/ '--^t C^' -u 'V MIND FROM CONSCIOUSNESS. EMPIEICAL PSYCHOLOGY; OB, THE HUMAN MIND AS GIVEN IN CONSCIOUSNESS. FOR THE USE OF COLLEGES AND ACADEMIES. Bt LAURENS P/HICKOK, D.D., UNIOK COLLEGE. AUTHOR OP RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY, MORAL SCIENCE, ETC. IVISON, BLAKEMAN, TAYLOR, & COMPANY NEW YORK AND CHICAGO. , tll\^^ ■ntcred, according to Act of Congress, to the year 185v BY LAUEEN8 P. HICKOK, li tkc Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Nortliern Dlstrtijl New York. o PREFACE. "»♦» It is the design, in the present work, to represent the human mind as it stands in the clear light of conscious- nese. We gc to our own inward experience to find the facts, both of the single mental phenomena and of their connection with each other. An Empirical Philosophy is here alone attempted, and in which we can not proceed according to the order of a pure science. The necessary and universal Ideas, which must determine all mental activity in every capacity, in order that these capacities may become iutelligible to us in their conditional laws of operation, are not now first assumed, and then carried forward to a completed system by a rigid a priori analy- sis and deduction in pure thought. Such a work haa already been accomplished in a thoroughly Rational Psy- chology. The subjective Idea which must condition and expound all Intelligence has been attained, and then the objective Law which controls all the facts of an acting Tl PBEF AOB. Intelligence has been determined to be in exact accoid- ance. But in this work we wait upon experience alto- gether. We use no fact, and no combination of facta, except as they have already been attained in the common consciousness of humanity. It is rather a description of the human mind than a philosophy of it; a psycography rather than a psychology ; and should not assume for itself the prerogatives of an exact science. Still, with this renunciation of all claim to a pure science, the attempt has been made to find the human mind as it is, and all its leading facts as they combine to make a complete whole. The aim has been to present all the constituent parts in the light of their reciprocal adaptations to each other, and to show how all depend upon each one, and that each one exists for all, and thus to give the mind through all its faculties as a living unity, complete and consistent in its own organized iden- tity. When a system is thus matured from conscious experience, having all the symmetry and unity of the acting reality, it may be known in a qualified sense, as a philosophy, and be termed a science of mind. It in a science, as Chemistry, Geology and Botany are sciences , the study of facts in their combinations as nature gived PBEFACE. Yt khem to uSj and thus teaching what is first learned bv careful observation and experiment. It assumes not to have found those conditioning principles, -which determine that the facts must have been so ; but it may and does from its own consciousness affirm, that the facts are so. Such a method of studying the human mind should precede that which is more purely philosophical, and thus more truly metaphysical, and is, perhaps, the only method to be attempted in an Academic or a Collegiate course. It is universally essential, as a portion of that applied discipline which is to prepare for vigorous and independent action in all public stations, and can not be dispensed with in any learned profession without detract- ing from both the utility and the dignity of the man. It equally applies to the full process of Female Education, and both adorns and refines while it also expands and strengthens. This empirical exercise, thus indispensable for every scholar, is also a preparative and incentive to the study of the higher Metaphysics in more advanced stages of philosophical enquiry. The present work has been written with the eye con- stantly on the class for whose study it is designed, and indeed mainly while the daily instruction with my own nil PREFACE. class was in progress, and the care has been to make it intelligible to any student of considerable maturity, who will resolutely and faithfully bring its statements to the test of his own clear consciousness. No instruction in Empirical Psychology can be given by mere verbal statement and definition, nor by attempted analogy and illustration. If the Teacher does not send the pupil to the fact as he has it in his own experience, there will be either an inadequate or an erroneous conception attained. The phenomenon within is unlike any phenomenon with- out, and all ingenious speculation and logical deduction will be empty and worthless without close and direct introspection. With such habits of investigation, it is fiilly believed that the following delineation of mental faculties and their operation will be readily apprehended, and consciously recognized as mainly conformed to the person's own inward experience. Union Collsge, 1854. CONTENTS. ■4 ♦ »■■ VA« INTKODUCTION. — ^The Difficulties and Tendencies to Ereor in the Study of Mind, . .13 ANTHEOPOLOGY.— The Connections of Mind and Body, 27 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY CHAPTER I.— General Method, 1. Attain facts. .... 2. Criterion for disputed facts, 3. Classification of facts, CHAPTER n.— General Facts op Mind, . 1. The existence of mind, . 2. Mind not phenomenal nor ideal, 3. Mind has perpetuated identity, 4. Mind is self-active, , 5. Distinguishes itself from its objects, CHAPTER III.— Primitive Facts of Mind, . 1. Sensation, .... 2. Consciousness, \ FIRST DIVISION. THE INTELLECT, CHAPTER I.— The Sense, .... Distinguishes and defines phenomena. SiCTioN I. — The External Sense, . Obaervaiion, . AUention, . Ill . 113 . 114 . 115 » 116 CONTENTS. Section II. — The Internal Sense, . Section IIL — The Fancy, CHAPTER IL— The Understanding, .... Connects qualities in substance, and events in cause. Logical connections and intellectual functions. Section I. — Memory, Section II, — Conception, Section III. — ^Association, Section IV. — Abstraction, Section Y. — Reflection, Section VI. — Judgment, Section VII- — Deduction, Section VIII. — Induction, Section IX. — Imagination, 123 126 , 121 CHAPTJm IIL— The Reason, . Afl&rms universal and necessary principles. Section I. — Modifies other Faculties, Section II. — Insight and Comprehension, Section III. — Ideals of Absolute Perfection, Section IV. — Genius, .... 132 134 136 140 141 142 147 149 152 155 159 165 169 173 SECOND DIVISION, THE SUSCEPTIBILITY, . . 176 Definitions. — Instinct, Appetite, Desire, Inclination, Propensity, Emotion, Passion, Obligation, AffectioiL CHAPTER I.— The Animal Susceptibility, Section I. — The Instincts, Section II. — The Appetites, . Section III. — The Natural Aflfections, Section IY. — Self-Interested Feelings, Section V. — Disinterested Feehngs, CHAPTER IL — The Rational Susceptibility, Section I. — Esthetic Emotions, . 185 187 189 191 193 197 200 201 C O i^ IBNTS. * PAoa Section II. — Scientific Emotions, . . 204 Section III.— Ethic Emotions, , . 207 Section IY. — Theistic Emotions, . . . 216 CHAPTER in. — The Spiritual Susceptibility, . . 220 Section I. — Induced in a state of will, . . . 222 Section II. — Varieties of spiritual sentiment, 226 Section III. — In what manner responsible, . . 233 THIRD DIVISION. THE WILL, 236 General Observations. CHAPTER I. — Complete Conception op the Will, . . 241 Section I. — ^Yarious Conceptions, . . . 242 Section II. — The true Conception, . . . 252 CHAPTER IL— Man has this Capacity of Will, . . 259 Argument I. — Conscious Responsibility, . . . 260 Argument II. — Distinction ofBrute and Human Will, 261 Argument III. — Man discriminates his own, . .263 Argument IY. — Reciprocal Complacency, . .265 Argument Y. — Man can resist Nature, . . .268 Argument YI. — Consciousness, . . . .270 CHAPTER in. — ^Acts op Will discriminated* from other Acts, 216 Section I. — From simple Spontaneity, . . . 276 Section IL — Erom the impulse of Appetite, . . 278 Section III. — From Desire, 280 Section IY. — ^From the Spiritual Affections, . 282 OflAPTER IY. — The Classification of the Acts of the Will, . . 284 Section I. — Immanent Preference, . . . 284 Section II. — Groverning Purpose, . . . .286 Section in.—Desultory Yohtion, . .289 Sn CONTENTS. FOURTH DIVISION. MIND COMPETENT TO ATTAIN ITS END, . 293 What the end of the human mind is; and that it is now lost. CHAPTER I. — The True CJon'ception of Powbb oq Ciuse, 300 Section L — Fallaxjious TheorieB, .... 305 Section II. — The true Conception, . . .313 Section III. — Classification of Vari^Uo*. . .316 CHAPTER IL— The Grounds of Certainty, . . .322 Section L — Negative of all Ground : Chance, Fate, 32' Section II. — ^Positive Ground : Necessity, . . 32"^ Section III. — Possible Ground : Contingency, , 3L^ Section IV. — Different Apphcations of Certainty, 338 CHAPTER nx — Natural and Moral Inability, . . . 342 Section I. — Natural Inability in Necessity, . . 344 Section II. — Moral Inability in Self-hindrance, . 350 Section III. — Cases where often confounded, . 359 CHAPTER lY. — The Human Mind as an Agent, . . 367 Section I. — ^Man acts as the Animal, . . . 368 Section II. — Man acta as Rational, . . .381 Section III. — As both Animal and Rational in one, 372 SEcfiON lY. — Objections to Liberty answered, . 378 CHi PTER Y. — The Competency and Impotexgy of the Human Mind, . . • . . 386 Section L — Man's Natural Competency to gain his end, 388 Section IL — ^Man's Moral Impotency to jain big end, ... 393 INTRODUCTION. PsiCHOLOOY is comprehensive of all the necessary prin- ciples and the developed facts of mind. The necessary principles determine the possibihtj of an intelligent agency, and reveal in the reason how mind must be con- stituted in order to any cognition of a nature of things as existing in space and time ; and is thus distinguished as Rational Psychology. The developed facts of mind are taken as they reveal themselves through an actual experience in consciousness, and when coinbhied in sys- tematic arrangement they give the specific science known as Empirical Psychology. It is this last only wliich comes within the field of present investigation. Empirical Psychology is thus inclusive of all mental facts which may come within human consciousness. The being of mind, mth all its faculties and their functions ; every phenomenon in its 0"\vn manifestaticn, and its law of connection with other phenomena ; all, indeed, about which an intelligent enquiry can be made in reference to mental existence and action, come within the province where this philosophy should make itself thoroughly and familiarly conversant. As an empirical science, it Ls demanded that all the facts be collected, and that they 14 INTRODUCTION. be orderly arranged according to their kno\yn connec- tions and dependencies. All that belongs to mind must have place, and each element its right place, in the system. Mental Philosophy has not thus, as yet, attained its consummation. All the facts of mind are not probably yet found ; many that have been attained are not clearly discriminated ; and what have been used have never appeared in any system with exact order and perfect harmony. Much more labor of observation, analysis and combination is to be expended on this field, before it can be said to be fully in possession, and all its parts com- pletely subjected to science. Peculiar difficulties and special hindrances lie in the way of mental investigation. The subject itself is for many reasons obscure, demand- ing the most patient and profound study. The most subtile analysis and the most comprehensive generaliza- tion are at times necessary, and in addition to the acute- ness of the perception and the intensity of the thinking which are called into requisition, there are various har bihties to error from certain sources of deceptive bias and delusive influence. These operate at the present as they have done in the past, and a preliminary exami- nation of them may best facihtate an entrance upon this investigation, and prepare the student the most effec- tually to resist all perverting tendencies, and attain the truth by holding the facts in a clear light and looking at them in the right direction. Among the m.ore prominent difficulties and sources of en'or, are — ^.Ai3lLITY TO EKROR. 15 1. The inverted method of tlie mind's operation in attahmig its facts. The elements for Empirical Psjchology are the facta of mind which come within every man's own experience. We may not assume what the facts are from any pre* sumption of what they should be, nor take them upon trust because others have said what and how they are ; we must find them mthin ourselves, and clearly appro- bend them in our own consciousness, or they may prove utterly false and thus wholly worthless. Others may have observed the same facts, and used them in their way in their philosophy, and their statement of them may direct our minds to them and greatly facilitate us in the attainment of them ; but their descriptions and assertions must not be allowed to stand valid, except through our own conscious apprehension and conviction. A fact, that has not been held in the clear hght of my own consciousness, can truly be no fact for my philoso* phy. All the facts I use must come within my cogni' tion, or I can make nothing but a borrowed science out of them. But, from its first conscious apprehension, the mind has been accustomed, in its agency, to turn its attention outwardly to the phenomena of nature, and gain its facta in the perception of the objects of an external world. It has steadied itself in its operations upon the organs of sensation, and thus long habit has made it to be easy and pleasant for the mind to increase its knowledge, in the attainment of new facts through sensible observation. The facts we now need lie in altogether another direction, 16 INTROUUCTION- and are to bo gathered from an entii-ely different field. The old habit of thro^nng the attention outwards is no^ CO be broken up, and an entu-e inversion of the mental action is to be practised. The mind is to make its o^vn phenomena its study, and tui'n the attention inward upon its o^Ti action. It is, as it were, to hold itself out to its own inspection, and turn itself round on all sides to its ovm observation. This position of the mind is alw^ays afc fii-st difficult to assume, and the perpetual counteraction of its wonted course is ever, in the begiiming, painful to sustain. The effort, steadily to look in tliis miaccustomed dh-ection, induces a weariness that destroys the capacity for clear perception and patient investigation. Repeated attempts, and decided and perpetuated effort, which shall ultimately habituate the mind to give this intro-version to itcs attention, can alone secure that there shall be any deep interest and delight in this order of mental opera- tion. A fixed and prolonged observation and examina- tion of the phenomena of the inner mental world is, on this account, the agreeable and chosen employment of comparatively very few minds, probably less than one in a thousand in our more enhghtened communities. The perpetual tendency from this is to induce impar tience and haste in the induction of mental facts, and to leave the whole pliilosophy of mind to a supei-ficial exami- nation. The assertions of one, hastily made, are taken ^Vupon trust by others ; specious appearances are care- \ lessly assumed to be veritable reahties ; complex opera >'*' tions are hft unanalyzed, and erroneous conclusions drawn from partial inductions ; and then the whole u LIABILITY TO ERROR. 17 put togetlier through the connections of mere casual or fancied resemblances ; often even mingling contradic- tions and absurdities in the system ; thus making the result to be a spurious and worthless philosophy. Cer- tainly many doctrines, which falsify the very distinctions between mind and matter, and the grounds of all respon- sibility, and the order of discipline and culture, are left tc spread themselves among the people, and influence opuiion and practice, solely because the common mind is unaccustomed to accurately note the daily experiences in its own. consciousness. This difficulty is to be overcome, and the habihty to error thereby avoided, only by a resolute perseverance in overcoming the old habit, and learning the method of readily reading the lessons from our own inward experi- ence. The organs of sense must be shut up, and the material world shut out, and the mind for the time shut in upon itself, and made to become familiar with its own action. The man must learn to commune with himself; to study himself; to know himself; to hve amid the phe- nomena of his own spiritual being. When this habit of intro-spection has been gained, the investigation of men- tal facts becomes not only possible, but facile and delightful. It should not be anticipated by any student, that this difficulty will be overcome without rigid and persevering self-discipline; nor that any satisfactory pro- gress will be made in mental science, until this difficulty IS thus surmounted ; but all may be assured that the narrow way may be passed into spacious and pleasant 2* 18 INTRODUCTION. fields of truth, bj fixing a maiily resolution, and persist- ing a while in its execution. 2. Tlie ambiguity of language. Language is the outer body of thought. Words, with- Dut thouglit, are empty ; and thought, without words, is helpless. The common speech is thus the outer expres- sion of the common thoughts of mankind. Philosophy attains the necessary principles, and determines the rules for the grammatical construction of language ; but philo- sophy does not make nor change language. The working of the human mind within determmes for itself its own outer expression, and, as an inner spirit and life, builds up its o^vn body, and gives to it a forai accorduig to the inherent law of its own activity ) But the great mass of mankind are conversant mainly Iwith the objects of the sensible world. They think, and thus speak, of little else than those phenomena which meet them face to face through the organs of sense. Daily experience fixes their habits and limits their men- tal action, while few only turn their minds in upon them- selves, and think and speak of the facts of their spiritual being. The common language of mankind is thus only an expression of what they find in then* daily experience. When man begins to reflect, and philosophize concerning ! himself and nature around him, he needs a new language \ for his new thoughts ; but his first reflection and philoso- i phizing is about natural objects, and physical science occupies his study and opens the way to mental and metaphysical investigations. His philosophical terms ] *re such still as give expression to his reflections upon LIABILITY TO ERROR. 19 nature, and his whole technical phraseology is readily referred, for its interpretation, to the outer objects of which it is the symbol, and thus gives little ambiguity, oi mistake and confusion in apprehending the thought. And when mathematical science is studied, the concep tions are pure numbers and diagrams, and can be con- stinicted as pure objects alike by all mathematicians, and thereby all mathematical language comes readily to pos- sess a definite meaning, and can at once be referred to its pure figure as an exposition of the thought, and pre- clude all possible obscurity in the apprehension. Physi- cal and Mathematical Sciences give Httle occasion for verbal ambiguities. But, in mental science, the case becomes quite difier- ent. The thought must have its word, and the science its philosophical phraseology ; but the thoughts, as ele- ments of mental science, are quite peculiar — even thought itself, and all the inner faculties and functions of a spiritual existence. The word, as symbol, cannot be explained by any reference to sensible objects, but must carry its meaning over to another mind, only by inducing the conception of the same mental fact in his own consciousness. All these distinct and; peculiar men- tal facts call for their expressive terms in language, and the science of mind cannot proceed until the words for mental phenomena are appropriated. To give to all these new thoughts entirely ncAv words, would be labori- ous in the invention and burdensome to the memory. The mind naturally and readily accommodates the Ian- , guage, alreadj- appropriated to sensible objects, in appli'l 20 INTRODUCTION. catioi^ also to these inner spiritual phenomena Where there was apprehended some striking analogy between the outer and the inner fact, the word for the outer was used also by accommodation of meaning for the inner, ind thus often the same word came to possess its two flieanings ; one in reference to the physical, and the Dther to the metaphysical world of thought. The mind, though wholly spiritual, unextended and illimitable by any of the forms of space, is thus said to he fixed or to tuander, to be dull or acute, narrow or comprehensive. The names for tangible quahties in nature are also trans- ferred to the intangible characteristics of the spirit, and the feelings of the human soul are said to be frigid or ardent, lax or intense; and the heart cold or warm, hard or tender ; and the will to be firm or iveak, stable or flexible; according to such supposed resemblances. The mind as well as matter has its inclinations and Impressions ; and many words taken from the outer come at length to have an almost exclusive apphcation to the inner ; as disposition, induction, conclitsion, abstraction, etc. Very many words in all languages have thus their primary and secondary significations ; and in the science of mind we are perpetually thrown back upon the analo- gies of matter. Ambiguous words and equivocal expres- sions repeatedly occur, and thus a constant liability ia induced to mistake and confound things which greatly differ. The thought is widely misapprehended, in the illusion from the two-faced symbol that conveys it. Sturdy controversies have been often mere logomachies j LIABILITY TO ERROR. 21 the philosophy alike, and only the phraseology differently apprehended. The errors from this source are to be avoided, not by excluding all such ambiguities, which will be wholly impracticable, but by universally bringing the fact within the light of consciousness. By whatever symbol the mental fact may be communicated, the conception must be known as that of some phenomenon within us, and not some quality from the world without us. The ana- logy must not be permitted to delude, but the fact itself must be found amid the conscious elements of our own mental experience. The truths we want in psychology are not to be sought in the heavens above, nor in the depth beneath ; but they are nigh us, even in our own being, and amid the hourly revealings of our own con- sciousness. 3. Inadequate conceptions of mental being and develr opment. The complete conception of a plant includes far more than its sensible phenomena of color, shape, size and motion ; or that of all its separate parts of stock, branches and leaves. It must especially include its vital force as an inner agency which develops itself in a pro- gressive and orderly growth to maturity. This is widely different from all conceptions of mechanical combinations, in which the structure is put together from the outside, according to some preconceived plan of arrangement. There is, both in the plant and the machine, the concept tion of some law of combination, and in this a rational idea which expounds each its own structure ; but in tha 22 INTRODUCTION plant it is that of an inner living law, spontaneously working out its organic development, while in the mechanism it is an artificial process for putting dead matter together. The former conception is far more difficult adequately to attain than the latter. The conception of animal life and development rises quite above that of the vegetable, and includes the super- added forces of an appetitive craving, an instinctive selection of its peculiar food, with the faculty of locomo- tion to bring itself to it ; and the capacity for masticar tion, digestion, assimilation and incorporation into its o^Ti substance, and thus a gi-owth in the whole system of the body and its members. Superior in degree^ in man, is the faculty of judging from sensible experience, and thus actmg from the dictates of prudence ; and tlie distinctive and far more elevated endowment in kind of rational faculty, in its artistic, philosophic^ ethic and reli- gious capacities, gives to him the prerogatives of action ' ^ m liberty and moral responsibility, thereby lifting him ^ from the bondage of all necessitated things into the "^^ sphere of pei-sonality. All this complexity of superin- duced faculties, from mere vital force up to rational being, has its complete organic unity, constituting but one existence in its own identity, and its own inner spirit works out a complete development of the whole, through all the manifestations of growth and mature activity. One life pervades the whole, and one law of being makes every part reciprocally subservient and accordant vfith all other parts. LIABILITY TO ERROR. 23 If then, an adequate conception of merely vegetable organism, as distinct from the combinations of mechan ism, be difficult to attain, how greatly is the difficulty augmented in attaining the fuU conception of humanity with all its included capacities and exalted prerogatives I From these inadequate conceptions of humanity, must necessarily originate very faulty systems of psychology. All resting in the analogies of mere mechanical combina- tions and movements must be widely erroneous ; and any failure clearly to discriminate between the animal and the rational, must necessarily fail in the attainment of a spiritual philosophy ; and any complete conception? of man's spirituality, which do not at the same time recognise the modification therein given from its combi- nation with the material and the animal, will also neces- ^ ,, sarily render the person incompetent to study and attain ^ the science of mind as it dwells in a tabernacle of flesh i^^K and blood. An exclusion, in fact, of any one of the superinduced powers and faculties in humanity, and their reciprocal dependencies and modifications, must so far vitiate the system of philosophy which is thus attempted to be constructed. Liabilities to error here are gi^eater than from all other sources. The only way to obviate these difficulties, and escape these liabilities to error, is by cultivating the intellect and elevating the conception to the essential spiritual .. being of the subject to be investigated. The use of any ^>^ mechanical analogies or animal resemblances must not ; be allowed to delude the mind, and induce the conclu-^^ sion that the rational and spiritual part of humanity can t24 INTRODUCTION. be at all adequately apprehended through any such media. The mind must be studied in the light of its own conscious operations, and the perpetual interactions * of the sense and the spirit, " the law in the members'"' and " the law of the mind," must be accurately observed, and while the philosophy thus knows to distinguish things that differ, it must also know to estimate the modifica ; tions which these different things make reciprocally upon each other. All material and animal being has a law imposed upon it, while all spiritual being has its law written within it ; the first moves wholly within the chain of necessity, the last has its action in Hberty and under inahenable responsibihty ; and all philosophy is falsely so called, which does not adequately discriminate between them. 4. The broad compreliension necessary to an accurate classification of mental facts. The mind is a unit in its existence, through all its ^ varied states of activity and all its successive stages of development. It is moreover a li\dng unity, growmg to maturity and maintaining the integrity of its organi- zation, by the perpetuated energy of one and the same N^ vital principle. When, then, we have attained all the -y single facts of mind wliich can be given in any experi- ^ ence, and know how to analyze every fact to its simple V elements, we have not yet completed our mental pliilo- S Bophy. The philosophy truly consists in the combina i; tion of all these discriminated facts into one complete -\ system. But there are very many ways in which a clas- '~ sification of the facts found may be made, and thus sya* LIABILITY TO EKKOK. 