some facts in the physical world which have a really
wonderful analogy with others in the world of thought, and seem thus
to give some color of truth to the (false) rhetorical dogma, that
metaphor or simile may be made to strengthen an argument, as well as
to embellish a description. The principle of the vis inertiae, for
example, with the amount of momentum proportionate with it and
consequent upon it, seems to be identical in physics and
metaphysics. It is not more true, in the former, that a large body
is with more difficulty set in motion than a smaller one, and that its
subsequent impetus is commensurate with this difficulty, than it is,
in the latter, that intellects of the vaster capacity, while more
forcible, more constant, and more extensive in their movements than
those of inferior grade, are yet the less readily moved, and are
more embarrassed and more full of hesitation in the first few steps of
their progress. While, therefore, it is not impossible, as we have
just said, that some slight mental aberration might have given rise to
the hesitancy and indefinitiveness of purpose which are so very
perceptible in the first pages of the volume before us, we are still
the more willing to believe these defects the result of the moral fact
just stated, since we find the work itself of an unusual order of
excellence, even when regarded as the production of the author of
"Nicholas Nickleby.
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