25 terns from the same facts may be as various as their varied combinations may admit. Merely casual rela- tionships may be taken, or even fancied or arbitrary connectioiis assumed, and made the principle by which the facts are brought into system ; or a blind imitation of another man's system may be followed, with no inde- pendent examination and determination of what tbe true order of classification may be. The liabilities to such faulty classifications find their source in the difficulty of attaining comprehensively wliat IS the living order of arrangement, as found in the mind itself. Single facts can much easier be found, than the right place for them in combination with all others. To put each fact in its own place* demands a knowledge of its relationship to all others, ana thus no classification of it can be known as correct, except through a know- ledge of all others with wdiich it must stand in connec- tion. The entire facts in the system must thus be knoA^Ti, each in its own control over others or dependency upon others, before they can be put together in any valid order of systematic arrangement. Such a comprehen- sive view is not readily attained. Few minds are will ing to take the labor necessary to reach such a stand- point, where they may overlook the whole field and accurately note every division and subdivision within it. Tlie several faculties and functions of mind are facts, as really as the phenomena which come out in their parti- cular exercises ; and the whole mind, Avith all these faculties, is itself a fact, to be accurately known in its completeness as really as any one faculty, or any one 8 26 rNTR0DUCTI05T. act of any faculty. The whole muid can le so known only by knowing all its component elements, and psycho- logy can be consummated only by sucli induction of every element, and such comjjlete combinatioii of them in a system, accordant with the comprehensive fact in the human mind itself; and only by such comprehensive knowledge can the liability to faulty systems in mental science be excluded. Thus forewarned of the difficulties in tlie prosecution of the study of mind, and the habilities to error thereby induced, the student is better prepared to enter upon the necessary investigations, and to guard against any delusive influences that may assail him. His task is to attain the facts of mind and classify them, exactly as they are found to be in the clear light of conscious experience. ANTHROPOLOGY. s -^^ THE CONNECTIONS OF MIND AND BODY. ( Mak holds within himself a combination of elements from the material, the animal, and the spiritual worlds ; and while he is to be studied as existing in his own unity, it must still be in the full apprehension of all this com- plexity of being. The material elements which enter into the composition of the human body are perpetually changing, and are themselves in reality no part of that ^ which is essentially the man ; and yet, ioth the animal ] and the rational in man are much modified, by the influ- ences which come in upon them through the body. The mind is the distinct subject for present investigation, but not mind as pure and disembodied. The psychology we attain must recognize, through all its facts, the existence of a rational spirit, which dwells in a tabernacle of flesh and blood. ) Physiology would contemplate man solely as living hody^ excluding all the pecuhar endowments and prero- gatives of a spiritual life ; and while the study of man in such a limited \\q^y would find facts of much interest, as bearing upon the welfare of his physical constitution, yet would they be only remotely subservient to the investi- gations of psychology. ^ 28 ANTirKO*c)LOG\ . Anthropology, on the other hand, contemplates raaii ai his entire being, physically, intellectually and morally ; recognizes the connections of mind with matter, and the influences of one upon the other ; and expounds the modifications which mind undergoes, from the action of the external world upon it through the body. The facts attained in such a science have an important bearing upon psychology, where mind is regarded in its own unity, and with all its different faculties and functions of operation relatively to itself. The mind itself, viewed exclusively in its own inherent relations, is not in human- ity as mind would be separately from all bodily connec- -^^j tions. The psj'chology of angels must differ much from that of man, inasmuch as pure spirit must exclude many facts which belong to an existence as incarnate spirit. Preliminary and auxiliary to the study of psychology is, thus, a summary recognition of some of the more promi- nent facts of antln'opology. We need to take mind and body as one li\dng organization, and learn the modifica- tions of the former which are made by its connections with the latter. Life is a spontaneous force, which collects its materials from the elements of surrounding nature, and assimilating them to its own uses, builds up thereby the organism of its own body. Matter is variously modified by mechan- ical, chemical and crystaline forces ; but in no way does it take on the forms of an organized existence, except as thus vitalized and constructed into a corporeal dwelling for some living spirit. The crj^stal may seem in many resnects but a little remove from the plant ; yet is tde CONNECTIONS OF MIND AND BODY. 29 former the same in quality through every part, and aa perfect in the smallest portion as in the whole ; while the latter has all its parts different from others, and no por- tion is in perfection without the whole. The crystal ia stUl dead matter, and has no organs which reciprocally exist for each other ; the plant is alive, and its root, stock, branches and leaves live each for the others, and all for each. In the plant we have the lowest forms of living organ- ization, and the life always working outwards to the sur- face. The growth of the stock and branches is on the outside, and every perpetuated bud successively develops itself only as a perpetual repetition of what has gone before it. A liigher force is superinduced upon vegetable life, and in this we have the animal, in Avhom every part grows simultaneously. The life is internal ; digestion and assimilation are carried on within the body ; and a sentient capacity enables the animal to feel itself and the outer objects which come in contact with itself. Through the appropriate organs of sensation, perception is effected ; and the faculty of locomotion is guided, and the power of selection directed to its objects. Every individual hfe has its own law of worldng, and builds up its own body after its own pre-conditioned Order. The forms are not in the matter, but already given in the vital force itself; and every plant, tree and animal, grows out after that shape wliich its own inhe- rent law has determined for it. External conditions may force modifications of the primitive form, but it is 8till easy to find the original pattern, after which tho B* 80 ANTHROPOLOGY. uuicr life is struggling to shape its corporeal being. The lite-force can only develop its own rudiments after ita own fonns, and can neither give to itself any new facul- ties, nor work after borrowed jiatterns. The conditions being supplied, each hidividual life Avorks out its own organic forms to maturity. It also prepares and perfects the spermatic germs for perpetuating the race ; separat- ing these from itself, and leaving them to begin anew, in their distinct identity, the same work of development accorduig to the old inlierited type of existence. Superinduced, again, upon the animal is the far higher force of a rational existence. The capacity for thought and hberty is given ; and the spiritual is imparted, that is to restrain and control the animal ; and m this we have the hmnan, with its intelligent and responsible agency. The man has his Ufe-force, with its OAvn abnor- mal type of being and development, as has the j^lant ; and the capacity for inward digestion, assimilation, and nutrition; for locomotion, perception, and selection, as has the animal ; but far above all these is liis spiritual endowment ; in which is rationahty, personality, and the responsibihties of an immortahty. Thus man is not merely hfe, Uke the vegetable ; but animal life : and not alone animal life, hke the brute ; but a spiritual hfe, wliich enthrones the rational upon the animal, aUying him to the angels, and putting on liim the likeness of the Divine. The one hfe, modified by all these superin- duced forces, each distmguishable from the othei-s, builds up for man his outer tabernacle from the dust, and develops all his mental facidties to their maturity, and CONNECTIONS OF MiND AND BODY. 3l thus presents us with that humanity which is the subject of our philosophy, and all the facts of which, m its purely mental relations, are to be combined in our psychology. The connections of mind Avith the body, and thus with the agencies of an external world, are mediately through the nerves, and their origin is in the brain and its elon- gation in the spinal-cord. These nerves, as they go off from the brain and vertebral-column, branch out to all the members, and over the whole body. They thus carry their communications each way, from the mind to the muscles, and from the outer world to the mind. These functions are performed by distinct fibres of the nerves ; those which communicate Avith the mind, from the outer world, are termed aff^erent, or sensation fibres ; and those that communicate from the mind, outward, arc termed efferent^ or motor fibres. Sometimes a fascicu- lus of nerves may form a plexus with another having quite a different origin, and an inosculation may thus occur, by which the powers of sensation or motion may be given to such nerves as had been before destitute of one or the other. A distinct system of nervous commu- nication is employed for the digestive and nutritive fi no- tions, and also for the respiratory operations. The com- munications of some are voluntary, others involuntary ; some are in consciousness, others in unconsciousness. A perpetually open medium of communication is thus given between the mind and body ; and, through the bodily organization, between the mind and the external world, rt is thus to be expected that the mind will itself be affected by its bodily connections, and in this respect it 32 ANT llllOPO LOGY. IS, that it has been said above, the promhieiit facts of aiithi-oi)ology have an important bearing upor psyclio- l'>gy. A few such may be given under the following heads : 1. Modlfieatims from external nature. Both plants and animals are greatly affected from the Burromidmg agents in external nature. The soil, tlie water, the air, the general chmatc, all modify the vege- table and the animal life, and give the peculiarities of then* locality to all living things Avithin tlie range of their influence. Some plants and animals are indigenous in certain re^ons, and may be cultivated as exotics over a wider territory, but beyond certain limits, no care can make either the plant or the brute perpetuate them- selves. The tropical, the temperate, and the frigid zones, all have their peculiar flora and famia, and the hmited adaptations of circumstances restrict many to a special locality. The cedar has its place on Lebanon, and the hysop, or the ivy, springr. out of the Avail. The rush does not grow without mire, nor the flag Avithout water. The camel traverses the desert, the Avild goat inhabits the mountain crag, and the pelican gathers its fish and feeds alone in the Avildemess. Man is far less restricted in his home, than any other living creature on the earth. Though less protected by nature, lie can yet feed and clothe himself, and so bend nature to his use, that he may live in any chrae, and people every isle and continent. The earth has but very hmited regions which man has not traversed, and few localities so inhos- pitable "here he may not make his home. But thougl* CONNECTIONS OF MIND AND BODY. 35 thus truly a cosmopolite, yet is man every where subject to changes from the external influences which act upon liim. The variations of climate and season, and even i sudden changes of the weather, often induce, in the'; same man, a wide difference of mental states ; and he is ' made energetic or enervated, feels elasticity or lassitudoj clieerfulncss or gloom, and passes through very varied ecaotions, by only passing through varied scenes and circumstances. So, moreover, the influence of food and dress, employment and society, indoor confinement or ! outward exposure, will very much modify his mental experience, and make the same man exhibit quite other physical and mental characteristics, by taking him out from the action of one, and putting him under the opera- tion of another regimen. Let any one of such influences, or a combination of several, operate long upon a man, and this will secure in j him fixed habits and traits of disposition ; and let this operate upon many men, and it ^yill assimilate them each to each, and give to them all, in comparison with others, the peculiarities of a class ; or, in broader limits it will secure the distmctive marks of national character. Such influences, from deeper and stronger sources in nature, operating upon some of the people in early ages, and jassing down in hereditary succession over long and widening generations, have divided4he one human family into several distinct races ; and given to such as are the prominent types of their race, a marked discrimination from others. Perpetuated external influences, and the Inherent law of propagation that ' like tends to the pro* •A ANT?UROPOLOGY. duciion of like, has kept these Imes of demarcation ((uite prominent, and the races shade ofif and run in to each other, only as the external influences become blended, or the amalgamation in the parents combine and assimi- late their peculiarities m their offsi)ring. The physical form and features, and the mental facts, are all diverse in this divei'sity of races amid the family of mankind. There has been little uniformity in the estimation cf the distinct races of mankind, some numbering more atid others fewer distinctions. If there be considered three races, whose type and characteristics differ exclusively of each other, and all other varieties be considered as a blending of these and their peculiarities as sub-typical only, and not indicative of distinct race, the most satisfac- tory account may be rendered. We shall then have the Caucasian, the Mongolian, and the Nigritian races, as distinctively marked types in our common humanity. There is, in the geography of Asia, two elevated pla- teaus, stretching from west to east quite across the con- tinent. The western commences in Turkey, and has the Caucasus on the north, and the Taurus and Kurdistan on the south, and passes on through Persia to the Indus, having the table-lands of Iran at its eastern extremity, and declining to the plams of the Tigris and Euphrates on the south, and of the Caspian and Bactriana, with the rivers of Sihon and Gihon on the north. Then com- mences a far more elevated table-land, having the Ilira- maleh on the south, and the Celestial and Altai moun- tains on the north, and stretching eastward to die sea of Ochotsk on the Pacific, descenduig to the great pemiiau- COiVNECTIONS OF MIND AND BODY. 36 lar plains of Hindoostan, farther India and Cliina on the south, and the frozen plains of Siberia on the north. This eastern Asiatic elevation contains Monj2:oha and Chinese Tartarj. If we call the first the Caucasian, and the second the Mongolian table-land, we shall have the cradles of the three races of mankind, and the names for two of the most distinguished and the most numerous. The Caucasian race is that of the most perfect type of hmnanitj, and may be said to have its center and most distinguished marks in Georgia and Circassia, and to be modified by distance and other circumstances in depart- ing from this geographical center. The peculiarity of the Caucasian type is that of general symmetry and regularity of outline. The head oval ; the lines of the eyes and the mouth dividing the whole face into three nearly equal parts ; the eyes large and their axis at right angles with the line of the nose, and the facial angle about 90 degrees, with a full beard covering quite to the ears. The complexion is white, and the stature tall, straight, and well proportioned. The Caucasian race can be followed through various migrations from the central home, as peopling south-Avestern Asia, northern Africa, and almost the whole of Europe. In south-western Asia, we have had the Semitic families of the Hebrews, Assy- riarvS and Arabians ; in Egypt and Mauritania, the Mitzraim stock ; and in Europe, the old Pelasgic tribe? of the Mediterranean, mth the successive Scythian irrup- tions ; the old Celtic, Teutonic and Gothic branches of southern Europe, and the Scandinavian and Sclavio tribes of the north of Europe. 86 ANTHROPOLOGY. The Mongol iaii race differs ^videly from the Cauca- Biaii, and is ([uitc inferior. Their home is in a more cokl, hard, and inhospitable region. The highest moun- tains in the world environ and run through this immense plateau of western Asia, covered at their tops Avith per- petual snow, and especially at the south, fencing off all the warm and moist gales of the Indian Ocean, and with only few and distant openings for any communication with the vales below on either side. The primitive type of the Mongolian is a triangular or pyramidal form of the head, with prominent cheek bones ; the eyes cramped, and standing far apart, with the outer corners greatly elevated ; the facial angle 80 degrees ; the nose small ; the hair coarse, black, and hanging lankly down ; with scanty beard, which never covers the face so high as the ears ; and a bronze or olive complexion. The expan- sions of this race have passed down and peopled the peninsulas of India and China on the south ; Tartary and Siberia on the north ; and have extended westward in the old Turcomans, the Magyar or Hungarian people, and the ancient Finns and Laps in the north-west corner of Europe : and to the north-east of Asia in the Yacon- tis, the Tschoudi, and the Kamtschatkadales. The Tar- tars once overrun and subjugated the Sclavic tribes in European Russia, but a combined resistance drove them to return to their own family in Asia. The Nigritian race, whicli in Central Africa becomes the full-typed Negro, has a less distinctly marked central origin. Circumstances, however, determine the region which must have been the cradle of this race. At quite CONNECTIONS OF MIND AND BODY. 37 the eastern portion of the Caucasian table-land, or per- haps in the valley of the Indus and at the foot of the Himmalehs must have been their origin. There are now black people in tliis region, and of a vholly different type from the Caucasian or Mono-olian. But the branchins off of the propagations from tliis stock, from this point, is tlie surest evidence. The characteristic marks of the Nigritian are a dull sallow skin, varying in all shades tf the earth." 40 ANTHROPOLOGY. Among animals, there is at least as great a distinotiou between such as are undoubtedly of the same species, aa in any difference of race among men. There are wide differences of race in neat cattle, horses, and especially dogs, where there is no ground to suppose that they sprang from an originally distinct ci'eated ancestry. In tlie case of swnie and sheep, peculiarities have arisen within very authentic tradition, from some great change in a single case, and which have been perpetuated with all their typical marks, in a variety so broad as to make them henceforth properly distinct races. Domestication in fowls, as well as animals, has produced such remarka- ble changes, and which perpetuate themselves from gene- ration to generation, that we ought not to be surprised at the distinctions wdiich circumstances may work among mankind, even to so great a degree as to be ti-uly separ rations of race. Individual differences and peculiarities, and class and tribe distinctions, are greater among men than among the same species of animals ; it ought, then, to be anticipated that human races may be broadly dis- criminated. But, while there is this broader diversity in different portions of the human family, there is also, on the other hand, stronger indications of unity, linking all the typica) races into one common brotherhood. The common pow- ers of speech and language ; the kindred emotions, sym p?itliies, and appetites ; the convictions of responsibihty to law, and the establishment of political governments ; the sense of dependence upon an Absolute Sj^irit, and the propensity to some religious worship ; the similarity of CONNECTIONS OF MIND AND BODY. 4] capacity in forming habits, coining under discipline and receiving cultivation ; and the sameness of times in the age of puberty, menstruation, and gestation, except in die modifications of manifest causes ; all determuie that mankind of every race are yet the children of one family. In addition to all tliis, there is the great fact, that tho races amalgamate and propagate from generation to generation, which is in contravention of the law between M^holly distinct species. A few only can at all produce a hybrid oflspring m a cross-generation, and when they do, the progeny is AvhoUy sterile. The conclusion from this is certainly quite sound, that the distinctions of race among men are adventitious, and that all are the descendants of one original parentage. The argument for different species through a distinct original ancestry, from any supposed different centers of propagation, is altogether inconclusive. At the widest ■ distance apart, it is still wholly practicable that all \ should have been cradled m the same region. The Patagonians or the Esquimaux may have an ancestry who wandered from Central Asia, and such a supposition involves no improbability. Indeed all tradition, so far as any is fomid among the scattered tribes of himianity, as well as all other indices, point to a common locality whence all have departed. The substantial facts of the Mosaic account are the most probable, and the most phi- losophical, of any theories that may be adopted. There are two strong objections to the vague popular notion that the first peopling of the earth, as now inhabited, radiated from the Armenian Mount Ararat. The old 4* 42 ANTHROPOLOGY. Celtic, Teutonic, and Sclavic tribes of western Europe, historically emigrated from a region much fartlier to the north-east, and this would make them to have first emi- grated eastward, up high mountain ranges, only to have returned on the old track, in their passage to a peiiTia- nent home in Europe ; and the fact that the Armenian Ararat is an almost inaccessible peak of a single moun- tain, springing from a comparatively limited base and with precipitous sides, makes it exceedingly unlikely that the ark, Avhich, divinely directed, had survived the deluge, should have been there stranded, demanding a mh'acle to bnng its enclosed animals safely down upon the plains below. It is said that the Circassian word Arak signifies solely a peak, and thus Ararat may very probably be a generic word for the high summit of any mountain. Others affirm it to be the name of a region, without any reference to any particular mountain. The greatest amount of probability is attained in supposhig that the cradle of the human family, after the deluge, was in the region of the sacred rivers Sihon and Gihon, which are now confluent into the sea of Aral, as the Araxes and the Oxus. This plaui of the Aral, as that to which the primitive patriarchs, with their posterity already somewhat multiplied, "journeyed from the east," and which was " in the land of Shinaar," would indicate that it was some of the high mountahis which surrouiid the table-land in Eastern Asia, and by far the most ele- vated points on the face of the globe, on which the ark rested after the deluge. The great dispersion of the human family from this point, in the confusion of tongues COi!^NECTIONS OF MIND AND BODY. 43 at Babel, would very readily accord with all the facts of diflfcrent races, and all the indicated centers of their typical peculiarities. Those emigrating eastward would enter the mountain defiles, and spread themselves upon the high table-lands of Tartary and Mongolia, and assimilating from marriage, chmate and other circumstances acting in common, would become the grand Mongohan stock, sending off its suc- cessive tribes, and pressing each other farther onward, down the southern Asiatic plains and peninsulas, and off to the northern streams which empty into the Arctic Ocean. Those going southerly would come upon the mountain steps of Iran, and others round the Caspian would reach the more western portions of the Caucasian plateau, and the like assimilations would originate the Caucasian race, having a common center Avhere its typi- cal marks received their most complete development. At the foot of the Koosh and Himmaleh mountains, Avithin the valleys of the Indus, might be generated a dark- skinned, crisp-haired family of children, which should propagate their pecuharities, and carry abroad their typical marks, and emigrate to more southern and tropi- cal cUmes, instinctively indicated as most favorable for the perfect development of their intrinsic characteristics, Hud actually fiiid tliis great center only as they reach the interior of the African continent. It is not probable that distinctions of race at all took their rise in the three sons of Noah. Nor is it to be supposed that any three different pairs of the human family, at any age, originated the three great distinctive 44 ANTIIRUPOLOCJY. faces, and tlion, excluding and exhausting all others, a\ length came to people the Avorld between them Stroii«» typical peculiarities somewhere began, and absorbed and a.^similated all others within them. And thus, takinhaired races. All other varieties may readily be reduced to some blending of these generic pecidiarities. These distinctions of race are older than history, and the cora- bmation of Egyptian, Assyrian and Hindoo sculpture rAay give us the whole, as complete in mikno^\Ti centu- ries backward, as any living specimens of the present age can furnish. 2. 3Iodijications of mind from constitutional organi- zatioji. Both the animal and rational forces, as originally superinduced upon the hfe-force, may be different, in proportion and degi-ee, in different individuals; and thus a different mental development may be secured, in the differences of rudiment m the original germ. But that which is more manifest in experience is here of more importance : \dz. that differences of bodily organization make corresponding modifications of mental development. The difference of sex manifests its influence through all the anatomical structure, and physiological character- istics. The bones, muscles, skin, hair, and the venoua and nervous systems, are all modified from the constitu- CONNECTIONS UJ? MIND AND 30DY. 4.5 tional peculiarities of the particular sex. But the bodily development is not, perhaps, any more strongly marked by sex than is the mental. There is a radical and abiding difference between male and female intellect, and no culture can change the one to be as the other Oftentimes the mind of the man may be more femmine, and that of the woman more masculine than the gene rality of the sex, and thus it may also be with the physi- cal constitution ; and yet the one is never found to have made its leap quite over into the province of the other. In emotion and sympathy, intellectual adaptations and inclinations, together with entire mental propensities, the male and female mind have each their own type, mani- festly discriminated the one from the other. They may each become distinguished, in the public observation, for the same pursuits ; and whether of art, literatui^e or science, there may be the products of both male and female industry which stand out prominent in excellence ; but nerhaps never will the case occur, in which an expe- rienced and philosophical critic will not at once deter mine, from the inherent characteristics of the productions themselves, that which the man and that which the woman has originated. The nature of the case mak(ja the peculiar province of each separate from the other, and the law of nature has fixed the constitutional organi- zation of the one unlike to the other ; it is thus to be expected, that in the ongoings of nature, she vn\\ keep the openings of mind in each, perpetually discriminated rtie one from the other. 16 ANTHROPOLOGY. Tlie different temperaments among men present then peculiar fticts quite as prominently as those of the dis- tinctive mental characteristics of the sexes. Ev^ery per- son has some prevalent type of mental activity inducea by his constitutional temperament, and this temperairent finds its source in the peculiar arrangements and func- tions of bodily organization. The body, as an entire system, has within itself different subordinate systems, which minister together for the growth and preservation of the whole. Conspicuous among these subordinate systems are the nervous, the muscular, and the digestive organizations ; and any peculiarity of their agency might be expected to mark their results in certain constitutional states of the entire bodily system. They are, in fact, the source of the distinguishing temperaments among men, and throw their influence upon mental action in such a way as to secure permanent traits and habits of hiunan life. The vitality and energy, which gives to one of these subordinate systems a special control in the whole body, wiU mark its effect in the whole organizar tion ; and accordins; to the measure of its controlling force, will be the temperament effected in the constitu- tion. There may be frequent cases in Avhich no one of these so prevails as to exclude all traces of some othei ; and yet, m perhaps all cases, some one will be found manifestly predominant, and thus give to the man the peculiarities of temperament which belong to its class. Rarely shall we find such a blending of all, as to leave tlie distinguishing temperament doubtful. CONNECTIONS OF MIND AND BODY. 4? Where the hfe gives a predominating energy and activity to the nervous system, there wiU be induced the sanguine temperament. In the nervous system, thero is made provision for animal sensibility and motion ; and where there is a rapid and augmented supply of blood, the animal sensibility and activity is thus proportionally quickened. The whole nervous system is thereby made I)reeminentlv ^dgorous, and prompt to respond to ever;y excitement. In this is the peculiarity of the sanguine temperament. Such a constitution will readily wake in sudden emotions, and be characterised by ardent feelmg, quick passions, unpetuous desires, and Hvely but tran- sient affections. There is a strong propensity to mirth and sport, and it easily habituates itself to a hfe of levity and gaiety. If sudden calamities occur, the sanguine temperament is readily overwhelmed in excessive gi'ief, and melts in floods of tears for every affliction ; but soon loses the deep sense of its sorrows, and springs again buoyant to new scenes of pleasure. In htcrature, this temperament prompts to the use of figures, and abounds in striking expressions, glowing imagery, strong comparisons, and perpetual hy]:»erbole. Its style is always highly ornamental and florid, and ita prose abomids in all the metaphors of poetry. Wiatever awakens emotion Avill be agreeable, and it opens itself readily to the excitement of music, or painting, or elo- quence ; especially when the i present system receives only the facts of experience, ^:leaving all necessary principles to be determined in a higher philosophy, to which the application of the term <;' common sense' would be wholly a misnomer. But [ witliin the field of experience, the test of common sense is final. It determines for us all that Empirical Psycho- logy can use, and can stand as umpire in all disputed cases that can arise.- - In any occurrence of an alleged contradiction in consciousness, we need to find that which is the common consciousness, and this must exclude all else. If any man allege a consciousness difierent jfrom that of mankind in general, this can be no matter of any farther concern to us ; for if it were true, it would only prove that he was alteram genus, and that any facts, which were peculiar to him, would be of no account in a system which embraces those only of our common OiENERAL METHOD. 69 humanitj. Rightly used, the test of common sense 13 conclusive, for only that which common sense sanctions can have any place in our psychology. But this appeal to common sense must, in all the pro- cess, be legitimately pursued. Three important rules must be observed in order to insure a safe decision. 1. The facts must lie ivitldn tlie range of common consciousness. — There are many questions which may be raised about facts that are quite beyond human expe- rience, and many facts which have come within the expe- rience of but few of the human family. No such facts are needed in a system of empmcal psychology, and for such facts, a criterion of common sense would be unavail- able. Any facts in the experience of disembodied spirits must lie wholly beyond the range of mortal conscious- ness ; and such ^cts as the experience of a miracle, a resuscitation from a drowning state, or a balloon ascen- sion, have come within the consciousness of too few of mankind, to make any general appeal practicable. The test must be attempted only in such cases as manifestly fall within the range of common experience. 2. The decision given must he general. — Not tho decision of a few in any age, or of one age amid succes- sive generations ; but so universal in all ages, as to prove for itself ther general assent of the race of man. This may be gathered from the history, the laAvs, the languar ges and the common customs and popular proverbs of the woi Id ; inasmuch as in all these ways is embodied the conscious experience of ages. to EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 3. The decision must he unbiassed. — The great mass of mankind do not give an mibiassed decision in relation to human guilt for general ingratitude to God ; the obli- gation of immediate repentance ; or the fact of constant divine dependence ; inasmuch as common depravity darkens or perverts the common consciousness. But general decisions, where no bias appears, or especially where manifestly the decision is against a general bias, may well be trusted. These three requisites in the application of common sense, the competency^ generality and honesty of the decision, will give validity to any fact that may so be sustained. III. The classification of the facts. Our system cannot here be built up, as in an a' prion science, by the carrying of one necessary principle through every fact, and thus binding them all in unity by it. Nor can it be properly inductive, in the sense of assuming some general hypothesis, and selecting and arranging the facts by it as they may be found in nature. We have simply to find the human mind as it is, and attain and classify its facts, just as these facts are given and connected in the consciousness. There are two methods in which a classification mav be conceived as progressing ; one, where the order of nature is followed, by beginning at the center and woik ing from thence outward ; the other, by taking nature as already a product, and beginning at the outside and working within, as far as practicable. The first may be called the order of reason; inasmuch as the reason GENERAL METHOD. 71 would SO take the moving force, or conditioning principle, at the center, and follow it out to the consummation : the second may be called the order of discovery ; inasmuch as in experience, the thing is already given, and "we begin on the outside and follow up the discovery, as far as we may, to see how the product was effected. The genius that first created the idea of a watch, would begin, in the thought, with the moving power at the cen- ter, and carry this force, in its development of forms and connections, outward, till in his completed conception, he had the whole in its unity, from the main-spring to the moving-hands over the dial-plate. But the discoverer, of how a watch ah^eady in experience had been invented, would begin his examination at the hour-index, and go backwards toward the central force in the main-spring. Both get the science of the watch ; one makes it, the other learns it. *- In empirical philosophy, we can only be learners. We must study what is, not project what may be. Nature began at the center and worked outward. She had her \dtal force in its salient point, and carried that out to the manure development. The germ expanded to the ripened plant ; the embryo grew to the adult stature. But the empirical philosopher can take nature's products only so far as already done, and study as he may how has been nature's process. He is shut out from nature's hiding- place at the center, and cannot say what it is that lies potential there, and determine in the primal cause what the effects must be. He can only learn nature, as she has already made herself to be ; and cannot project a EMPIIUCAL PStOHOLOat nature m liei primal laws, and thereb}^ determine ho\i ilie must be. So we must study the human mind. We are to attair. the facts in completed system, just as mind in reahty 15, and not form some ingenious theory, nor adopt some other man's theory, which we strive to maintain with- out nature, or in spite of nature. Valid facts, clas- sified according to their actual connections, will give a psychology which proves itself. In it, all confusion will be reduced to order ; it will expound all anomolies, and expel all absurdities, and stand out the exact counterpart of the living actual mind itself. The general order of classification, thus determined to be that of discovery ; there need only be added the following general directions : 1. Permanent and inherent relationships between the mental facts are alone to be regarded. 2. Homogeneous facts only may be classified. Nature never mingles contraries together. 3. The system must find a place for all the facts. 4. When completed, the system must be harmciuous va\ self-consistent. CHAPTER 11. GENERAL FACTS OF MIND. There are certain facts relative to the mir i as a whule and which appertain to it comprehensively in its own being, and which as thus generally inclusive of all the other subordinate facts of mind, it will be better to attain primarily and separately. In these general facts and states of mind, may be apprehended the true order of arrangement for bringing all subordinate facts into a completed system, and we shall, therefore, in this prepare the way for an intelligent classification of all the elements of the system that may subsequently be attained. 1. The general fact of the existence of mind. The doctrine of true and vahd being, which determines and settles all dispute between idealists and naaterialists, nopainalists and realists, constitutes the distinct science of Ontology^ and which can be made to rest only on the conclusions of Rational Psj^chology. In all empirical science we begin with the assumption that the facts exist, and having thus begun with experience, it is not compe- tent from experience to prove the vahdity of those facts which are conditional for it. The qualities of substances ^ and the exercises of agents alone appear in conscious- ^ I aess, and thus all that experience can vouch for is the^.*^ quality and the exercise, and not the essential being in "" which the qualities inhere and from which the exercises 74 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. spring, rermanent, substantial being, as the ground oi all attributes and the source of all events, is assumed and not given in consciousness ; and there is thus an occasion for scepticism to come in, modified in various ways, and which can be excluded only through the most profound investigations of transcendental science. It is not the place in Empirical Psychology to state these sources and varied forms of scepticism, much less philosophically to exclude them ; suffice it to say the sources exist, and are ^' exceedmgly prolific of sceptical theories, and which musl - ^ all be put over into the field of Rational Psychology. ^ But passing all attention here to the appropriate investi- *?^ gations of an ontological science, we may give those par- ticulars that come within experience, and on which an Empirical Psychology must rest for the actual being of that mmd, which is put as the agent of all those exercised that appear in consciousness. We are not conscious of what mind is, as we are con- scious of what an exercise is ; we know a thought, an emotion, and a volition, as we do not know the mind which thinks, feels and wills. The mind itself cannot appear in consciousness, as does its acts. But, while the mind itself does not appear in conciousness, and the different exercises are successively appearing and disap- pearing, there is that which does not come and go as the ^ exercises arise and depart. One consciousness remains, and holds within itself all these fleeting appearances of thoughts, feelings and choices. There -is also, in thivS one consciousness, the additional testimony that these exercises are not thrown in upon its field, as shadows V V GENERAL FACTS OF MIND. 75 passing over a landscape, but that they come ap from some nisus or energy that produces them from beroath ; and that when the thought appears, there has been a conscious energizing in its production ; and when the thought vanishes and an emotion or a vohtion appears, there has been sometldng which dii not pass away with the thought, but energizes again in the emotion or the vohtion ; and thus that there is some entity as opposed t. 87 consciousness of anything that is properly a feeling. I then slide my hand over the velvet, not that I may perceive its smoothness, but that I may feel the agree* able emotion it occasions. Sensation is, therefore, never tc be taken as feeling, except in a blind and unconscious state. It is not an emotioA, for that is awakened only in the agreeableness, Dr the contrary, of the thing perceived ; it is not even a perception in touch, which we ssij feels thus, for that is a quality brought out in the consciousness, and for which the sensation was an antecedent condition. The sensa- tion may be perfect, and a complete content of sense be thus given in the organ, but if the requisite intellectual agency in attention does not folloAV, there wdll be neither a perception nor an emotion in the consciousness. Sen- sation may be, with no conscious emotion following it. The pure mind itself has no distinct organs that may receive any impressions given ; but it may properly be said of mere mental agency, that the mind affects itself in all its varieties of action, and thus gives to itself a sensation which is a proper content for a perception. The mind, as such, is thus taken as an organ of sense, and any internal movement is an impression upon it, and thus , niducinoi; an affection in it ; and such affections are each. - as much an occasion for the proper intellectual process to^ result in the perception of a thought, an emotion, or a voli- tion, as an affection in a bodily organ is an occasion for perceivuig a color, a sound, or a smell. The one mind is diffused through all the bodily organism, and becomes modified in the impressions upon bodily organs from the 88 EMPIRICAL rSYCliUi^uux. outer world ; and such affections may be known as exter nal or organic sensation: the same mind is also modi- fied, m the impressions it makes upon itself in its own agency ; and such affections may be known as internal or inorganic sensation. In each case, the modifications resulting from the impressions constitute a proper con- te it, which may subsequently, be matured into complete perception. n. CoNSCiousxESS. This is the source of all convic- tion m experience, and, as general in the human race, has been put by us as the ultimate criterion in all cases of disputed facts, which may be used in an Empirical Psychology. We have been frequently referring to it in the previous chapters, and have rested on the common acceptation of what consciousness is, and the faith which all are constrained to put in its testimony, without any attempt to give an explanation of it. The place has now been reached for a distinct exposition and apprehension of consciousness, as one of the facts in a system of Empi- rical Psychology, inasmuch as it stands in the order of primitive facts proximately precedent to all perception. When any mental activity has been completed, conscious- ness must still intervene, or no apprehension of that activity can be effected. Consciousness has been very differently apprehended by different writers, and certainly not seldom misappre- hended. Some have considered it as scarcely to be distinguished from personal identity ; others, as a sepa- rate faculty for knowing the action of all other mental powers ; and others, again, as the complement and con- PRIMITIVE FACTS OF MIND. 89 nection ot all mental exercises, inasmucli as they are all held in one consciousness. Consciousness is doubtless ever one in the same person, (a few cases of morbid experience alone excepted,) otherwise some actions would be in one consciousness, and some in another, and the man's life could never be brought into one experience. But this does bj no means confound consciousness in personal identity, for identity continues in and through a great number of states of imconsciousness. Nor may it be assumed as a distinct faculty for knowing the operas tions of other faculties, for when intellectually I know anything, this would oblige the consciousness to an act of knowing that I know, and which, as knowing act, would still need another to know it, and thus on endlessly with- out findino; a first and conclusive knoA\in2; act. And merely to say, that it is a medium in which all other mental facts and states are connected, is still to explain nothing, and really to have said nothing to any purpose. These different, and in some cases at least, erroneous conceptions of consciousness, indicate that there is some radical difficulty in attaining the precise fact of conscious- ness. It secures that other facts shall appear, while itself does not appear. If, instead of attempting to conceive consciousness as a distinct mental faculty, or in any way an agent putting forth specific exercises, we wiU consider it under the ana- logy of an iimer illumination, we may both avoid many difficulties and gain some great advantages. When any organic impression is given and thus a content in sensa- tion is attained, the self-active mind has at once an occa- 8* 90 EMPmiCAL PSYCHOLOGY. 31011 for spontaneously going out to complete the percep tioii. By an appropriate intellectual activity, hereafter tc be described, the precise quality and its exact limits are constructed, and the object is thus made distinct and definite ; and now, if all tliis be conceived as accom- plished within the mind's own light, no farther agency will be needed. The distinguishing and defining of the eontent m sensation is all that is necessary to make it an object, and when it thus appears under this mental illu- mination, it is the same as saying that it appears in consciousness, or that the mind is conscious of it. The conception is not of a faculty, but of a light ; not of an action, but of an illumination ; not of a maker of pheno- mena, but of a revealer of them as already made by the appropriate intellectual operation; and as thus con- structed in the illuminated mental sphere, they at once appear to the mind, and the fact of perception is con- summated. The content in sensation, w^hich has been distinguished and defined, appears under this illumination as the objective; and the agency, accomplishing this work, appears in the same light as the subjective ; and thus both the object and subject, the not-self and self, are together given in the same revelation of conscious- ness. The reflection that the subjective agency is in the self, and that the objective content is from some other than self, is a direct discrimination of the self from the not-self — a finding of myself — an awakening in self- consciousness. ^Vhenever the mind loses this discrimination between the subjective and the objective, there is the loss of self- PRIMITIVE FACTS OF MIND 91 consciousness. The infant has the sensation and a grow ing perfection in the appropriate constructing agency ; but for some length of time the infant is without self-con sciousness, and acts only from instinct. The animal observes and attends, distinguishes and defines, some- times more acutely and accurately than man ; but the animal never completely separates itself from its objects, and thus never fully attains itself in clear self-conscious- ness. So in somnambulism, a man may execute many most surprising transactions ; walk along a precipice, upon the roofs of houses, climb tow^ers and steeples, and accurately guide and keep himself harmless in all these dangerous positions ; because he distinguishes and defines his sensations exactly, while he never distinguishes him- self from his objects, and is thus Avholly lost to all self- consciousness. So under intense excitement, the man whose dwelling is on fire may act most energetically ; but in this loss of self-possession, he may often dash the frailest articles of furniture together, and throw his crockery and mirrors from the chamber windows. Under violent passion also, the outrageous conduct of some men often show, that they have wholly lost them- selves ; and so also with the ravings and delirium of a burning fever. Here too, lies the explanation of much of the wonders and modern miracles of animal magnetism. The mes- coeric sleep, by whatever cause induced, unlike natu- ral sleep, quickens and greatly intensifies the mental agency in distinguishing and limiting the sensations, but leaves wholly out the action of self-discrimination, and 9- EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. tlie slightest suggestions and iiiflucnces control the sub- ject, who is thus put completely within the power of the operator. In all these cases, there is simply the absence of self-consciousness — the person is beside himself. Bu^ in syncope, apoplexy, etc., there is not only the loss of self-discrimination, but also of all power of distinguishing and Hniiting the sensations ; and when the lesion goes to the destruction of the power of sensation itself, it then becomes death. That there is sensation distinguished ) and defined, and also self-discrimination, is altogether the great fact tiiat there is self-consciousness. In the one illumination of consciousness, the object^ and that it is my object, are both given. The process of the thought, as it develops itself m reflection, to attain the truth in the vahd being of the self and its objects is wholly for Rational Psychology; but so far as experience is our guide to facts, we have the process, as above, in that mental illumination which reveals the subjective and the objective together. Consciousness is therefore " the hght of all our seeing." The diflficulty that has always been foun(J in deter- mining what consciousness is, at once hereby explains itself. It is sufficient to vouch for itself, that it is ; but it is not competent to reveal within itself what it is. It is a light in which other things appear, but is too pure that it should itself be seen. It reveals all that can be brought within it, but it cannot be put in any position where it may represent itself. Without it, nothing can appear — it is thus primitively conditional for all percep- tion—but while in it the mind sees all other things, l^RIMITiVE FACTS OP MIND. d'6 there is no ight higher than it, by which the mind can see the consciousness itself. TTT. Mental states, as capacities for knowing, KEELmG, AND WILLING. The self-active mind is perpet- ually energizing in varied specific exercises, which are each readily distinguished in consciousness. Some of these exercises are perceptions, reflections, recollections, comparisons, abstractions, etc., all of which are in some way subservient to the process of knowing. Others are sympathies, affections, emotions, passions, etc., all included in some department of feeling. Others, again are pre- ferences, choices, purposes, volitions, etc., and all in some way concerned in ivilling. The one mind is the source of all these different exercises, and must put them forth -. ' at separate times and on different occasions, and must v therefore in some way modify itself conformably to its*"^ diverse operations. As one agent, in the several ways of knowing, feeling, and willing, the one self-active mind mast be in different states, in order to put forth the exer- cises which are peculiar to each kind of operation. It may here be assumed, that all single exercises of the human miad may be included in one or the other of these kinds 3f operation, and thus stand connected with either knomng, or feeling, or willing. Such assumption will be subsequently verified, but in taking it for the present, it will be competent to say, that inasmuch as the states of mind must vary as the kinds of general operation vary 30 there must be the three general states of mind, aa knowing, feeling, and willing. 94 ilMPiRicAL ps\:hology. In all human experience, there is often the conscioiia- ness that the mind is unprepared for certain exercises, to which at other times there is a readiness. At one time the man thinks with difficulty, and at another time with great facility. When absorbed in thought, ^liere is a conscious unpreparedness in the mind, to open itself to the flow of emotion ; and when overwhelmed with feeling, the mind is prepared for neither patient thought nor stedfast resolution ; and thus generally, if the mind is prepared for one kind of operation, it is in that unpre- pared for another kind. A general state of mind is necessary, therefore, as prelimmary and preparatory to all specific activity. The general state, in fact, becomes a capacity for the specific acts included within that kind of operation. We may say, in general, that the mind has the capacity for knowing, feeling, and willing ; but a direct capacity to specific action, under either kind of operation, is not attained, except as the mind goes into its state appropriate for such action, and this direct pro duction of the capacity is one of the primitive facts of mind. We may be conscious of many imjwrtant facts connected with this direct capacity for specific action, and the clear apprehension of them will prepare us directly for the determination of the peculiar method necessary in attaining and classifying all the other facts of mind. The mind, as self-active, produces itself into several dififerent general states, which thus become each respec- tively a capacity for specific single exercises. It is here assumed that all single acts may originate in one or the coi:<^-'^^. (& PRIMITIVE FACTS OF MIND. 9l) ether tf these general states, and which states we will here denominate, from their different kinds of capacity, as — THE Intellectual State; the Emotive State; ani THE Willing State. These we will now farther investigate. 1. These general states may he clearly discriminated in consciousness. When you take jour seat before a public speaker and he rises to address you, there may be a very clear con- sciousness that your mind has gone out into a general state, before a single word has been uttered. There is, as yet, no specific exercise, but only a state of mind induc- ing a capacity for particular exercises. It is not atten- y^i^ tion, for there is no voice to which the attention may be ;, /a f applied ; it is not perception, for there is no content in the sense to be apprehended ; it is not thought, for there has been no thoug;ht communicated or awakened. It is simply a readiness to act, in any and all of these specific exercises, as the occasion shall offer ; and is therefore, a state of mind capacitating for knowing, when the occa- sion for knowing shall have been given. It is, thus, an Intellectual State. So also, with an audience, before the curtain rises which covers some scenic representation ; each mind has put itself in a state to know, when any tiling shall be uncovered to its perception. And so, again, in the expectation of some musical performance . before the sounds have been given, and the opportunity afforded for attending to their inner meaning in the tune they wiU embody, the mind has already gone into an intellectual state in reference thereto. This may also 96 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. be true in reference to any other sense ; as the touch, taste or smell ; and in reference to all mental action for knowing in any way ; as remembering, thinking, reflect- ing, etc. The self-activity goes out into an intellectual state, as preparative for any specific exercises that may be concerned in knowing ; and when the conditions are given, the specifice exercises for knowing are then pro- duced, and the apprehension of the object or theme is consummated. If now, the mind maintain itself wholly in the intel- lectual state, and exhaust all its activity in the intensity to know, there will be no preparation for emotion. But when, instead of abiding in the intellectual state, it opens itself for the coming up of the emotions which the discourse, the scene, or the tune, may be adapted to excite ; there will in this be the consciousness of quite a different state, and that in it there is the capacity to quite a difierent set of exercises, from all that is con- cerned in knowing. Simply as having gone into the intellectual state, the mind was not thus prepared to feel ; and if it should wholly absorb itself in intellectual action, it would have no capacity to feel, and no specific emotions would be exercised. The self-activity must produce itself into quite a different state, which we have termed the Emotive State, or its action would be a know- ing mthout feeling. So also, in solitary thought and silent speculation. I may be intent merely to know ; or I may pass out of the state adapted only to dry thought, and assume a state which is also in readiness to feel ; and my intense speculation will then become a sweet PRIMITIVE FACTS OF MIND. 9^ meditation, in which the mind will not only be filled •with thought, but will also overflow with emotion. But we will cany out this discrimination still fardier You maj imagine yourself to have been among the a- ence, which listened to the great Athenian Orator in ^ of his terrible Phillipics. In an intellectual state, >« .> appreliended his exordium, so appropriate, so captivating; his narration of topics and arrangement of matter, so skilful, so logical ; his delineation of acts and events, so graphic, so consecutive; and his whole argument, so com- prehensive, so conclusive ; that your mind was elevated and filled Avith the thought which revealed and proved, and made you to know so much. But you did not rest merely in knowing. You opened your miud to emotion, and felt the glow of patriotism, the deep sense of national honor, the shame of servitude, the disgrace of cowardice, and burning indignation agaiust the tyrant. But neither did you rest in this state of deep emotion. In your self- acti\dty, you roused every energy of your enkindled spirit, and held all ready for the most prompt and deter- mined execution, while you shouted with the thousands of Athens — ''Let us march against Phifip." You found in yourself the capacity for a strong wiU, and the putting forth the most strenuous exertions. This last state of wilhng is clearly distinct in the consciousness from either of the former. As conciselv illustrative of these three distinct J2:eneral states, I adduce the following examples from the sacred Scriptures. When Cornelius had sent for Peter by the direction of an angel, and had already received him into 9 y8 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. his house, he sajs: '' Now, therefore, are we all here pre- sent before God, to hear all things that are commanded thee of God." — Acts x, 33. Thej were in the intel- lectual state. Again, the Psalmist in great distress, longs for the communion and manifested approbation of God, and waits for the emotions which his spiritual pre* sence would mduce, and he saj^s, '^ My soul waiteth for the Lord, more than they that watch for the morning." — Ps. cxxx, 6. Here is as manifestly the emotive state. And finally, when Saul had been stricken to the earth by the brightness of a miraculous vision, and he found himself ready to undertake any duty divinely commanded, he cries, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" — Acts, ix, 6. A clear case is given in this of the willing state. 2. The occasions for going out in such general capacities. An original peculiarity of mind may be an occasion for these general mental states, in reference to pai-ticular ends of action. To some minds it is natively congenial to follow a particular calhng, or to pursue a particular branch in hterature, science, or art. The poet, mathema- tician, pamter, or sculptor, seem often to have an innate propensity each to liis special employment ; and different trades and occupations often find such as have their natural adaptations to the particular pursuits. Li all such cases, an occasion is given in the origuial bias of the mind for the self-activity to go readily out into a capacity both to know, to feel, and to will, in reference to the given end. PRIMITIVE IF ACTS OE' MIND. 99 Id. the ^ame way, tlie peculiar temperament, in tlie constitutional formation, may be an occasion for the self- active mind, to put itself in a readiness to know, feel and will in certain congenial directions. Prompting occa sions also, are often given, from the thousand contingenf circumstances in which the man may be placed, and fron the casual incidents that fall around him, by which th< mind is induced to put itself in a new attitude, and g( out into a different general state from that previously occupied. Under any one of these conditions, a sponta neoas movement puts the mind, at once, in the appro- priate state for particular acts of knowing, feeling, or wilhng, in reference to a particular end. Sometimes we are conscious of an effort of will to hold ourselves in readiness for specific acts toward specific objects, and such acts of the will become themselves an occasion for the self-activity to put itself into the wished for capacity. But in all such occasions it is important to note, that the state is not itself a vohtion ; it is not the direct product of the will, but immediately produced by the self-activity on occasion of the will prompting to it. Just as an act of recollection may be prompted by an occasion of willing, while the remembering is not at all a vohtion, but the spontaneous product of the self-active mind in recalling its past perceptions. In all cases, the general state as capacity is attained, by the spontaneous movement of the self-active mind into it ; and wliether by occasion of native mental peculiarity, or of constitu- tional temperament, or casual circumstances, or an efibrt of will, the production is immediately from the spontar .100 EMPIRICAL iPSYCHOLOGt'. neous self-activity. AVilling may give occasion for the movement, but no act of will can produce the state either to know, to feel, or to will. It may very often be wished, when the will cannot attain it, and thus volition is often not an adequate occasion for it. A ready state to know, or to feel, or to will, in a specific direction, is often as impossible to be reached by willing, as an act of clear recollection, or a state of sleep. Whatever the occasion given, the self-activity goes directly out in the production of the respective capacity, and spontaneously projects itself from one state into another. As the first act of knowing, in the infant mind, must have been spontane- ous, with no occasion of a previous volition, so is every general state spontaneous, though often by occasion of volition. 3. The order of connection in these general mental capacities. The self-active mind produces in itself these different capacities according to an invariable order, and while the law for such order cannot be brought into consciousness, the fact is manifestly given in common experience. This order, as given in fact, it is quite important fully to attain. TJte intellectual state is immediately from the self- activity. — On occasion being given, the mind by its spon- taneous activity, produces itself directly into an intel- lectual state, and stands prepared to act specifically in any exercise connected with knowing in that particular direction. This may as well be from a state to know in reference to a different object, as from a state of feeling, PRIMITIVE FACTS OF MIND. lOi or of \\illing. Q.^he mind, in a state to know all that a speaker may say, is not in that also in a state to know the music which an orchestra may be about to perform. The mind, in a state for the speaker, would be conscious of a manifest change, if the speaker should be suddenly removed and the orchestra at once presented. But in such case, and ui aU cases, the mind does not need to go into an emotive state, nor a willing state, in order that it may take an intellectual state. Whatever be its present «tate, it needs only the proper occasion, and it immedi- ately produces itself into the required intellectual state. The emotive state is attained only in connection with the intellectual state. — Emotion cannot be, except the object in which the emotion is to terminate be first given. But this object is given only as it is known ; and it is known only in an intellectual state ; and thus without a state to know, there cannot be a state to feel. If I am not ready to know any object, I cannot be in readiness for any emotion which is to terminate in that object. This is quite manifest in consciousness not only, but also appears in daily observation and experience. The mind, that reluctates any emotion, directly evades all occasion for bringing that object into consciousness; and the mind, that rejoices in any feehng, seeks also to keep the object within knowledge. A most kind and benevolent provision in human nature is based wholly on this fact, and designed to obviate the evil consequences of any excessive and absorbing pas- sion. When the object in which the passion terminates is vividly present in the mind, the emotion rises in ita 9* 102 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. highest intensity, and thus becomes a violent paroxysm of passion, and then bursts from its own fullness, and flows off in its own peculiar channels. Deep grief vents itself in sobbing and tears, or, in its most passionate excite- ment, rends the garments, beats the breast and tears the hair ; wliile joy ovei*flows in laughter and singing, and when most excited, boisterously leaps and dances. In proportion to the intensity of the passion, is the violence of its explosion, and in this very outbuilt is the provision for its relief. The object is by this, for the moment, thrown out of the consciousness ; the image which occa- sions the excitement fades away, or for the time is wholly vanished, and the emotion ebbs accordingly. Succes- sive ebullitions of passion, may thus occur, and overflow again and again in reference to the same object ; but this violent paroxysm is nature's kind interposition to snatch the object temporarily from the view, that its tides of feeling may not overwhelm the spirit. How salutary this is, may be estimated from the sad conse- quences of a passion which finds no such vent from nature, and leaves the fixed attention concentrated upon the object without cessation ! The reason is overpow- ered, and often incurable madness succeeds. The willing state is attained only in connection with both the intellectual and the emotive states. — A choice, or any act of the will, demands an object in Avhich it may terminate, as truly as does an emotion. We can not choose except as there is something in the conscious ness on which the choice may Alx itself. There must thus be some object as known, and thus the necessity for PRIMITIVE PACTS OF MIND. 103 an intellectual state. But the mere dry appreliension of an object is not a sufficient occasion for a choice. Tliere is nothing which can properly be called a motive or reason. Some feeling must be awakened towards the object, either of desire or obligation, or the conditions for a volition are not given. We cannot choose, unless there be something congenial to be attained in the choice, and this can occur only in an emotive state. As well no object, as an object which awakens no feeling of interest, or of duty. The wilhng state, as capacity for putting forth any voluntary exercises, must thus be preceded by both an object known, and an object felt, and must thus be occasioned by both an intellectual and an emotive state. In these only is the condition of willing at aU given. 4. These general states of mind may he blended in the consciousness, hut not confounded. The intellectual state may, under certain conditions, be taken by itself alone, but the emotive state cannot stand out separate from the intellectual state. So soon as an intellectual state should cease, the object of know- ledge must fall away from the consciousness ; and as this was the end in which the emotion terminated, with the loss of the object, the feeling must also become extinct. We are quite conscious, that only in the object known Ran any feeling be maintained ; and thus, that except an intellectual state blend with the emotive, the condi- tion for the latter cannot be given. The mlhng state, moreover, must stand blended with both the intellectual and emotive states, and cannot find its conditions fo* 104 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. being taken, except as both the knowing and the feeling are at the same time in exercise. Only as the object is in consciousness, can there bj any emotion; and only as some emotive exercise is put forth, can there be any occasion for wiUing, inasmuch as no vohtion can be, witL out some motive in the susceptibihty ; and thus a state of willing must blend with both a state of knowing and a state of feeling. The mtellectual state may be in com- plete isolation; the emotive state cannot be, except as blended with the intellectual ; and the willing state can not be, except as in combination with both the intel- lectual and the emotive states. But, when thus blended, they are by no means con- founded in the consciousness. We can readily discrimi- nate the one from the others, even when they all stand in combination. When I choose one from two or more objects, I may be distinctly conscious of both knowing the object, and of feeluig an interest in it, at the same time that my will goes out in an executive act to attain it. They are in exercise together ; and the general states, which capacitate for their exercise, are also together ; and I am conscious of their blended being, at the same time that I discriminate the one from the other. The blending is without confusion ; as in the wliite hght all the colors are given, but wMch are also readily dis- criminated through the prismatic medium. Knomng, feeling, and willing all coalesce in every vohtion, and yet are all distinguished, each from each, in the conscious- ness ; and the general states, as capacities for each, alike coalesce, and are alike distinguished. PRIMITIVE FACTS OF MIND. 105 5. These capacities may ordinarily he perpetuated 5j/ a stedfast purpose. As before shown, a native bias of mind and a consti- tutional temperament maj stand as permanent occasiona for a state of knowing, feeling, and willing, in that direc- tion to which nature prompts. The native artist is ever prompt to know, feel, and will in reference to his favorite topics. The native poet, or mathematician, is perma- nently in readiness for all specific exercises, which relate to his congenial pursuit. But aside from all constitu- tional bias, an act of will maj be an occasion for the self- active mind to produce within itself the required general capacity. Commonly, by a decided voluntary act, the mind can be put into either the intellectual, emotive, or willing state ; and though the state is not itself willed, yet is it induced by occasion of willing. And as the state was induced by occasion of a voluntary act, so, ordinarily, may it be perpetuated, by making the volun- tary action to become a stedfast purpose. This is quah- fied by saying, ordinarily ; for there are sometimes exempt and extraordmary cases, when no volition can be made an occasion for either of the general states of mind now contemplated. As an illustration, the presentation of a book may be supposed, and thks may be an occasion for the mind, either spontaneously or through a volition, to go into a state to know the thoughts of the author as the reading of the bDok shall progress from page to page. This state may be perpetuated, to an indefinite extent, by fixing a stedfast purpose in inference to it : and while the attea- 106 EMPIBICAL PSYCHOLOGY. tioii might readily be diverted, and the intellectual state in reference to the book be transient, if all was left to the control of mere passing occasions, yet this settled pur- pose may hold the mind intent to know, until the reading of the book is finished. So, also, with the state to feel the emotions, which the meaning of the book may occar sion ; and voluntarily to put in practice, what the book may enjoin ; a settled purpose may perpetuate all these states, and prevent the mind from passing ofi" into other engagements. Thus, also, a man may fix on some pur- suit for years, or for life ; and in this settled purpose that fixes a perpetual calling, an occasion will be given for a perpetual state of readiness, to know, feel, and will, all that may at any time be disclosed, as bearing upon the success of that engagement. Even against the prompting of occasional circumstances, or the native bias of constitutional temperament, a strong and decided purpose may give the condition in which the self-active mind shall go into a permanent state, to know, feel, and will, as would otherwise be wholly uncongenial. Thus, a man may disciphne his OAvn powers, and correct a.ny constitutional biases, and educate himself to very different habits of thought, emotion and execution, from such as would have been prompted by circumstances or native inclinations. Thus, also, when any perpetuated states have been long retained, and habits of thought, emotion, and practice have been formed ; a strong and resolute will may be an occasion for inducing general states of knomng, feeling, and willing in quite diflferent directions ; ar^i thereby induce to the breaking up of old PRIMITIVE PACTS OF MIND. 107 habits, and of forming others that shall be very differ- ent. No habit of thought, or feeling, or acting, is itself directly willed ; the vohtion may become an occasion for the mind to pass into paiticular aptitudes for knowing or feeling, and the repetition of consequent successive exer- cises forms and confirms the habit. 6. No general state will he permanent^ except ly a settled purpose. When constitutional biases become an occasion for specific habits of thought, feeling and willing, the consti- tutional inclination is soon also seen to have induced a corresponding determination of the will, and thus a moral no less than a constitutional disposition is settled. A change henceforth, if effected, must not only counteract constitutional temperament, but also deep seated pur- poses. " Old things must pass away, and all things become new." But where no particular bias is given from nature, and only passing circumstances prompt the mind to go into its general states, these will be especially fluctuating and imstable, if not held in one direction by occasion of a stedfast purpose. One state comes and goes, and others follow in fleeting succession, as summer shadows chase each other over the landscape, and the whole mental activity is in continual ebb and flow, with no steady current or perpetuated direction. Spontane- ously will the self-active mind project itself from oi.o state to another, as passing occasions are given, and never continue long in one stay. Should any mind attempt to hold itself in suspense between two given ends of action, mth no stedfast pur- v^ 108 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. pose in either dii'ectioii, there will soon be a paniful con sciousness of the impracticabiUtj of maintaining such a position. The activity will soon have slipped away from all direction to either object, and the exercises of thought, and feeling, and wilUng, are soon going out on wholly 'iifferent ends. But when, after due deliberation, a stedfast purpose is taken in reference to any object, thia becomes at once an occasion for the mind to go into a ^\^ permanent state in reference to that object, and to know, feel, and will, whatever the interests of that purpose may demand. It is not necessary that the purpose be a per- petual energizing of the will ; the one fixed purpose has been the occasion for the self-activity to go into a perma- Qent state ; and, except such permanent purpose be taken, the mind will not hold in a perpetuated capacity for either knowledge, emotion, or voUtion. Nothing makes the man consistently stedfast, in either intel- lectual character, affection, or voluntary action, but the perpetual dominion of a deep and stedfast purpose. He is else " double-minded," and of course " unstable in all his ways." In the foregoing General Facts we have one, permar nent, self-active mind ; and in the Primitive Facts, we have sensation, consciousness, and the self-active mind as competent to go spontaneously into the states which capacitate it specifically to know, to feel, and to ^vill. ^ The one mind is the actor in all ; but it must pass into ^ successive states, in order that it may produce within itself the capacity to particular exercises in either. We . PRIMITIVE FACTS OF MIND. 10b now affirm, that the self-active rtdnd is competent to pro* duce in itself general states or capacities for these three modes of activity, to know, to feel, and to will ; these- three, no more and no less. They all exist, as thus produced, in consciousness ; and we ate also quite con- scious of our impotence to induce within us the capaci- ties for any other varieties of mental activity. We can act in no other capacities than as intellectual, sentient, and voluntary beings. Aside from the primitive facts already attained, and which are precedent to and prepa- latory for these, all human mental agency is confined to knowing, feeling, and willing. We have in this the natural order for our psychological classification. Many have forced all mental facts mthin two divisions, substan- tially those of knowing and willing, though using different ways of expressing them ; but the appeal is here confi- dently made to common consciousness, that the exercises in the emotive state are different in kind from the exer- cises of either knomng or willing, and that a sharp line of discrimination stands between these facts. As all emotion and sentiment differs from all knowledge and volition, so it differs from sensation, properly so called. Sensation precedes perception, and is a necessary condi- tion for it ; emotion succeeds the perception, and springs by direct occasion from it. We need to find a capacity for mental acts which is not at all employed in knowing or in willing, nor at all imphed in organic sensation. A confounding of things which so much differ can only mduce perplexity, absurdity, and error. The following is the true order of Mental Classification : — 10 110 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. The capacity for knowing, is — The Intellect. The capacity for feeling, is ^ The Susceptibilitt. The capacity for willing, is — The Will. 1. The Sense. I. The Intellect. . . . «J 2. The Understanding. 3. The Reason. 1. The Animal. II. The Susceptibility. \mQi variety ; viz. a red 116 THE INTELLECT. color, as discriminated from any other, or the peculiar noise, or odor, as distinct from all other sounds or smellsi The content is thus separated in its kind from all others, and also in its variety from all others, and male to stand out in consciousness in its own individuality, as having nothing farther to be separated from it, or discriminated in it, but which now appears in its own pecuhar identity. It is to be carefully noted that observation is exclu- sively a distinguishing act, and does nothing beyond a complete discrimination of the quality both in its kind and variety. When I have intellectually distinguished the sensation as a content in vision, and thus the quaUty of color in kind; and then have farther distinguished the particular color in the vision, and thus have found the peculiar variety, I have fulfilled the whole work of observation. The distinguishing may go on through all differences in variety, till the quality has nothing farther that can be discriminated as di\iding it from others, and thus be completely and exactly individualized ; and in this is exhausted the entire function of observation. It results in making the content to be a distinct object in the consciousness. Attention. — "When a sensation has been distinguished ill kind and variety, by an observing act, there is given in this, a distinct, but not yet a definite object to the consciousness. We need, farther, a purely intellectual agency which shall completely define the quality within its own limits. When we have distinct quality, wo need also to go farther to complete the perception, and attain the definite quantity. This is effected in attention. Aa *fl^ SEKSE. 117 observation was exclusively a distinguishing act, so atten- tion is wholly a constructing act. Not a holding to^ (ad teneo') but a stretching to (ad tendo^ the limits of the object. An attending agency, as a complete fact in the con« Bciousness, may be best suggested to the apprehension in the following manner. If I would possess any pure diagram, in simple mental space, I must in my own intel- lectual agency construct it; it will not somehow come into the mind of itself. I can have no pure mathema- tical line, except as in my intellectual agency I assume some point and produce it through directly contiguous points, conjoining all into one form, and thus I draw the line. Thus of all pure figures, simple or complicated, circles, squares, triangles, and all sections of them, I can not subjectively possess them, except as I intellectually construct them. If now, you will carefully note in con- sciousness this constructing agency, which describes pure mathematical figure, you will in it attain the precise fact of an act of attention. The distinct quahty appears in consciousness from the act of observation, but as given in space it is as yet utterly formless. An intellectual agency must construct it, by describing its entire outline and apprehending its complete limits, and thus bringing its definite shape into the consciousness. Whether it be quafity in vision or in touch, the attending agency must stretch itself all about it, or brood entirely over it, and thus take it in its exact fimits and determine what space it fills. The quality, 118 THE INTELLECT. given in observation, is thas determined as to its quantity in space by attention. So the distinct quality, as given in time, is by obser- vation alone wholly without period. An mtellectual agency must again construct it. Taking the distinct quality at the instant of its appearance, and conjoining the successive instants into one period up to the time cf its disappearance, and thus stretching over the whole from beginning to concluding limit, the quantity of time that it has occupied is determined, and we have the quality now in its definite duration. So, moreover, the distinct quahty, as given in degree, is wholly measureless by the act of observation alone. An intellectual agency must begin at the point of an arising affection in the sense, and follow up, through all degrees of intensity in the sensation, to the point actually reached by the content in the organ, and thus by stretch- ing over all degrees from zero to the given Hmit of affec- tion, the full measure of the content in sensation is deter- mined, and we have the quahty in its definite amount. No quahty can have measure in any other directions than extension in space, duration in time, and intensity of degree ; and when an act of attention has stretched over the limits filled by the distinct quahty in all these several directions, it has determined it in aU the foiTns which any quahty can possess, and made it to be known definitely in all its measures of quantity. The above operations of observing and attending are conditional for all knowledge in the sense. Without the first, the quahty would not be distinct, without the last it THE SENSE, iii? would not be definite in form. I may know distinctly a distant color on a sign board to be black, and yet I may not be able to define the color and read the letters. I shall in such case have a distinct but not a definite know- lodge. I may distinctly observe a white object at the bottom of a stream or a lake, and yet from the ripples on its surface may not by any power of attention be able accurately to define and exactly know its shape. So, j again, there may be sensation with neither observation | nor attention, and in this condition the sensation remains i in unconsciousness. So, I am often unconscious of the book from which I am reading, of the chair on which I am sitting, and of the pavement over which I walk. The knowledge is as complete, as the distinguishing and defin- ing are perfect. One operation cannot dispense with, nor compensate for, the other, but both must be fully accomplished. All qualities may be distinguished ; and all may be ( defined in the limits of time and degree ; but only the | qualities given in the vision and the touch can be fully | defined in space. The content in the eye and the pres- sure of the fingers, can be constructed into complete shape in space, and these only. Sounds and smells can not be defined in shape, and only imperfectly in direction and distance, by the most careful attention ; and tastes can be defined by no limits of extension in space. Such are the facts as given in experience, but it appertains to Rational Psychology to determine the principles why our experience must so be. The fact of sensation is given as | primitive ; the intellectual operations, distinguishing in I 120 THE INTELLECT. observation and defining in attention, bring the content in sensation distinctly and definitely into consciousness. A complete object is thus before the mind, and we are Baid to apprehend it, in thus getting it within the muid'a griisp, out of its former darkness. In its appearance in die light of consciousness, it is known as phenomenon ; and inasmuch as it has been taken through the medium of sensible organs, it is termed a perception. As the impression on the organ has been made by an existence from without, the phenomenon is ascribed to outer nature as some quality of an external world, and perceived through an external sense. Thus may all the facts of external perception be gathered, as inclusive of all the phenomena of human experience by sensible organs. The affection of the organ is from some external impulse, and no product of the mind, but inasmuch as the living mind is diffused through the entire organism, this affection becomes the occasion for an intellectual agency to distinn-uish and define it in the clear liorht of conscious- neas, and thus to know it as phenomenon. In this is readily determined what is objective and what subjective Thus : I perceive heat. Is this heat in my mind, or in the object ? That which has affected the organ, and become a content in sensation, is from the outer world, and that which has distinguished and defined it, is from an inner agency. The affection has been given, the peculiarity and the form have heen found,' That which has come in from without is to the mind wholly indistinct and indefinite, until in its own agency it has determined what, where, when, and how much it is. THE SENSE. 121 It thus follows, that what has been given to the sense is not the thing itself. That outer thing has in some waj affected the organ and induced sensation, and this sensa tion it is which the intellect distino-uishes and defines 1 • CD I Not the thing itself is made object, but the color, sound,! smell, etc., of the thing, appears in consciousness. The ] outer thino; has so affected me, that I have come to know I it m such a mode of its being, and apprehend, not it, bu+ its qualities. The quahties are real, and not mere seem ing phantasies, inasmuch as there has been a real impres \ sion and thus a real content in sensation ; but they arel only real qualities of things, and not the things them ' selves. I perco^'ve a redness, a fragrance, a silky smooth ness, throu^n diffei^nt kinds of sensation ; but I c' n^ by any sense perct ve he . Jse, which i. red, irag.uni, smooth, etc. Moreover, these qualities, as gained by i sense, are single and separate in the consciousness. ' They are constructed one by one, and perceived only as Sf> many different phenomena, and cannot by any obser- vation or attention be put together as the attributes of one substance. They are known in isolation, and not in their connection. And still farther, to the sense all/ things are in a perpetual flow. The phenomena are to it, only as they are in the consciousness ; and in this, there is a continual arising and departing. One pheno- menon is rapidly succeeded by another, and with contin- aally varied sensations continually varied phenomena arc perceived. And not merely do the phenomena pass rapidly on and off from the field of consciousness, but the ajgne phenomenon to the sense is in continual succession. ' 11 122 THE INTELLECT. The ravs of light which give the phenomenon of color, and the undulations of air which occasion sound, are for no moment the same. The impressions on the organ are a series and not a constant, and thus the content in sen- sation is in no two instants unchanged. Like the river, its stream is perpetual, yet never the same. In the sense, all objects are coming and going, and the object itself is also never in one stay. Thus, the outer world .comes into the consciousness only as to its properties, and we perceive the qualities of things only ; and those, single, separate, and fleeting. Had we only the faculty of sense, in observation and attention, our experience could have no orderly connections, but would be only a medley of coming and vanishing appearances. Section II. The Internal Sense. — The internal sense is a faculty for knowing the inner mental exercises. When considering the fact of sensation, we found the liv- ing mind itself an org'an for recei\'ing impressions froAi its own action, and thus taking a content in sensation with every affection which its own movement induced. The action in its different capacities of knowing, feeling, and willing gives the different Icinds of content for thought, emotion, and volition ; and, in each capacity, the varieties of content for peculiar thoughts, emotions, and vohtions. The distinguishing; and defininf]:; inteUcc- tual agency constructs these into complete phenom.ena aa readily as the organic sensations. Inner exercises are hereby perceived as distinctly and definitely as outei qualities, and an emotion of joy or an act of choice is as TSD SENSE. 123 clearly in consciousness, and as truly phenomenon, as a red color or a fragrant smell. The difference in the forms, which can be given to innei and outer phenomena, is alone here remarkable. The affection induced in the mind by its own action does no I have local position and topic^ expansion, as does the con- tent of sensation in the eye, or the moving organ of touch, and thus no occasion is given for the intellectual agency in attention to stretch itself over any spacial limits, and determine any locality and shape to an mner phenomenon. Only duration of period, and amount of mtensity, can be determined for any iimer exercise, and thus no forms of space can have any relevancy to mental exercises. The conditions of space are wholly impertinent to all mental being and action. The members of the body, and the body itself, can give affection to its own organs, and tlius its quahties can be constructed in space and known as having extension ; and the mind may be conceived as somehow diffused through the body, and thus having locahty ; but this is tliouglit only and not perceived, and thought even through the medium of a supposed con- tainer, without being able to think where in the body the •nind is. The mind appears only in its acts, and to these no place, but only period can be given. A thought has a when, but not a where ; a limit in time, but not a sha])e ia space. As in the outer, so also in the inner sense, the phen > mena are given single and separate. The thought, the emotion and the volition are constructed in the consc ious- ncss one by one, and we thus perceive the exercises iso 1^4 THE INTELLECT. late one from the other. The act, and not the actor, appears ; and no operation of construction, in attention, can connect the separate acts as together dependent upon one mind. Were there only the faculty of sense, we should know the mental phenomena only as successive appearances dancing in and out of the consciousness. These single exercises are also in continual flow. The acts not only pass away, to be followed by others, but the same exercise is a continually recurring energy, and no thought or emotion can stay in the consciousness for any two moments the same. The affection in the sensation is only a perpetual repetition. In the sense, we thus know how the outer and the inner affects us. The sensations induced become, in con- sciousness, the qualities of an outer and the exercises of an inner world. They appear, and we know them ae appearances, and apprehend them as the modes of a real existence ; but we only perceive that wiiich is attributed to things, and not by any means the things themselves. All perception is an immediate beholding, inasmuch as the object is put face to face before the mind in the light | of consciousness. Perception is thus intuition^ in the sense i of immediate view in consciousness. There is another meaning of intuition, which is a looking into things them- Bolves, and is more properly insight^ but which is for the reason and not the sense, and is distinguished as rational intuition. A sense intuition is an immediate beholding in consciousness. This is empirical intuition when the con- tent in sensation is distinguished and defined, arid thus a real phenomenon is given. It is the same, whether of outer THE SENSE. 12!A or inner phenomenon : a perceived thought oi emotion la a real phenomenon, immediately beheld in conscioutiness, as much as a perceived red color or a fragrant odor. It is a pure intuition, when the object in consciousness is wliollj the production of the intellect, without any con- tent in sensation. An intellectual operation, which shaU be the same as an attending act, except as there is n( content in sense to condition it, may construct any mathe matical figui-es, or arithmetical numbers, and such pure forms in the consciousness are what is meant by pure intuition. All pure mathematic is thus a science of pure intuition, inasmuch as all its modified diagrams and com- plicated numbers are purely intellectual creations, with no content in sensation. The scheme, after which such pure diagrams must be made, is furnished by the reason, and thus no animal can be mathematician, but the con- struction itself is altogether a Avork in pure sense. Section III. Fancy. — When the constructing agency, Avith no content in sensation, builds up for itself seeming mental pictures as the semblances of real phe- nomena, it is termed Fancy. The objects are mere phantasies as a seeming, and not veritable phenomena as an appearing; and, though the work of an image- making faculty, they are not properly termed products of the imagination. Imagination proper is the work of the pure understanding, as Avill be hereafter explained, but the fancy belongs AvhoUy to the pure sense. Its semblances are grouped together from a capricious mterest in the mere seeming, and not from any judg- 11* 12G THE INTELLECT. meiit or taste, and are thus wholly fantastic, ^vith neithei the principle of utility nor beauty. This faculty of the pure sense is lively in all the fii*st wakmgs of the mind, and the earlier da\niings of self-conscious- ness. In a disturbed sleep, the fancy is ever busy, and the semblances come and depart in grotesque combina- tions and successions, or in more regulated order from previous habits of association, accordingly as the mind is more or less lost to all self-consciousness. There is also much day-dreaming, or castle-building in the air, which is but the empty reverie of an idle fancy. The half-stu- por of an opiate obscures the self-discrimination and sets loose the fancy; and the horrible hamitmgs of delirium tremens^ or mania a' potii^ are the demons of fancy which torture the burning brain of the habitual mebriate. Chil- dren live in their fancies, and the savage muid is always fantastic. Their ornaments, amusements, music, and pictures, are destitute of all living art, and are only a gaudy display of that which is most ostentatious or strik- ing to the senses. It is only after much cultivation, that the mind rises from the sense-play of the fancy, to the works of imagination and the creations of genius; and only the most cultivated can appreciate the highest products. CHAPTER n. THE UNDERSTANDING. The Understanding is that Intellectual Faculty bj which the single and fleeting phenomena of sense are knoAm as quaUties inhering in permanent things, and all things as cohering to form the universe. In the sense, the opera- tion of the intellectual agency is engaged in puttmg the content in sensation, within limits ; in the understanding, this agency is employed in putting that which has been ^^ defined, into its grounds and sources. The first is a Ov conjoining and the last a connecting operation. The^ sense-object is a mere aggregation ; the understanding- object is an inherent coalition. In the sense, the object appears ; in the understanding, it is thought. One is a perception ; the other is a judgment. We may best apprehend the pecuhar work of the understanding, by looking through the whole connecting process. When distinct and definite phenomena are perceived in sense, they are not allowed to remain single and separate in the mmd, just as the sense has taken them. A farther operation succeeds, and a ground is thought in which they inhere, and the single phenomena become thus knoAvn as the connected quahties of a com- non substance. The redness, the fi-agrance„ the smooth- less, etc., which have been separately attained by diflfer^ 5nt senses, are successively thought into one thing, and 1-8 THE INTELLECT. the mind forms the several judgments that the rose \9 red, and is fragrant, and is smooth, etc. And so, also, with the distuict and definite inner phenomena. The thought, emotion, voUtion, etc., are successively connected in their common source as the exercises of one and tho same agent ; and thus the successive judgments arc formed that the initid thmks, and feels, and wills. A common 8ul)ject is thought for the qualities, and a com- mon source for the changes, and they become thus con- nected as substance and qualities, cause and events. And still farther, the diOferent aabstances are also thought as standing ki communion together, and reciprocally influencing each other ; and causes and events are thought as produced the one from the other, and thus irj dependence ; and in this way, the cohering things and the adhering changes are all connected together in one nature, and judged so to inhere mth each other through space and time, that they all together make the umvei*se. The permanent substance, in which the quaUties are thought to inhere, is no perception of the sense, and can be gained by no analysis or generalization of that which sense has perceived, but is itself wholly a new conception in the miderstanding. As distinct from phenomenon^ it may be termed notion. The former is perceived m the sense, the latter is thought in the understanding. The notion is made to 8tand under the phenomena and con- nect them into itself, and the intellectual faculty which performs this connecting operation, is properly known as the understanding. THE UNDERSTANDING. 128 The genesis of the understanding-conception, as notion, ina.y be apprehended as follows : Some external thing is supposed to have occasioned the impression made upcn the organ, which induced a sensation ; and then this sensation, and not the thing that made the impression, is taken up bj an intellectual operation wliich distinguishes and defines it, and thereby makes it to appear complete in consciousness ; and thus the phenomenon is solely the mode, in Avhich the external thing has revealed itself in the sense. This external thing, thus makmg itself to be known in the sense only by its phenomenal qualities, is thought to be the ground of these qualities. Inasmuch as it cannot appear, it can be no phenomenon ; but inas- much as it is necessarily thought as the ground of the phenomenon, it is notion, and stands under the pheno- menon. We thus call it substance (^suh stans^. This substance, in the thought, is that Avhich has separ rately given to the different organs their particular phe- nomena ; and these are connected, in the judgment, as the several qualities all inhering in the substance. The substance cannot appear, and therefore the connecting operation cannot be in the hght of consciousness, as was the constructing act of attention in the sense. The know- ing of the understanding cannot therefore be intuitive. Each separate phenomenon is severally brought to the common substance and connected with all the others in it, and by this discursus of the thought through the com- mon substance, the knowing of the qualities as inhering in it is discursive. The connection of quality and sub- Btc.ace is not perceived, but is thought. 1.30 TUE INTELLECT. Again, when the quahties of the same substance altei in the sense — as when water congeals, or becomes vapor — it is thought, and not perceived, that anotlier substance lias been brought in combination with it, and so changed it as to modify its phenomena; and these new plienomena are thus known as events^ which have come into the cor^ sciousness through the sense by this modifying came. The substances do not at all appear, and therefore their modifying action cannot be perceived ; but the under- standing thinks this action to be the cause of the altera- tions of the phenomena, and brings these altered pheno- mena, as events, discursively to the cause and coimects them in it, and thus judges them to be successive events depending upon their causes. The whole process is a thinking in judgments discui-sively, and not a perceiving of objects intuitively. Lastly, when the qualities of different substances are altered reciprocally one with another — as when one body is put in motion and another body is retarded, by their contact — it is thou2;ht in the understandiniz; that there has been an efl&ciency in each body, which has thus altered the phenomenon in each — on one side from rest to motion, and on the other from a o;iven de2;ree of motion to a sloAver. The substances are not themselves per- ceived, and therefore the action and reaction cannot bo perceived ; but the understanding discm-sively connects the begun motion and the retarded motion, in the red- procal efficiency from the contact, and thinks the two events as co-etaneously occurring, and thereby judgea these phenomena to cohere in the reciprocal causation. THE UNDERSTAiS"DING. lol In the use of these notions of substance, cause, and reciprocal efficiency, all separate qualities, and all events , in sequence or communion, which are perceived by sense, are disoursivelj connected into permanent things, and sue- 1 ccssive events, and cotemporaneous occurrences, accord- i ing to their respective notional bonds, and are all thus \ bound together in a judgment Avhich makes them to be Dne Nature of things (of nascor) ; a growing together ; ; a concretion ; and in this an indissoluble and uni- ' versal Avhole. What the same intellect has intuitively , defined in the sense, it here discursively connects in the j understanding, and thereby comes to know, in a judg- \ ment, the fleeting appearances as the altering qualities 1 of permanent things, and these permanent things as con- stituting one universal nature. The knowing of the phenomena was a perceiving ; and the knowing of the things, and their coalescing in one whole of nature, is a judging ; and the difference of these two intellectual operations demands that they be referred to the distinct functions of two different faculties. It is the proper work of the understanding to connect the phenomena of the sense into one nature, as a universe. It is, moreover, competent to the understanding to think in judgments, without any phenomena being given through the sense. The pure understanding can take its cwn empty forms, and use them as readily and as logi- cally in all modes of connecting in judgments, as it can the actual phenomena which are given in the conscious- ness. This operation is in pure thought, and as thus excluding all content of sense is mere abstract thinking ; 132 JHE INTELLECT. but itc comiected judgments from pure forms may be iudetiuitely comprehensive, and are as valid in theii* con- clusions as when it is connecting appearmg quahties into real things, and real things in a Avhole of nature. That the ek raents for abstract thinking may be given, there Jiust be found several pai"ticular faculties for attaining and using them, and these faculties belong to the province of the understanding, and as mental facts for a system of psychology need to be attained at this very point of our progress. They will be given m separate sections, and tlie consideration of them particularly will, in the result, give a conclusive view of the whole logical process of abstract thmking. The examination of neither of them will need to be very extended. Section I. Memory. — Tliis is one of the most pro- minent, and m many respects one of the most important faculties connected with knowmg. It follows perception, but is preliminary and auxihary to all processes of tlmiking in judgments. AVhen phenomena have been apprehended in clear consciousness, they do not altogether pass from V the mind in vanishing from the light of consciousness, but C leave what may be termed their semblance, or representar tive, \ ohind them. The faculty of retaining these repre- sentatives of former perceptions is Memory ; and the act of recalling them into consciousness is Recollection. The Memory differs from the Fancy in this — that the former retains only the representatives of perceptions ; the latter constructs new forms, and modifies old recollections into new combhiations. The Memory is the faculty for retaiih- V THE UNDERSTANDING. 13o ing repi esentatives of ivhatever has once been in the con- 8clousn places in space and their periods in time had first been. ;^" The sense-space-and-time is through experience ; the reason-space-and-time is independent of all experie ace, for it must first have been, as condition that any experi- Bnce can be. In the sense, space and time are the con- THE REASON. 161 tingent and transient places and periods of passing phe- Qomena ; but in the reason, space and time are the necessary and immutable, the universal and eternal con« ditions of all place and period for any phenomenon. The insight of reason penetrates the very act of perception, and determines what it is, and what is conditional that it could have been, and thus comprehends both perception and the phenomena given in it ; and thereby determines for every object a whole of space, of which the place it occupies is an immoveable part, and also a whole of time, of which the period it occupies is an unalterable portion. No mere abstracting of phenomena can give a whole of space and of time ; for the phenomena have given each its own place and period only, and the place and period as wholly conditioned by the phenomenon ; and should the phenomenon be abstracted, its place and period would fall away from the sense with it, and leave nothing of either space or time for the consciousness. By the light of reason upon all the operations of our senses, our perceptions of objects come to be in place and period not only, but in a place which is a determined portion of one whole space, and in a period which is a determined por tion of one whole time. We perceive objects, and know them to have a determinate place in the one space, and a determinate period in the one time. So different is perception to a mind with reason from a mind without it ! And so also, in the understanding we think, and from our Bndowment of reason our judgments become greatly modified. The mere action of the understanding would think the phenomena perceived in one place and period 14* 162 THE INTELLECT. to be connected in one common ground, and thus make them to be the quaUties of a common substance, and would know the aggregate quahties and substance as one thing. And so, moreover, it would think any alteration of these phenomena, as originating in some change in the substance induced by the working of some efficiency upon it, and trace all observed alterations in the same thing up to the source of some efficiency working upon the substance, and would thus know the changes as depen- dent upon their cause. As experience goes on, it would perpetuate this thinking in judgments, and connect all phenomena into things, and all changes into their causes, and thus perpetuate a determined order of experience as the series of events pass onward through the conscious- ness. But such connections of phenomena and events would be effected no farther than the phenomena and their changes occurred in the perceptions of sense. AU the material thus afforded in perception would be worked up into things, and causal series, by the understanding; but the connecting operation would be effected only as the occasion was afforded in the objects perceived. The remembrances of the past would induce its expectations of the future, and an animal sagacity might arise that would observe prudential considerations in adapting itself to the anticipated occurrences. But the present connec- tions and the anticipated occurrences would all stand in the occasions furnished by the experience of the senses. The judgment would find all its data from the perceptions actually occurrii g, and would thus be exclusively a think- ing and judging according to sense. Those phenomeiia, THE REASON. 16S vrhich came together iii one place and period would be thought as connected in one thing, and those events, which came together in one order of succession, would be thought as connected in a series of causes and effects ; but no judgment of a substance or a cause would arise aa conditioning the phenomena and the events, and only as suggested or implied in the phenomena and events themselves. All is posterior to the perception, occar sioned by it, and conditioned upon it, and taken as a conclusion from it. The whole thinking and judging is prompted from the perceiving, and has no impulse nor guide beyond the facts as exactly given in the sense itself. So the connections are, but nothing determines why they so are. I But in the possession of reason, the human mind has this judgment in experience, not only, but a judgment over experience, determining how this must be. By its own insight into sensation as a fact, it determines for it that it must be a product, and that antecedently to an impression upon the organ of sense something already is, or that impression could not be. It determines that the mode in which this something exists must condition what the affection, and thus what the content in sense shall be ; j and consequently, that all changes in the organic affection, and thereby all alteration of the phenomena perceived, must have had their previous changes in that substantial something which produced the organic impression. It *ihus determines that a substance is conditional for all phenomena, and that a cause, inducing some change in the substance, is conditional for all alteration in the phe- 164 THE INTELLECT aomena ; and hereby comprehends, universallj, pheno mena in their substances, and changes in their causes. The reason truly penetrates the understanding itself, and ^ determines what is conditional for all thinking in judgr- »• ments. It concludes not merely, as in the understand- ing simply, that the manner of the appearance indicates a common ground for the phenomena, and also a commcn source for the events ; but more than this, that the phe- nomena could not have been, had not their substance pre- viously existed, and the changes in those phenomena could not have been had not their cause previously existed In the light of the reason the judgment is modified from tliis — that these qualities belong to a substance ; and these noAV events depend upon a cause — and becomes the necessary and universal judgment which no experi- ence can give — that all qua.lity must have a substance ; and all events must have their cause. It is not the judg- ment, solely in experience, that the perceived qualities determine for the percipient what the thing is, and that the perceived events determine for the percipient what the cause is ; but that this substantial thing has perma- nently existed and determined what its qualities shall be, and the successive causes have previously energized and determined what the events shall be. The substance has perdured from the beginning, and all its altered qualities have inhered in it ; and the causes have operated in an unbroken series, and all the changed events have adhered to them. All phenomena are thus comprehended, ihrougb all time, in their permanent substances and successive causes. THE REASON. 165 Section II. The insight of reason finds a BDPERNATURAL IN NATURE, AND COMPREHENDS NATURE BY THIS SUPERNATURAL. — Substances are modified bj contact or combination with each other, and this occar gions corresponding modifications of impression upon the organs of sense ; and, thus, in the ongoing modifications of substances, old phenomena are continually passing awaj and new phenomena perpetually coming in to the human experience. The present perceived phenomena find the conditions of their being in the proximate pre- ceding changes of the substances, and the phenomena preceding these changes had their conditions in the next antecedent changes, and thus backward in all the inde- finite series of change. This linked succession in its adhesions is Nature, and involves a perpetual progress of conditioning and conditioned, as nature goes onward, and a perpetual regress of conditioned and condition- ^-x ing, as nature is explored backward. The one substance, sj, which now appears in the grape, may succesrsively appear .^^ in the phenomena of the expressed juice, the fermented --^ wine, the acetous fermented vinegar, etc. ; and in the same way, with all the changing substances and their events in nature. The onward changes must be thought as a conditioned and determined order of progress. The onward march can never cease, nor vary its order or direction, for the present is conditioned by the past, and conditions all the future. No attempt to follow back the order can ever reach to an unconditioned, for the very law of thought, in an understanding, is the connecting through some notional efficiency, and the highest point 1 66 THE INTELLECT. attained must still be as it is, because it is ao conditioned by something going before it. The most subtle and profound German thinking haa found no Tvaj to leap these barriers. Its, so called, absolute thought is still strictly conditioned thought. The Hegelian process of development is by perpetual duplications and identifications of the thought — going out from absolute being, through origination, into deter- mined existence, and thence into being joro se, etc., etc. — but is still as thoroughly determined through all the process by antecedent conditions as the materialism of the French Encyclopedists. The ideal Spirit, as original in this process of development, is utterly misnamed the. Absolute, for he is bound ever more to continual repeti- tions of himself in the living act of progress. The free thought, as it is termed, is free only in this, that it makes its own limits and annuls them, and in this free process of making and annulling its own limitation, it holds on in its progress of development by a necessary law. Just as the vital spirit in the germ, by its living act, goes out into the bud and limits itself by it, and then annuls the bud, and its limitation in it, by positing the bud in the permanent blade, and thus the tree grows as the bud is perpetually both produced and also left stated in the stock ; even so does the world-spirit develop itself, and in its eternal living action, limiting and annulHng tlie limitation of itself, nature grows, and the universe is in constant becoming and remaining. There is no absolute, for the only supernatural is the intrinsic spiritual life of nature herself. So true is it, that the most athletic lo^* THE REASON. l67 cal thought, in chase of the unconditioned being, leaves even his conception altogether unapproachable. In its highest ascent, its movement is still discursive, and it is forced to connect the present, by some medium, with tlio past, and its highest conception of an originating act ia precisely the same as that of every subsequent progress- ing act — a so called absolute spirit, existing only in the perpetual acti\dty of a negation and affirmation of itself. Is man's highest faculty of knowing, that of the logical understanding? then is the conclusion of Sir WiUiam Hamilton impregnable — "the human mind can never know the unconditioned." We cannot look beyond the prison-wjalls of nature. An absolute being is inconceiva- ble. If we assume to worship in any other than nature's temple, we must " worship we know not what," and inscribe our altars " to the unknown God." But it is itself a perpetual demonstration against this conclusion, that the human mind never gave its submis- . sive assent to it. However entangled and fettered by its logic, it has ever fought up against the delusion, and resisted that sophistry which would hold it down by a per- petual affirmation that its first must still be conditioned to a higher. All the grave injunctions to humility, and distrust of human faculties, are here impertinently apphed. It is no impulse from pride, and conceit of false philo- sophy, which so untiringly resists all attempts to make the mind ignore the being of its God. To reason's eye, "his eternal power ajid Godhead" are '^ clearly seen in the things that are made." With no attempt to compre- hend the Absolute himself, the human mind does compre- 1G8 THE INTELLECT. hend universal nature in the Absolute, and stays its own conscious dependence upon liim. The reason, by its insight into nature, determines for nature an absolute Author and Finisher. There is no attempt to attain the Absolute from the conditioned processess of logical thought ; but, inasmuch as human reason knows itself, and in this, knows also what is due to itself, and is thus a law to itself; so it knows that the Absolute Spirit must have within himself his own rule, and stand forever absolved from all rule and authority imposed upon himself by another. In this is the complete idea of a personal, abso- lute Jehovah, competent to origmate action in himself, without its being caused in him by a higher efficiency. The existence of such a being, the human reason is con- strained to see in his works, and to know him as creator of nature, and the governor and user of nature at his own pleasure. When the logical understanding would run up the endless series of conditioned connections, the reason cuts short the vain chase, and interposes the clear con- ception of the self-sufficient originator of being, and in him finds a beginning, and in him also a sovereign guid- ance to a foreseen termination ; and thus encompasses and comprehends the processes of nature, in an absolute Being who has begim and will also make an end. What, to the mere understanding, must be an endless series, with no possibility to reach a first nor to forecast an ulti mate, has thus, in the comprehending reason, become a work and a providence ; the creature of an independent and self-existent creator; and in this absolute creator THE REASON. 169 the human mind finds its God, and owns its rightful allegiance. Section III. The reason attains its 0"vyN ideals eF absolute perfection. — WTien any phenomenon is apprehended in the sense, there may be made an abstrac- tion of all that was a content in sensation, and there will thu3 remain in the consciousness only the pure form which the attending operation had constructed. This pure form is limit and outhne only, and has m it no contained qual- V ity. The fancy, also, may construct any such pure forms originally from itself, without any previous content in sjnsation, and may so modify the outline and shading in space as to represent any figure in nature, or to give new figures of its own construction which have no patterns in nature. The mind may thus amuse itself in a perpetual sense-play of abstractions or fanciful productions ; taking the forms ofi* from nature, imitating the forms in nature, or constructing wholly new forms of its own. Such are the forms, when given in colors, that interest children, savages, and all uncultivated minds. Such, also, are mainly the forms, a httle more chastened by the judg- ment, which appear in calico-prints, curtains, carpets, etc. Such a mere sense-play interests only as successful imita' cion, or as presenting some striking novelty. At the highest, it is only a chastened fancy and has within it no DDea:'dng, inasmuch as there is nothing of the insight of reason, and thus nothing properly rational. But our inward emotions give themselves out in certain forms, and passions express themselves in peculiarly 15 170 THE INTELLECT. delineated features, or in specially modulated tones The insight of reason directly detects the feelmg in the form, and finds the hidden meaning; utterin"; itself through the arranged measure. It is thenceforth no mere fancy- sketch and sense-play, but living sentiment ; the dead form is now quickened by the presence of an inner spirit* The image, the picture, the tune, are all inspired; and in tliis insight of reason we immediately commune with a beating heart and a glowing soul, under that which the sense has presented to us as empty form. The sense can construct the measures and outhnes ; the understanding can arrange these constructions, according to experi- mental convenience and utility in attaining its ends ; but the reason, only, reads the living sentiment embodied in the form, and discloses the hidden meaning of each pecu- liarity of modulated tone and dehneated figure. This utterance of human sentiment in sensible forms gives beauty ; and when the disclosed sentiment is that of a superhuman spirit, and we stand awe-struck in the pre- sence of an angel or a divinity, the beauty rises propor- tionally and elevates itself to the sublime. And now, the reason, in its insight, reads the hidder sentiment expressed in all the forms of art and nature, not only ; but in its own creative power, it originates the pure forms which enshrine the particular sentiment the most perfectly, and in these attains a beauty or a sub- limitj- which is wholly its own, and can reveal itself to no otlier eye. This pure form, created by its own genius, which fullest and highest enshrines the intended senti- ment, is the absolute beauty ; the beauty, to that creating tHE REASOI^. 171 reason, which is unsubjected to, and whoiij absolved from, the determining measures of any applied standard ; and which, as the heau ideal, will itself me^^sure and criticise every other form it may find in art or nature. We may say that the artist '' studies nature ;" or, even that he " copies nature ;" but we do not mean correctl}" by this, that he goes hunting experimentally through nature till he finds the right particular pattern, which he takes cfi", and henceforth makes to be his guage and measuring rod for all other forms of beauty. He could not so study nature and select his copy, were it not true that he already had his own archetype, which told him how to study and where to copy nature. The nature he studies and copies is that which is nascent in the sphere of reason, and by which he can determine when nature itself is natural, and of all her beauties can say which is most conformed to the higher archetypal nature. This is TO KAAON, THE BEAUTIFUL : comprehending within it all that is beauty. So also, in all arrangements and combinations after the guiding direction of a principle that puts every element in organic unity mth the whole, and thereby makes it an organized system, reason has its insight that immedi- ately catches the hidden truth, and philosophically reads and expounds the whole combination. There is an idea which runs all through it, and determines every part of it, and in the accordance of such idea in the mind with such an znforming law in the system, there is truth; and such truth, so rationally apprehended, is science. But, as in beauty, so here in truth, the reason can carr^ 172 THE TKTELLECT. foFM ard some necessary principle in the building up of a system, which shall the most completely enshrine ita truth, and make it to subsist m itself impervious to any other eye ; and by this its ovm. systematic idea, it will measure and criticise all the organic combinations in nature, or in other men's published philosophies. Nei- ther nature nor pubhshed sciences vnW be of any signi- ficancy, nor possess any philosophy, till the insight of reason shall find within them a law corresponding to her own pure idea. Her own ideal embodiment of truth is comprehensive of all utterances that can be given to it, in nature or in philosophy. Here is for the reason TO AAH0E2, THE TRUE: the absolute measure of all science. And so, finally, the insight of reason into its own being gives, at once, the apprehension of its own prerogatives, and its legitimate right to control and subject nature and sense to its ovro. end, and hold every interest subordinate to the spirit's own excellency. That which, to its own eye, will most fully secure and express its own worthi- ness, must be its absolute rule, and will contain an ulti- mate right which is comprehensive of all right that it can recognize. The absolute Reason demanding, in his own right, the subjection of all nature not only, but of all finite reason to his own end, will give an exemplification of the highest possible claim of authority and sovereignty ; and the finite rational personality will, from an insight into the attributes which are essential to this absolute Jeho- vah, see that his own worthiness is most exalted in gi^^ng full effect to these claims of the Deity, and bowing before him in profoundest adoration. In such subjection and THE REASON. ITS adoration is fclie highest claim satisfied, and this inherent excellency of the Absolute Spirit is comprehensive of all moral dignity. He is TO AFAGON, the good: and all finite goodness fades in his presence. Thus it is that reason is the measure of all things, and in its own distinctive function is comprehending faculty for all things. Its absolute ideals stand out unmeasured and unsubjected, and bring all else within their measure and authority. Sense cognizes the phenomenal, the understanding cognizes the substantial, and the reason cognizes the absolute. Section IY. Reason inspires both fancy and IMAGINATION, AND THUS IS GENIUS. — The mere fancy is solely a sense-play, and has no meaning ; the imagination embodies thought in all its productions, and has a mean- ing for the judgment, and an adaptation to some end. The naked imagination is, however, wholly from the understanding, and while it embodies thought, calcula- cion, adaptation, and thus applies to use and convenience, it has no sentiment ; no warm glow of feeling. It is the faculty for planning, inventing, adapting means to ends, and arranging in view of results. When the activity accomplishes this with the facts of nature in hand, it ia judgment ; when it uses past experience, and goes with some remembered pattern out to nature to find and arrange its materials, it is the reproductive imagination ; and when it invents wholly new combinations of forces and influences, it is the productive imagination. But when the reason comes to this work, it infuses a senti- 15* 174 THE INTELLECT. ment into the fancy, and puts a living soul into every combination of the mere imagination. It inspires the whole image, whether from the fancy or the imagination, with livinor feehno; and overflowing; emotion. Its combi- nations are not merely contrivances, embodying thought and plan, but they all express an inner life, and have a true biography, and are thus properly ideal creations. The characters and the plot may have an infinite diver- sity, but the inner life, which the insight of reason sees to be the nature for such a creation, rims through and actu- ates the whole. The creation has thus its own inner spi- rit, and the outer life conforming to it is true to its OAvn nature. It may be such a creation as the empirical nature never knew, but if there is the free utterance of its own spirit, it will not be unnatural. Whether Milton's Satan, or Goethe's Mephistopheles, or Shakespeare's Caliban ; its world is its own, and its entire action in it is true to its ensouled sentiment. Fancy or imagination, thus endowed wdth the higher power of reason, and com- petent to breathe an iimer living soul into its otherwise dead products, becomes genius, and is the prerogative of man only as he is rational spirit. The animal may both fancy and imagine, but no brute was ever a genius. The brute may perceive more acutely, and judge according to sense as accurately, if not as extensively, as man ; and thus the pure construc- tions of fancy, and the arrangements of the imagination may be effected by brute mind ; but man only has reason superinduced upon the sense and the understanding, and thus man as rational, and not as animal, can give forth THE REASON. 176 the creations and inspiration of genius. In tlie gift of reason, the human is a being different in hind from the brute, and this difference is made to pervade his entire mental organism. He is thereby elevated to the sphere of the moral and the personal, the spiritual and immor- tal; becomes competent to know himself, and to compre- hend nature in its Author and Governor; may commune m the regior of art and poetry, and be both philosopher and religious worshipper. SECOND DIYISION. THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. The human mind may be said to have a susceptibility to every varied form of feehng, that may come into con- sciousness. It is susceptible of joy, wonder, hope, the emotions of beauty, the obUgations of morality and reli- gion, the affections of sympathy and love, etc., etc., and thus, taken in detail, man has many susceptibilities. But the term is here applied in the most comprehensive accep- tation, inclusive of the entire sentient or emotive capacity of the soul. Sensibility might be used as expressive of the same thing, but it has been more familiarly applied to the capacity for organic sensation : and sensitivity, and emotivity, have also been used as the scientific terms for the capacity of feeling ; but they are less famihar, and in literal meaning less expressive of the capacity intended. All feeling must be taken under the condition of some antecedent impression or affection of the mind ; and if antecedent to consciousness, as in organic sensa- tion, tlie affection on the organ is the immediate occa- eion ; or if subsequent to conscious perception, as in all DEJ'INITIONS. 177 emotions, the object apprehended is the immediate 0(5car sion; and thus, in all cases, feeling is a susception; (sub capiens,') and the capacity to thus take under an antece- dent affection is properly a Susceptihilitv. This capacity opens before us one of the most interest- mg fields in psychology for our investigation, in which lie all the joys and sorrows incident to humanity, and where must be found al] our subjective motives to voluntary action. Its careful consideration is the more important, since most writers on mental science have omitted alto- gether to give it a classification as a distinct capacity, and hctve confounded its facts with those of the will. Others recognize it as distinct from both the intellect and the will, and yet in no case, so far as I know, has it received a very full, nor, according to my view, an accurate ana- lysis. How very important such analysis is, in avoiding much confusion and error relative to responsible action, mil become quite manifest in our subsequent investiga- tion. The intention is to give such an examination and analysis, as will enable us to classify accurately the lead ing distinctions of feeling, and more especially as they stand related to the will, and look toward moiiil responsi- bilities ; although a detailed examination and arrange- ment of every particular feeling will not be necessary, nor in the present work attempted. The leading distinctions of feehng are numerous, and it is of importance that we discriminate them, for many purposes, though for the great end most in view here — in their bearing upon voluntary agency — such particular discrimination is of less consequence. A concise expla- llO THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. nation and consequent definition, of these distinctions ta feeling, m\\ here be sufficient ; while we shall afterwards take up the grand generic distinctions that more imme- diately look towards moral responsibility, in separate Chapters. "VMien any impression is made upon any portion of the bodily organism, that is in communication with the bram as the grand sensorium, we have a sensation. The same also is true, when any inner agency of the mind afiecia itself, and thus induces an internal sensation. All this has been sufficiently considered under the head of Primi- tive Facts, and we need only refer to what has already there been attained. The sensation is antecedent to consciousness, and conditional to the perception of any phenomenon. We take, thus, sensation, in the absence of all distinct and definite consciousness, and we can only say of it, that it is mere hlind feeling . No object is thereby given, and no separation in consciousness of the mind from its objects, and thus, as yet, no self-con- sciousness is attained. Still, this blind feeling is not uidifference to some end. There is an intrinsic conge- niality to certain results, which can only be known as a natural sympathy, or spontaneous attraction to a parti- cular end, and thus in its blindness, the feeling has its impulses in very determinate directions. It is feeling in a Hving agent, and prompts the agency, in the direction thus inherently congenial with itself. The impulses of such klind feelmg are known as Instinct. This is the same, from the lowest to the highest orders of sentient beings, who ever act in the absence of self-con- DEFINITIONS. 179 Bciousness. The earth-worm, or the muscle, may have its simple and imperfect organization ; and thus upwards, through all ranks of animals, to the most complicated and completed organizations of man ; the sensation in each m]\ be as manifold as the occasions for impressions upon living organs ; but in all cases, it will be such, and so much, blind feeling, going out towards its congenial ends and thus, action only under the impulses of instinct. There is no light of consciousness, or of reason to guide ; but the whole is controlled by that original creative act, which determined the congenialities of the feeling to its objects. Brute nature, unendowed with reason, but yet fitted with its adaptations by the Absolute Reason, is everywhere instinctively acting out its most rational issues. Thus " the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times ; and the turtle, and the crane, and the swallow, observe the time of their coming." — Jer. viii, 7. Thus the ant lays up its winter store ; and the bee con- structs its surprising mathematical cells; and in many ways, the instinct of man attains its salutary ends, where all his high endowment of reason would fail. When feeling is no longer blind, but has come out in consciousness, so that it may properly be known as a self-feeling, it at once loses the directing determination of the natural sympathy, or congenial attractiveness to its end, and is thus instinctive impulse no longer. Tlie agent feels in the light, and no more waits on the instinc- tive prompting, but seeks the guidance of conscious perceptions. Not feehng blindly impelled, but feeling waitirg )o be consciously led to its eni, and thus an 160 THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. appetency to its object. In such a position, sensation has risen from an instinct to an appetite. The feeling ia living and active a^ before, and tends towards its conge- nial end ; but it has raised itself above, and thus lost, ica instinctive deterimning, and waits on perception in expe- rience to guide it. Thus the blind feeling of want in the infant, that instinctively reaches the breast, becomea conscious hunger in the man, and looks around for an object to satisfy it. VVTien the feeling, as appetite, has gratified itself in an appropriate object, and that object has thereby become known as competent to impart this gratification, and thus there is no longer an appetency for something that may gratify, but the object that gratifies is itself known ; the sensation has risen from a mere appetite, and become a desire. Hunger craves without a known object, but aa an appetite it seeks for such object ; desire also craves, but it is for a specific, known object, and as having already its understood capacity to gratify the feeling. In aU desire, there is a cra™g; a longing that would attract the object to itself, and as it were fill up a void in us by it ; but when the feeling would go over to the object, and permanently ally itself with it, it has lost all its characteristic of a craving, and as it were an effort at absorbing it, and thus is no longer a desire, but an incli- nation. A desire craves, and at once expires in exhaust- ing the object ; an inclination bends towards, and permar nently fixes itself upon the object. There is that in the constitution, or that which has been subsequently acquir<^d, which determines the direction BEFIinTIONS. 18i of the inclinations, and without which, and against which, it would be impracticable that the particular inclinations should be experienced. This constitutional or acquired impetus to a given inclination is a propensity. We shall subsequently better see how propensities are to be con- trolled, and how inclinations that are determined from them are nevertheless responsible; but at present the sole object is, to define the different leading divisions oi feeling, and thus discriminate them in our consciousness, and not to look at them in their different aspects toward moral accountabUitj. When the mental activity is passing on in even flow, whether thinking, feeling or willing, there may suddenly on occasion arise a perturbation of feeling, a ruffling and disturbing of the placid tranquil experience, and which, for the time, to a degree confuses and bewilders; arrest- ing all onward movement to an object, and holding the susceptibility in a state of agitation, without any prompt- ing of inclination or direct craving of desire ; and such a state of feeling is properly termed emotion. The feeling in desire and incHnation has its distinct object, not only, but also a distinct action towards it ; the feeling in emo- tion has also its object, but it is as if in commotion before it. In wonder, I stand before the object astonished ; in awe, I stand confounded; in joy, I stand transported; in fear^ I stand transfixed ; in all, I stand before the object with feelings so confused and disturbed, that there is nc direct current of feeling towards any end. That normal state of the susceptibihty which predisposes it to emotion, is excitability ; and this may be a general sensibility, 16 182 THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. that awakes in agitation -ttdth every changing wind that passes over the mental surface ; or it may be a tendency to agitation fr jm certain sources only, and thus a predis- position to particular characteristic emotions. When the onward movement of desire, or inclination, towards its object is suddenly invaded, and the "whole mind put in confusion, and yet the emotion, instead of anx^sting the current, goes on with it, and makes it to be a perpetually perturbed and agitated flow of feeling ; the desire or inclination being so strong, that the emotion does not suspend nor change its direction ; it is then passion. The distinction between emotion and passion, is, that simple emotion is agitated feehng with no cur- rent, while passion has the strong current of desire still rushing onward to its object, though so agitated as to pursue it blindly and furiously. And still farther, the distinction between inclination and passion is, that simple mclination is an even flow, while passion is that flow disturbed by a strong emotion. A sudden danger to a child may so arrest the current of natural affection, th;it the parent stands transfixed in an emotion of fear ; or it may be that natural affection rushes on in spite of all disturbance, and strives to rescue in a frenzy of passion. Othello's love for Desdemona is not arrested by lago's representations of unfaithfulness, but only terribly agi- tated, and pushes on in a frenzy of jealous passion. No increase of emotion or of inclination can make passion, but strong emotion and inclination must be blended, to induce passion. DEFINITIONS. 183 When the susceptibility is quickened by the presence of a rule of right, given in the insight of reason, there is at once the constraint of an imperative awakened ; the conviction of duty arises, and the feeling is that of ohli- gation. In desire, the feeling goes out in craving for its object ; in inclination, it goes out to rest upon its object; ui obr gation, the object comes to it, and throws its impe- rative bonds upon it. The forecasting of a time of trial, and arraignment before some judicial tribunal, awakens the pecuHar feeling of responsibility ; and the inward consciousness of having resisted the current of obligation, is accompanied with the feeling of guilt ; and the appre- hension of exposure, and subjection to sovereign displea- sure, induces the feeling of remorse. \Yhen the iaclination goes out to its object, under the determination of a permanent propensity, it is affection. If this permanent propensity is constitutional, whether it be temperament of body or original conformation of mind, it is natural affection ; if the propensity is in a state of will as reigning disposition, it is moral affection. All affections are feelings, but the prepense direction to them may come from physical constitution, or from ethical disposition. This may be sufficient for the discrimination of the hading acts of the susceptibility, without here attempting to find every specific feeling that may come into human experience, and classifying them all under some of the above definitions ; yea, it may be that there are other generic forms of the activity of our sentient nature, and thus that farther discriminations might be necessary, 181 THE SUSCEPTIBDJTV. before a^ e should make our analysis complete in this direc tion ; but the above is sufficiently comprehensive for a]\ necessary direction and illustration, while the designed order of classification in our psychology will now pro ceed, under quite other divisions of the feehngs. With out particular regard to the above discriminations, any farther than the obvious propriety of applying terma according to distinctly apprehended meanings, the sus- ceptibility will be analyzed, according to the permanent capacities in human nature, in which it has its distinctive 3xercises. Man participates in both an animal and a rational nature, and thus his susceptibility to feeling will oe modified accordingly. As rational, he is also free spirit, and his feelings must be modified by the disposi- tion given to the free spirit. There will thus be occasion for the three Divisions of the Animal, the Rational, and the Sjnritual Susceptibihty, which will each be investi' y;ate(l under its distinctive Chapter. CHAPTER I. THE ANIMAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. All our emotive capacity ^vaits upon our intellectual capacity. Only as the intellect is aroused and goes out into specific acts of knowing, can our emotive nature be excited and go out in specific acts of feeling. Antece-, dently to all self-consciousness, the knowing and the feel- ing are confusedly blended together, and the mind has in this state no capacity to any distinct emotion. The one mind becomes capacity for feeling, by producing itself into an emotive state. It is thus a susceptibility ; a capacity for taking feeling, under the condition of a pre- ceding impression made upon it. Inasmuch as man has an extended intellectual capa- city, so his capacity for feeling may be extended, and all varieties of knowing must give their modifications of feel- ing. AVhile, therefore, the human intellect operates in higher and wider spheres than the animal, and thus has a susceptibility proportionally elevated ; there is also a sphere of knoAving common to both man and brute, and, in this particular, a sphere of feeling that is to each the same. AVliatever may be the greater clearness and com- pleteness of knowledge in the same field, this will not modify the feeling to make it different in kind^ but only varying in degree. In the man, it will still be animal feeling, and so far as the feeling waits upon the know- IG* 186 THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. ledge given in sense, this will bring no prerogative to the human susceptibility. Here is, thus, the lowest form in which the human susceptibihtj develops itself in specific feelings, and yet a form completely and permanently dis- tinct from that which originates in man's higher rational being. The importance of this division in our classifica- tion is in the fact, that there is this inherent and lasting distinction in human feeUng, separating the sensual or animal feelings from all others in our experience. The Animal Susceptibility is the capacity for feeling which has its source in our animal constitution. The exercise of this susceptibihty must be in such feelings only as terminate in the sense, or which may come under the judgments of the understanding relar tively to objects of sense, and can never transcend the limits of the natural world. Were the capacity for feel- ing restricted to this form, we could never rise into the region of art, philosophy, ethics or reli^on ; and all the elevating and ennobling emotions, wliich dignify man as a being of taste, morals, or piety, would be wholly excluded. Confined to the sphere of the animal constitution, all the feelings are impulsive and transitory, coming and depart- ing with the impressions made upon our constitutional organization. They are thus desultory and involuntary, and can be restrained only by reciprocal counteraction ; the agent controlled only by setting one opposing feeling over against another, and strong desire repressed only by strong fear. In all the working of this susceptibility, man is only animal, though from the completeness of con- itituti)nal organization, an animal of the highest grade. THE ANIMAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 187 The feelings of the animal susceptibility may be Arranged under the following sections : — Section I. The Instincts. — The lowest form of mental excitement is found in organic sensation, and ivliich is induced by some impression made upon the organ. It must precede, and is conditional for, an awak- ening in self-consciousness. In mere organic sensation, the intellectual and the sentient are both present, for the impression gives its aflfection to the mind itself through the sensorium; but they are present as wholly indiscrim- inate, and therefore neither as distinct knowledge nor distmct feeling. We recognize the whole, not in con- sciousness but only in speculation, and can apprehend the sensations only as mental facts of knowing and feeling, in their confused and chaotic being. The intellectual agency as distinguishing and defining, must move over this chaos, before it can be brought out in clear form. But precisely in this state of undiscriminated mental feeling, there is an inherent impulse to action in a deter- minate direction. The feeling has its own congeniality to certain ends and objects, and thus spontaneously goes put under the determination of this attractiveness to its object. The sense guides itself, by its innate adapted- ness to certain ends, and thus acts directly towards its congenial objects, before the mind can discriminate these objects in consciousness, and guide itself to them In its Dwn light. The reptile turning under the tread ; the young of animals or man clinging to the breast ; the adult just rousing from a sleep or a swoon ; are all iUus- 188 THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. trations of the impulsive nature of instinctive feeling. 1, has many degrees of obscurity from its darkest strag- glings up to its half-conscious agency ; but whether in man or animal, it is everywhere, so far as it is instinctive feeling, the constituted congeniahty and adaptedness of the sensation to its given result, and thus an impulsive working to its end in the absence of self-consciousness. Among the examples of instinctive feelings may be given, the impetus to the preservation of life ; the shrink- ing from pain and death ; the sudden closing of the eye, lifting of the hand, or dodging away of the body, when a ay danger threatens ; and, in fact, the whole action of nfancy, the tossings in a troubled sleep, the dehrium of a fever, the movements of the somnambulist, and the marvelous exhibitions of mesmerism ; all are the prompt ings of blind sensation, in the absence of self-conscious- ness, and are determined m their intensity and direction, solely from the impulse of an intrinsic congeniahty in the sensation to the end induced. What is meant by the instmct is, not the affection in the organ, but that conge- niality or attractiveness in the sensation towards the end, which at once gives the impulse in that du^ection. Hun- ger in the infant and the adult may be the same sensa^ j, tion ; but in the infant, there is an instinctive prompting to the object of gratification, which is wholly lost in the direction that the light of consciousness gives to the adult. The migrating bird not only feels the air in which it moves, but this sensation has its attra';tivenesa towards the warm gales of the south, when the rigors of winter are approaching. TSE ANIMAL SUSCEPtlBtLITY. 189 Section II. The Appetites. — When any constitu- tional sensation is awakened, and the instinctive impulse whicl] determines it towards its end is lost in the rising light of self-consciousness, there is still the feeling seeking its end, though waiting for the perception in conscious- ness to guide it. In all such cases of seeking its appro priate object of gratification, the feeling is properly termed an appetite. It is often expressed as a longing after its end, and this is only descriptive of the feeling, as if in its seeking it elongated itself in the direction towards its object. There are some sensations which seem eminently to have this appetency to a particular end, and which are thus more emphatically termed appetites, as hunger and thirst. In a peculiar state of the great organ of diges- tion, when the stomach is empty of food, and the gastric juice, with the movement of its own surfaces, acts directly upon its own substance, there is induced a peculiar sen- sation common to all animal being, and which at once seeks for some congenial object to relieve it. This is known as hunger, when the stomach is empty of food ; or as thirst, when destitute of drink ; and these seekinga or longings in hunger and thirst are eminently appetites. But all other constitutional sensations, which go forth in longing for some congenial end, are equally appetites, and belong here to this division of the animal susceptibility.,] The sensation of fatigue, which longs for rest ; of pro- tracted wakefulness, which longs for sleep ; the longing for health in sickness, and for buoyant spirits in nervous dejection ; the going forth of animal inclination between 190 THE SUSCEFflBILIl r. the sex 3S ; and the longing for a shade from the heat, and for a covering from the cold ; they are all sensations seeking for gratification, and are as truly appetites, as the seeking in the sensations of hunger and thirst. To these should also be added the longings which go out for gratification in the sensations of all other organs. The eye and the ear, the smell, taste and touch, give sensa- tions that long for gratification as truly as the uneasiness of an empty stomach, and as thus truly appetitive, the seeking feeling should, in each case, be knoAvn as an appetite. When the experience has tried the particular object that gratifies the longing for relief, and thus the sensa- tion now goes out specifically for a particular object of ! known gratification, the appetite is then lost in a desire, i and the general seeking or longing for relief becomes the direct craving for a distinct gratification. This may also be so agitated by the sudden presentation of the object, that the desire or inclination goes out furious and fren- j zied in enjoyment ; and in this hurried rush of feeling, the desire becomes a passion. The appetites may thus readily be raised to desires, and these excited into passions ; but through all these forms of seeking their objects, they are still animal feehng only, and exist in brute and man of the same kind, however they may be modified in forms or degrees. It should also be noted, that the appetites are nearly alUed to the instincts, differing fron them only in rising to the light of self-consciousness, and thus liable to sink back again to a mere instinctive impulse, when an absorption in the pleasure of gratifica- THE ANIMAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 191 don SO far obscures the discriminations of seif-consciouf^ ness. An animal and a man may be so intent in gratify- ing appetite, and absorbed in the pleasure, as to lose all consciousness of what is about them, and what they are ; and thus absorbed, their gratification is as instinctive aa that of the infant at the breast. The opposite feelings to appetite, as loathing or satiety, j need not be particularly considered, inasmuch as they follow th» same laws, and are subject to the same deter- minations, except as throughout they are the converse of the former. Section III. Natural Affections. — There is a love which is solely pathological, originating in constitu- tional nature, and determined in its action and direction by an innate propensity. Such an inchnation differs wholly from that spiritual affection which appropriates its object freely, and strikes its root deeply in the moral disposition. Of this last we shall speak fully, under another division of the susceptibility ; but of the former only are Ave now concerned to attain an adequate con- ception. There is in the parent a deep propensity to an anx- ious and watchful solicitude for the welfare of the child. This is strongest in the breast of the mother, and though the most tender and wakeful towards the child in infancy, yet is it perpetuated through all stages of experience until death. A benevolent provision is in this made for the care and nurture of the child in its helplessness, far more efiective than any governmental regulations could 192 THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. Becure. Tlie strength and tenderness of maternal love may be regulated and elevated bj moral and religious considerations, and thus come to partake of the charac- teristics of a virtue, but in so far as any such considera- tions mingle, they are wholly foreign to the maternal inch- nation as here contemplated. The Avhole feeling is that >f nature, and to be destitute of it, in the case of any mDther, is to be simply unnatural. The inclination of the father towards his child, finds its origin, also, in a natural propensity, but its strength and constancy depends mainly upon the action of connubial love. If the mother be not herself loved, the love of the father to his children will be easily overborne by opposing considerations. In law- ful and aflfectionate wedlock, the natural regard for the offspring is secured perpetual and active in both the parents. It is useless to enquire for any parental instinct, by which natural affection might be directed to a child not otherwise known ; for one condition of natu- ral parental affection is, that the child be not only the parent's own, but known to be so. Tliat the mother deems the child to be her own, is a necessary, and the sufficient condition, that her love should go out towards it. This love is strongest in the parents ; reciprocated in the children towards the parents ; mutually directed towards each as brothers and sisters ; and extended to all the kindred, in modified degrees, according to near- ness of relationship and circumstances of communion. Nature itself prompts to communion, as occasion rr^ay offer, through all the family circle, but if c'rcumstancea prevent all intercourse, the ties of natural affection THE ANIMAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 193 become thereby mucli weakened. In the meie aiimal, tiie maternal solicitude appears, occasionally connected with that of the male where they procreate in pairs, but continued only during the helplessness and dependence of the young, and lost when they are competent to pro- vide for themselves. It is because man can trace the lines of kindred descent, and diffuse his communion through all the circle, that he comes to perpetuate and extend his family affections beyond those of the mere animal. The occasion for their exercise and cultivation is thus given in man's higher endowments, but the source of natural affection, in man, as in brutes, is solely in con- stitutional pathology. It is nearly allied to the appe- tites. The feeling has its intrinsic congeniality with its object, and adaptation to its end, and thus seeks its object as an appetite ; but it differs both from an appe- tite and a desire, in that it seeks its object for the object's Sake, and not that it may absorb it into its own interests. It is not merely an inclination, as tending towards, that it may connect itself with, the object ; but it inclines toward the object, solely that it may subserve its welfare. It is thus an affection ; but as merely pathological, and finding its whole propensity in constitutional nature, it is natural affection only. Section IY. Self-interested feeling. — An appe- tite seeks its end in gratification, and a desire craves its object that it may fill itself with it ; but in distinct self- consciousness, I may come to appreciate any object solely m the use I may make of it for my happiness. I con* 17 194 THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. template myself as a creature of appetites and desires, and the objects which my appetites seek and my desires crave I contemplate, simply as ministering to my happi- ness in gratifying these appetites and desires ; and with the objects turned towards me in such an aspect, a large variety of feelings may be induced, all of which will agree in this, that they wholly terminate in my own inte rest. It is not a mere seeking that terminates in its object, nor a craving whose only end is to be filled by the object ; but a self, that can estimate both appetites and desires with all their objects, as they bear upon its own enjoyment. All the feelings here contemplated will not go out direct towards any object, but will all be reflex upon the self, and terminate solely in self-interest. They will be impossible to him who could not contemplate him- self aside from his desires, and estimate his very desires and their objects as the means of so much self-enjoyment. Thus I shall have the feeling of joy, in the possession of such desires and their objects, as bearing upon my happiness and not for the object's sake. In the loss of such objects I shall feel grief, not on their account, but my own. The feelings here will be mainly emotions, excited in reference to my own immediate interests in the objects. Joy in the prospect of possessing, and grief in the danger of losing ; hope and fear ; pride and shame ; tranquility and anxiety ; animation and despon dency ; patience and perplexity ; all rjiay be awakened as I am made to view objects in their varied relations U my own interest. TffE ANIMAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 19b Here also come in all the feelings connected with tht f acquisition and possession of property. All objects that ' minister to mj wants touch, at once, the feeling of self- interest, and excite the propensity to get and retain for future use. As -it is mj enjoyment which is to be secured, so the objects must be in my possession, and mj right to them capable of being defended against the claims of any others. An immoderate anxiety in secur ing such possessions is the feeling of covetousness, and an immoderate eagerness to hoard them is the feeling of avarice. If this goes so far as to deny itself the enjoy ment of the use, and makes mere accumulation the end, the feeling then becomes the passion of avarice, inas- much as the inclination to hoard is disturbed, and per- verted from its end. When money, or that which may be exchanged for the objects that may minister to our enjoyment, is accumulated, we have the secondary or derived feelings, which regard the possessions not in themselves, but in their relative bearing upon such as we may want and may by their means attain. There may also be a complete passing over of the feeling to the sim- ple object of exchange, and in the perturbation of the passion, that thing be hoarded for itself. So the miser transfers his feeling from the objects of gratification the money might get, to the money itself, and refuses all use not only, but all accumulation of anything but hard specie. Here, also, are found the feelings which originate in a ge}ieralization of consequences. Experience abundantly teaches both man and animals, that certain preseni 196 THE SUSCL'P'iTBILlTY. gratifications of appetite are followed by greater com ing evil. They learn bj experience to avoid certain practices, that would in themselves be agreeable ; since from the past, they know how to anticipate the future conser^uences. Such a generalization of experience, and deducing prudential considerations therefrom, very much modifies the feelings. Present desire is suppressed, and a provident foresight awakens new inclinations. The feelings of self-interest are addressed from a new quar- ter, and the judgment of an understanding according to sense is made a strong means for exciting the suscepti- bihty. The man may take into his estimate a far broader field of experience, and deduce a much wider series of consequential results, than the animal ; but the intellec- tual operation is the same in kind, and the prudential feeling is of the same order in both. It is solely animal feeling, awakened by calculations from animal experi- ence, and prompts to action in the end of self-interest only. Mere prudential claims never reach those emo- tions, which are stirred by the authority of a moral impe- rative. There may be the gladness of success, or the regret of failure ; the gratulation of prudent manage- ment, or the self-reproach of improvidence ; but there can never be the moral emotions of an excusing or an accusing conscience. From considerations of self-interest there also arise the many painful and dissocial feelings, which are directed against whatever is supposed to interfere -sN-ith self-enjoy ment. Envy and jealousy, hatred and malice, anger and rerenge, are all aroused amid the colHsions of opposing THE ANIMAL SL'SCi]PTli5lLlTY. 197 interests. These may all become m(.iral vices from theii: connection with an evil will, but the animal nature alone has within it the spring to all such naturally selfish emotions. Section Y. Disinterested Feelings. — There is in human nature a strong propensity to society. A rational and spiritual susceptibility elevates to social communion in much higher spheres, qualifying for scientific, moral, and religious intercourse ; but the yearnings of the animal nature itself are for company and fellowship with those of its kind. Brutes are more or less gregarious, and even the animals that five mostly in solitude, seem to be forced to this isolation, from the scarcity of their prey or the necessity of their hiding places. This social propensity stands connected with many feelings which find their end in the welfare of others, and that have no reflex action and termination in self. Inasmuch as they refer to the interests of others, and are exclusive of self-interest, they may be termed the disinterested feelings. The self is gratified in their exercise, inasmuch as it is so consti- tuted that it enjoys the play of these emotions for others ; but the end of the feeling is in others, not in self, and it thus comes in as one of its own enjoyments, that it should feel for its fellows. Here are found all the natural sympathies of our nature. Other men have all the varied feelings which belong to our own experience, and the witness of these feelings in others naturally enkindles a kindred feehng m ourselves. Except as the selfish feelings have been 17* 108 THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. allowed to predominate, and thus to lepress our disiute* rested emotions, we shall naturally rejoice with the joy- ous, and weep with the weeping. According to the varied experience of our fellow-men, our own emotions will be excited; and we shall feel pity or fellow-pleasure, condolence or congratulation, just as we see others to be affected. Such animal sympathies extend to all sentient being, and the happiness or suffering of the brute crea- tion strongly affects the susceptibihty of man. Even animals themselves deeply participate in these sympa- thies, and are moved by the glad sounds or the cries of other animals. There is often a quick sensibility in very immoral men, and the natural sympathies of some good men are slow to be aroused ; and thus quite aside from all moral disposition, the natural feelings of men may render some far more amiable than others, just as some animals may enlist our sympathies much more strongly than others. . The disinterested feeUngs may be modified by a calcur j lation of general consequences, in the same way as before of the self-interested feelings. Experience may teach as plainly what is best for others, as what is most pru- dent for myself; and this general consideration of conse- quences will at once awaken its peculiar feelings, in refer- ence to others on whom the consequences are to come. All the feehngs of kindness, or natural benevolence and philanthropy, are here exhibited. They prompt to the denial of self-gratification for the happiness of others ; or rather, these disinterested feelings make the man the most happy, when he is making others happy. The THE ANIMAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 1?9 whole is pathological only, and is land, just as the ani mal is sometimes kind to his fellow brute ; and in this working of natural sympathy, many acts of self-denial are put forth, and human distress relieved, where the moral susceptibility has not been at all moved, and the charitable deed has had in it nothing of ethical virtue. FJven animals sometimes deny themselves for their kind, >\nd thus manifest this natural kindness of feehng ; and in man, the disinterested feelings may be more compre- liensive, and his calculation of consequences for other's benefit far more extended, and thus his plans of benevo- lence may reach much farther than any provisions the animal may make ; but in one case as in the other, the whole may be the impulse of animal susceptibility only. [n such cases, nature, not moral character, must have ill the credit of the kindness. CHAPTER n. THE RATIONAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. hi the rational, we rise to a sphere of feehng altogether above anything reached in the animal susceptibility, and in which man as rational only, and not at all as animal, participates. We have already found the reason to be organ for apprehending absolute truth ; and faculty for comprehending in necessary principles and universal laws ; and such higher capacity of knowledge is occasion for a higher sphere of feeling, and which will be as different m kind from all exercise of the animal suscep- tibility, as the cognitions of the reason diflfer from the perceptions of the sense and the judgments of the under- standing. The feelingg of the rational susceptibility are as truly grounded in constitutional nature as those of the animal, and are therefore still removed from all moral accountability in their origin, inasmuch as they are necessitated in the nature which is given to man ; but these are found in man as he is constituted rational, while the former belong to him as he is constituted ammal being. All the rational feelings accord in this, that they are awakened by some insight of the reason, and nevei from any perceptions of the sense, nor any judgments ol the understanding according to sense ; and hence thej must be known, as originating in an entirely distinc sphere of our generic susceptibility, which must be care THE RATIONAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 201 fiillj and accurately discriminated. But though they are all of this one higher order of feehng, yet will they be found to differ in other things, each from each, according to the different directions of the insight of reason ; and therefore presenting, of the same order, still many ^'arie- bie?. These varieties will be clearly distinguisliedj and the general investigation will fully determine the line of separation between them and all feelings of the animal being. We may give all these varieties imder the following sections : — Section I. The Esthetic Emotions. — The field of the Fine Arts separates itself from all else, in \drtue of the artistic products which have theii* significancy only tc the insight of reason, and this field, on that account, admits of only such emotions as the rational insight into these artistic products occasions. They awaken no feel- ings of appetite, nor the cravings of desire, but these products of art attain their whole end, in the contemplar tion of that which the insight of reason finds mthin them, and which is always some sentiment of a hving being. All that belongs to this field of the fine arts is therefore properly termed cestJietio. QAU&riTtxhg, conversant with sentiment, sentimental.^ The wbole feehng may be included in what is termed the love of the beautiful. These aesthetic feelings may be brought up and dis- criminated in consciousness, as facts to be recognized in empirical psychology, by the following considerations. 202 THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. The feelings of living beings can be represented to others, in certain shapes to the eye and certain tones to the ear. It is not of any importance what the consent of color that fills the shape, nor Avhat the content of sound that fills the tone ; the feeling is expressed in the pure shape or the pure tone, without any regard to the matter 'vhich fills either of them. Shape is given limit in extent, and tone is given limit in intensity ; and as thus limited, we may apply to both shape and tone a common term expressive of the limitation, and call liform. The living feeUng will thus always be expressed in some pure form. Now the animal eye and ear can perceive definite figure and definite sound, and thus apprehend the pheno- mena of nature when the content for them is given in sensation ; but it is to the mind's eye and ear only that pure form, without all content, can be given ; and when the pure form is thus apprehended, it is not any sense, but the insight of reason only, that can recognize the living sentiment which may there be expressed; The feeling embodied in the form can be perceived by no mere animal ; it is object only to the organ of reason. Such rational apprehension of living feeling, in any forms, will also awaken its own peculiar feeling in the bosom of the observer; and as the insight was all of reason, so the susceptibility awakened is wholly rational, and com- pletely distinct from the animal susceptibility. ^nd now, this rational insight may attain the expressed sentiment, and awaken the consequent feeling, from the thousand scenes and sounds of nature, or from painting, IHE RATIONAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 20S statuary, and music ; the contemplative mind at once mterprets them all, and thus truly commimes with both nature and art. To the sentient spirit, visions and voices are on every side, and it catches each peculiar sentiment of the sunset, the moonlight, or the tempest ; the field^ the grove, or the deep forest, as readily as those inscribed by the pencil and chisel in the galleries of art : it reads the meaning of the sounds in the breeze, the stream, or on the ocean shore, as distinctly as that which is expressed in the measm'ed numbers of poetry and song. It is as if the cold marble had its beating heart, which was send- ing its warm pulses of feeling through all the statue ; as if nature herself had a li^dng soul, which was looking out through all her features, and expressing before us all its deep emotions ; and so soon as the piercing insight catches the living sentiment, our own souls respond in sympathy, and we feel at once the spirit within us, to be kindred to that which is glorying without us, and in a thousand ways addressing itself to us. This affection is faintly induced in us by the presenta- tion of some mere sense-beauty, and the reason is applied to partially illuminate the fancy, when flowers are made to have a meaning, and the trees to speak, and birds and beasts communicate in language, and thus sentiment comes out in fable : but far more adequately and com- pletely, when all sense and fancy are discarded, and nn iuspired imagination awakes to catch nature's true expressim, and with no phantasm, no fable, but in strictest reality, the rapt vision of the seer detects the genuine living sentiment that verily is there. This it is 204 THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. which fills all natura with beauty, when we read her expressions of sentiment, either as joyous or sad, and find them such as our human hearts can reciprocate, and with which our mortal feelings can blend in sympathy \ but at once all nature rises to grandeur and sublimity, when we catch the sentiment of the supernatural, and read any whore the uttered feeUngs of an approving or an offended God. So a creative genius may originate some new ideal of beauty or of sublimity, expressing the given sentiment more perfectly than nature anywhere presents it, and may labor to put his ideal into some form on the canvas, or on the marble, or in the epic verse, or in the notes of music ; and just so far as our insight can penetrate hijj inspiration, and sieze the very sentiment which he has embodied in his artistic product, will our feelings be kindled in sj^mpathy, and our souls glow with his enthur siasm. Reason only can speak to Reason. This onl} can embody the sentiment, and this only read it as thus expressed ; and thus the rational soul, and not the ani- mal, can be touched with beauty, and roused by sub- Umity, and be conscious that it stands face to face with another living spirit, communing directly and intensely in one common sentiment. Section II. Scientific Emotions. — All true sci ence is a comprehension of its subject in its ultimate principle and necessary law. Rightly to philosojjhize is to take some necessary truth, and bind up all the apper- taining facts in systematic unity by it. If the necessary THE BATIONAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 205 and universal law for the facts cannot be jet attained, the facts cannot yet be subjected to science ; and the whole subject waits for its philosopher, as the movementa of the solar system long waited for Newton. No science can be made of mere facts ; they are but its elements, and must be held in combination by some principle which conditions the facts to be, and to be just as they are. If mere omnipotence make facts to be, but follows no a! 'priori law beforehand determining how the facts must be, the whole is a mere arbitrary jumble of existences, as destitute of all possibiHty of science to the maker as to any outside observer. All induction of facts is with the assumption that such a conditioning law exists, and in the direct interest of finding it ; if it be assumed as a deduc- tion from a long list of consenting experiments, the general law thus assumed gives merely inductive science; if the law itself be seen in the pure insight of reason as a! priori necessary for the facts, and thus conditioning the facts, and therefore that so sure as the a priori principle is, so sure the facts themselves must be, then is the science itself absolute in its absolute principle, and is an a' priori^ or transcendental science. Philosophy is thus a seeking for truth, and can never rest satisfied until it is found in its own absolute being. The principle by which she binds up all her facts in order, and in the light of which she expounds them all, must be seen by her in its o^vn necessity and universality, and that the whole process of the philosophizing ultimately strikes its root in the rear son, or she cannot yet be satisfied with her work, nor feel justified as having yet accomphshed her mission. 18 206 THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. Now the feeling, which gives its impulse to all such activity, is the love of truth; and all attainment of truth awakens its own peculiar emotions in the mind ; and thus, all scientific feeling must necessarily originate in a rational, and can never be educed from any animal sus- ceptibility. The Absolute Reason has put his 0"vvn neces- sary and universal laws in all nature : nothing exists as an arbitrary or anomalous fact, but all is as the a' priori principle in the creating of nature conditioned that it must be : and thus the power, which gave birth to nature, was determined in its action by absolute truth, and is therefore absolute wisdom ; and all sympathy ^nth the truth of nature, and all impulse to the study of nature, and all the emotion excited by the successive degrees of insight into nature — reading her deep secrets and detecting those inner laws which have bound her from the beginning, and which are themselves the accordant counterpart of those eternal archetypes that were in the creating mind before the world was — all these elevating and ennobling feelings are among the prerogatives of our rational being over our animal nature, and belong to man and are found in man, because the reason in his o^vn soul can stand over against the reason hid in nature, and look its truth directly in the face, and know it, and love it, and commune with it, as both having tL>e same conscious divine origin. The same organ that reads the sentiment in nature, detects also the inner laws of nature ; in one IS seen beauty, and in the other truth ; and all the emo tions of each are in the one rational susceptibility, differ ing only as the direction of the insight varies. THE RATIONAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 207 Section m. Ethical Emotions. — The reason hag an insight into itself, and knows itself, not relatively only as distinct from animal being, but directly and particu- larly in its own prerogatives and capabilities. The spirit itself knoweth the things of the spirit ; its own spiritu- ality, and in this its intrinsic dignity and excellency. In thus knowing itself, it knows what is due to itself ; what it has an absolute right to claim from others, and what ia the inherent behest of its own being that it should do for itself. Reason is thus ever qutpnomic ; carrying its own law mthin itself, and, from what it knows itself to be, reading its own law upon itself, and binding itself at all times to act worthy of itself. That it should in any way deny itself, and act for some end that was other than its own worthiness, would be to degrade and debase its own beino;, and thus to make reason no lono;er reasonable. This gives an ultimate right quite other than the useful and the prudent. By generalizing what is, wo learn what is useful and thus what is prudent for ourselves, and what is useful and thus what is kind or benevolent for others ; but we cannot thus determine that which is. and from the generalization of which we get the prudent and the benevolent, to be right, and cannot thus say that either prudence or benevolence is a virtue. If nature is not as it should be, then its working is to be resisted, and as far as possible counteracted, both for ourselves and others, no matter what injury nature thus working wrongly may do to us or others for it ; i. e. no matter, as nature wrongly is, how imprudent or unkind our resist- ance of it may be. But by the direct insight of reason 208 THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. into itself, and seeing what is due to its own excellency, we find at once the law written on the heart, and by which we can judge of all experience in nature whether it be such as it should be, and thus whether prudence to ourselves or benevolence to others, in following out the generalizations of nature, are virtues or not. The ulti- mate rule is determined, not by the enquiry, what may the endless ongoings of nature do for me ? but, what does the worthiness of my own rational being demand of me ? Such rational insight aAvakens its peculiar feelings, and in which no animal perceptions nor judgments accord- ing to sense can possibly enable us to sympathize. We may have all the feelings w^hich prudence or kindness involves, through the excitement of our animal suscepti- bility — for the rules of prudence and kindness may be determined by just such intellectual operations as the animal can perform — but we can never have the feelings which the ultimate right occasions, except as in our rational beinor we have the insi2;ht to find the absolute rights of reason itself, arid therein see what its own excel- lency demands. All the former are solely economic emotions, and are of the animal nature ; the latter only are ethic emotions, and are of the rational susceptibility- These feelings come mainly under the working of natural conscience, and as they are of so much moment in all that regards our moral and accountable being, it is important that they receive a more extended examination. We thus distinguish the source of all our ethical feelings as originating in one particular susceptibility which is known as — THE RATIONAL SUSCEPTIBILITr. 209 THE CONSCIENCE. Tlie distinguishing prerogative of the reason to kno\v itself, and thus in all cases of self-reference what is due to itself, is not a mere dry intellectual apprehension, but is accompanied with a feeling of constraint or obligement that is known as duty. The knowledge of what is due, and the feelins; of constraint to secure that what is due siall be rendered, is duty ; and both are properly included in the term conscience. Not mere self-knowledge, but this knowledge accompanied with its imperative, is to iTuvs-^oV, the QO^scientia^ which we have now to consider. There is the intellectual act — which has by some been solely taken as conscience — and the awakened feeling of obhgation — which has by such been called the moral sense — both combined in the completed work of self- knowledge, and each would be inefficacious to fix the sentiment of duty without the other; and yet, as \hQ feel- ing is the most prominent in the consciousness under the pressure of duty, it is mainly of the susceptibihty that conscience is predicated in common use. In this sense we so consider it here, and define Conscience as the sus- ceptibility which is reached by the insight that deter- mines) a rule of right. The conscience, as a susceptibility, will be farther explained under the following divisions : — 1. Different applications of the rule will modify the feeling of conscience — The rule may be viewed in refer- ence to ivhat is to be done. When the claim of duty is felt antecedently to the act, there is always a distinguish- able feeling ^f crnscience in regard to the rule. It may 18* 210 THE SUSCEPTIBILfTY. be a claim viewed as resting upon another,^ and the feel* ing awakened is one of conscience. Thus Paul speaka of the conviction one may have of what another ought, or ought not, to do, and calls it " conscience." " Con- Bcience, I saj, not thine own, but of the other." — 1 Cor, X, 29. This might be fully expressed by one man saying to another — 'I am persuaded in my conscience that such is your duty.' It may be a claim viewed as resting upon myself. So again, Paul speaks of his prejudiced appre- hension of duty as conscience, when he says, " I verily thought with myself that I ought to do many things con- trary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth," — Acts, xxvi, 9; for he subsequently says of it, "Men, Brethren, I have lived in all good conscience before God unto this day." — Acts, xxiii, 1. This might be directly expressed by the man in saying, ' I feel bound in conscience thus to do.' Or, the rule may be viewed in reference to ivhat has been done. AYhen an imperative is felt to have been applicable, but the action under it has already occurred^ there is also a very distinguishable feeling of conscience, accordingly as with or against the imperative. It may be in reference to w^hat another has done. Thus Paul and his fellows-laborers did w^hat others thought they ought ; and this conviction of others is termed " con- science," — "by manifestation of the truth, commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God." • - 2 Cor. iv, 2. This may be plainly stated by one man to another in saying, ' I conscientiously commend, or I conscieni ously condemn, your conduct,' It may be in THE RATIONAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 21\ reference to what I my self ha,ve done. Thus the Scrip- tures speak of " a good conscience," — 1 Peter, iii, 16, and of " an evil conscience." — Heb. x, 22. When I view mj conduct as conformed to the rule, I shall feel self-approbation ; and when as contrary to the rule, I shall feel self-condemnation ; and I can directly saj, ' I have an approving conscience ;' or, ' I have a guilty conscience.' These varied feelings of conscience are aU from an apprehension of the rule of right in some aspect, and can be awakened only in such an apprehension. I may see that I have been imprudent or unkind, and feel regret or ashamed ; but only as I see that I have violated an imperative of duty, shall I feel guilt, or remorse. Such feelings may sometimes be termed mo7'al feelings, but tliis is only because they have their connection Avith moral and responsible action, and not that the workings of con- science are themselves participants in moral character. The action of conscience is necessitated, and as truly in constitutional being as an appetite, and cannot be deter- mined voluntarily. Whether good or wicked beings, all must approve of the right and feel obligation, when it is apprehended ; and all must feel complacency or remorse, as they see they have kept or violated it. Wilful and persevering violence to conscience may make it callous to all feeling, and for such desperate perverseness the man must stand responsible. Such are spoken of as " past feeling," — Eph. iv, 19 ; and as " hav- ing their conscience seared with a hot iron." — 1 Tim. iv, 2. But this effect upon the conscience, and all the feel- 212 THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. Ings any way induced in it, are of nature and not of the will ; and are not thus moral, in the sense of direct responsibility. 2. Tlie operation of conscience is ever in accordance with the apprehension of the rule. — All awakened suscejw tibility is as the apprehension of its appropriate object. As the painting is apprehended to be beautiful, or the philosophy to be true, such must be the feeling awakened thereby, and no change of the feeling can be made but by a change in the apprehension of the object : and thus also with the conscience. It can be aroused to feeling by nothing but an apprehension of a rule of right, and the feelings will follow the apprehension whether it be correct or erroneous. No conscience can feel obligation to what is apprehended to be wrong, nor other then obli- gation to what is apprehended to be right : and in the same way after the act ; no conscience can feel remorse for apprehended well-doing, nor other than remorse for apprehended evil-doing. The conscience, as a susce^i- bility, can never act deceitfully. As the light reaches it, such must be its consequent feeling, and thus be ever true to the intellectual apprehension. A good man is not to be disturbed by the suspicion, that perhaps the feelings of his conscience may have been delusive ; nor the pangs of a bad man relieved by any persuasion, that perhaps his remorse is from a false conscience. When conscience approves, the act in that point is virtuous ; and when it condemns, the act in the point of condemnation is vicious. No matter if the rule was really a nullity, and conferred no obligation from TSi: RATIONAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 213 »tself ; nor, even if its claims were reallj the verj opposite to what was apprehended ; the action having been as the rule was apprehended to be, the conscience must accuse or excuse accordingly, and the man in that act must have been vicious or virtuous accordingly. The point of responsibility is not in reference to the feeling of the Conscience ; that must be true to the apprehended appli- cation of the rule. Hence Paul decided, that though meat offered to an idol, and afterward sold in the market, had no defilement, because " an idol was nothing," yet if any one who thought differently ate of it, to him it was sin. " He that doubteth is damned if he eat, for what- soever is not of faith" (belief that it is right) " is sin." — Rom. xiv, 23. The feeling of the conscience never deceives. 3. The rule may he ap'prehended partially or errone- ously. — The simple rule of right is in the same ground ever the same thing, and thus, knowing nothing of muta- bility in itself, can never give forth conflictirg claims. But finite reason is not ahvays veracious. The medium through which the rule is brought within the apprehen* sion may give a perverted insight, and thus contradictory obligations may be felt, in reference to the same matter, by two different persons or by the same person at differ- ent times. Conscience may bind in one case, and loose in another. This perverting medium is made an occasion for conflicting convictions of duty. The conscience, aa 3usceptibility, is true in its feelings to the apprehension, 'out the apprehension is perverted. So in the case of Paul, above ; he " verily thought that he ought to do 214 THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. manj things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth," while Stephen would lay down his life, and Paul himself afterwards, in the conviction that no action might be contrary to the will of the Lord Jesus Christ. The rule was not double, in this case, and duty in conflict with itself. The reason's eye, in Paul, was made to look through the perverting medium of pharisaical education nd prejudice. His apprehension of the rule was erro- neous, and the feelings of the conscience went out accord- ingly. And perversions as effectual may originate in various sources. Partial and obscure light may prevent a clear appre- hension, and thus one man have far more adequate views of duty than another — as, a heathen cannot know all the duties of a Christian. A bias of self-interest may induce an obstinate perversion — ^as, the maker or vender of ardent spirits may determine to look at his business through the general custom ; or, the hcense of the civil law ; or, the assumption that another would do worse than himself in his place. A long habit may preclude all examination — as, for a long time, good men pursued the slave-trade. Violent passion may ruffle the mind, and so disturb it as to distort the truth ; and even a fit of anger may be induced, for the very purpose of excluding truth from the conscience. The point for all responsibility, and all correction of conscience, is in the insight of the reason ; not at all in the feeling, which must be as the apprehon- •fy^^,^,,^,,.^J^ Bion. If a false view was unavoidable to the mac, he is not responsible for it; if it could have been avoided, in that, and to just the extent of the neglect, is his guilt. THE RATIONAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 216 Honesty and care in attaining the rule are incumbent upon all, and the sin in a perverted apprehension may be very great. 4. The conscience must he the controlling suscepti- hility. — Tlie animal susceptibility may prompt to action through appetite and desire, and the rational suscepti- bility may also give the impulse to action through the love of beauty, or the love of philosophic truth, and these may sometimes be in harmony with the impulse of duty ; but whenever they may come in collision with the feel- ing of obligation, that must control and restrain them all. Truth and beauty are higher than sensual gratification, but duty is higher than philosophy and art, and thus virtue is above all. In all collision of motive, the appeal to conscience must be supreme. This is abundantly manifest. To violate conscience, for anything, subjects the man to conscious baseness ; and the loss of self-re- spect is the necessary loss of his manliness, and the high- est evil that can be incurred. No added pleasure to any susceptibility could be sweet, when conscience reproached and accused. Not only is conscience found to be the susceptibility that has this highest prerogative ; it mani- festly ought to be so. If we could conceive of a being so made, that appetite might domineer over conscience, and conscience quietly yield as if appetite had the right to be supreme ; it would at once reflect a reproach upon the maker of such a being, and the insight of reason would infallibly announce that he had been made wrongly. A perversion of conscience is therefore man's utter ruin ; and, of all incorrigible delinquents of the claims of duty, 216 THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. we maj saj emphatically, good were it for such that the^' had never been bom. Where the conscience fully controls, the agent is virtu- ous ; and the weaker capacity is as truly righteous, in such a case, as the stronger. But while moral character will thus be as the control of conscience, the moral worth of the agent must also include the capacity. Adam, in innocence, was as truly virtuous as Gabriel ; but the angel, having the higher capacity and thus the greater strength of faculty in righteousness, is of more moral worth than the man. The true dignity must be the com- pound of character and capacity. And as much as con science must condemn for all known violation of duty, as truly as it must approve for all fidelity to right, so it must follow that every moral being carries the elements of his own retribution Avithin him. The material for his own hell or heaven is laid up in every man's conscience. Section IV. Theistic Emotions. — The animal eye can perceive the phenomena of nature, but as there is no insight of reason, it cannot apprehend a God in nature. Inasmuch as to animal being there can be no theistic perceptions, so to it there can be no theistic emotions But in the things that are made, the rational mind of man sees the eternal power and Godhead of the Maker. Nature is comprehended in a personal Deity, who origi- nates it from himself, and consummates it according to his eternal plan. Such recognition of a God, at once occar i sions its own peculiar emotions. Feehngs are awakened that could arise from no other object in the insight THE RATIONAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 217 Man, from his conscious weakness and helplessness, ia obliged to feel his need of such a full source of supply, and his utter dependence upon it. In God alone he lives and moves and has his being, and is utterly empty without this unbounded fullness. Without including here other feelings than such as are necessarily awakened by the apprehension of a present God, it is manifest that such a rational insight must lay its foundation in the mind for its peculiar rational suscep- tibility. Not only can no perceptions of the sense enkin- dle these emotions, but they differ also wholly from such as are awakened by the apprehension of beauty, or truth, or ethical right. They make the man, in his very con- 1 stitution, a religious being. He must feel awe and rever- ence, and entire dependence, in the presence of Jehovah, The very source of all beauty and truth and right ia here, and thus the Absolute Good is known, and in this is an occasion for faith and love and worship, when the willing spirit shall joyfully yield itself in full devotion. Such homage of the spirit will open a new susceptibility, hereafter to be considered as the spiritual ; but the capa- city for this is our rational being as it gives the insight' to a God, and such apprehension of the Deity necessitates, in wicked as in holy men, the peculiarly constitutional emotions we here term theistic. Without the insight of reason, as revealing God in nature, this susceptibility could not be, and with such an insight and revealmg, this distinctive susceptibility must be. Man can no more divest himself of his religious nature and responsibility then he can of his ethical being and obUgation. 19 218 THE SUSCEPTIBILITY Now, in all the above sources of feeling, iEsthetic, Scientific, Ethic, and Theistic, we have a wide sphere of susceptibihty altogether removed from, and elevated above, the animal. And it is necessary to observe, in conclusion, only this, that the impulse to action in all the rational susceptibility is wholly and consciously diflferen* from that of the animal susceptibility. The animaJ nature craves, and makes the man uneasy and unhappy in his want, and forces his activity for a supply. H« must tvork to relieve his want ; he must get happinesi only through toil. But the rational nature knows no uneasy cravings, and demands no toilsome work. It seeks not to devour its object, but simply to contemplate it ; not to use it to the end of filling " an aching void," but lo keep it as having perpetually a serene compla- cency in it. The action that goes out towards it, is ever cheerful and glad, and is thus known as W\q play-impulse . The soul goes out after beauty and truth as a dehght, and seeks virtue and the worship of God as a blessed activity. The Beautiful and the True, the Rignt and the Good, are taken themselves as ends, and contemplated in their own dignity, and giving full complacency in their own excellency, and are not to be degraded as means of gratifying any appetite, nor held as mere utilities for satisfying wants. Our activity is spontaneous and joyou3 as it terminates in either of them, and is never to becomo the forced and irksome toil of trying to make them sub- servient to us. The artist does not wish another to bring out his own ideal forms of beauty for him, nor th<^ philo- sopher wish anothei to make up his science to his hand THfi RATIONAL SFSCEPTIBlLlTY. 'Zld Wc do not choose that some others should pia^ctice virtue ncr offer worship for us, and then give us the profits in some rewarding gratification ; if we cannot have the serene complacency in our own practical virtue and piety, there is no reward for us. One may hire another to do his work, but no one will thank another to do his playing. The animal susceptibility may get its gratification by any barter, and buy in happiness at any market ; but the rational susceptibility has its end only in the contempla- tion of that which is made to conform to its own perfect ideals. There may be the love of the beautiful, of the true, of the right, or of the good ; but in all these cases, the love must be solely for the object's sake, and not that the object can be sold out in exchange for what maj^ gratify some clamorous appetite. CHAPTER m. THE SPIRITUAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. Tms sphere of the susceptibihtj is quite as important and as strongly marked as either of the others, and in order to a true psychology, it is also as necessary that it be carefully discriminated from both the animal and the rational, as that they should be accurately distinguished from each other. Both the animal and the rational susceptibihty are constitutionally in human nature. In so far forth as man is animal, he has constitutionally the capacity to all animal feeling ; and in so much as he is endowed Tvith reason, he has in this higher constitution the capacity to all the feelings of the rational being. These compose the entire sphere of constitutional susceptibihty, inasmuch as the animal and the rational exhaust all the distinctive kinds of sentient life in which the human nature waa created. Within this constitutional sphere of feeling, appetites and desires, impulses and obhgations, may con- tinually be going forth, and in them the race of mankind, as constitutionally endowed, will all participate. In these activities of sentient being, man can only differ in degree and not in kind, inasmuch as all participate in the same original constitution. The feelings are neces- sitated in nature w^hen the occasions for them are given, and as the tiger must have his appetite foi* flesh, and the THE SPIRITUAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 22l OX his appetite for grass, so the man must have his whole sphere of constitutional susceptibility necessitated in ita o^vn nature. The feelings can change, on the given occa^ sion, only through a change of the physical constitution. But in the spiritual susceptibility, we come to a sphere of feehng in all these respects widely dififerent. The rational nature of man is so superinduced upon the animal nature, that while each preserves its own func- tions and faculties, they yet together make but one being, and the man both as animal and rational is a unit in his own identity. To have solely the animal nature is still to be a thing, but to have the endowment of rationality is to be elevated from thing to person. With this comes self-law, conscience, responsibility, and proper immor- tality. In this personality is perpetual spiritual activity, and as this goes out in its direction towards its objects, and stands permanently disposed in the direction to dis- tinct ends, it gives to itself a proper spiritual disposition. The disposition is as abiding as the given direction, and responsible when found to be for or against a known rule. This going forth of the personal spiritual activity, which is properly its disposition, determines character ; and so far as the disposing of the activity comes under the approbation or condemnation of conscience, the dispo- sition has a moral character. And here, we are to fix our attention upon this spiritual disposition^ and we shall find it to be an independent source of feeling, and thua occasion for a distinct sphere of susceptibiHty, which has not yet been at all recognized. Altogether aside from the activities of the animal and the rational suscep- 19* 222 THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. tibilities, peculiar feelings wiU originate in the spiritual disposicion ; and while all of constitutional being remains the same, a change of this spiritual disposition will at once hiduce a change of feelings, which can only follow their appropriate modification of disposition. In this we shall find a clear consciousness that the spiritual susceptibihty has its source in the personal disposition, and that it is utterly exclusive of all that belongs to constitutional nature, whether of the animal or of the rational. It will be necessary to determuie respectively, the process in which this spiritual susceptibility is induced ; the leading distinctions which it may embrace ; and also the point at which responsibility attaches itself to this susceptibility. Section I. The process in which this spiritual SUSCEPTIBILITY IS INDUCED. — In the former cases of sus- ceptibility we have found them already potentially in the constitutional being. All that Avas necessary to awaken the actual feeling was the presentation of the proper occasion to constitutional nature. No process was requi- site in order to the attainment of the susceptibility, but the hand that made us had already put it within us. Not so in this case. Mere constitutional being will not originate it, but the constitutional faculties must have their direction ; the personal actiAdty must have disposed itself toward some end ; a disposition, determinative of the state in which the spiritual personality is, must have been efiected ; and though we determine nothing here of the time or the conditions of this process, yet the fact, that such a personal spiritual disposing must occur, may THE SPIBITIJAL SUSCErTIBILITY. 228 bo made clear in the consciousness, since, without the disposition, we are conscious that the connected feeling cannot be. Animal and rational nature mav have their complete constitution, but only as the person has a spirits ual lisposition, can he be susceptible to the peculiar feel- ings here in view. We have, thus, to notice the process by which a particular disposition determines a suscepti- Oihtj to its own pecuhar feehngs. '- We msij first take an illustration, from a case where a disposition is deliberately formed. A young man may have just concluded his college course, by which he has become intellectually fitted to enter upon any course of direct professional study. The question presses for a decision, ' What distinct profession shall I pursue V He may, perhaps, readily dismiss all others, but is quite inde- terminate in reference to the profession of Law or of Di\d- nity. He will study for the Bar or the Pulpit, but which he should take he cannot at once decide. He dehber- ates ; estimates his own qualifications and circumstances ; calculates carefully all the consequences that may be apprehended ; and ultimately disposes the whole mind in a direction to one pursuit. We now suppose it to have been, judiciously and conscientiously, the Gospel Minis- try ; and with the mind so made up, there is no need of a perpetual energizing to keep it in that direction : it has already gone into a fixed state, and become a specific bent or permanent disposition. And here, the point to be noticed is, that this disposition to the Ministry has biduced a susceptibility to feelings and emotions, which ^ould not have been in his experience, had his mind been 224 THE SUSCEPTIBILITY disposed on the profession of Law. Every daj will come up feelings and sympathies, that originate wholly in a susceptibility determined in this disposition of his mind. His constitutional susceptibilities have not at all changed, for constitutional nature has not at all been modified ; but the mind has become disposed in a new direction, and bent to a new and permanent end ; and at once, in this permanent disposition, there is a new susceptibility to feeling, and which susceptibility could in no other way have been induced. The same may be said of any other determined pursuit. The Physician, the Farmer, the Sailor, the Soldier, etc. : all have their classes of sympa- thies and emotions peculiar to each other, and which can not be exchanged the one for the other, but in the corre- sponding change of disposition. The constitution remain- ing wholly unchanged, these feehngs become possible, in the securing of the appropriate disposition for them. Still more prominent is the peculiarity of some feelings, where the disposition has not been so deliberately formed. Wealth, or fame, or pleasure, may be proposed as ends to be attained ; but the strong bent of the mind, in its particular direction to either, may have been effected gradually, insidiously, and almost imperceptibly to the man himself. The disposition may have had its begin- ning and growth so unnoticed, that it may emphatically bo said of the man, " ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of." But the disposition, whether avaricious, ambitious, or voluptuous, has in it its own specific suscep tibility. The avaricious man has feelings which neither the ambitious nor voluptuous man^ as such, can have. A THE SPIRITUAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 225 miser's feelings are not possible but in a miser's disposi- fcion. Physical organization and constitutional tempera- ment may be of any modification ; but the avaricious sentiment cannot be, without the spiritual disposition bent on hoarding money. Change that disposition and you change all these peculiar feelings, without at all changing the constitutional nature, or the constitutional susceptibilities. So, in a more eminent degree, and without here attend- ing at all to the subjective manner in which the disposi- tion is secured, let the whole bent of the mind be directed to the rule of right as its end, exclusive of any gratifica- tion that can come in conflict with it, and this is the disposition of the righteous man ; and in this dispositio^a solely is the susceptibility of the good man. No mattei what his constitutional nature and its susceptibilities, he cannot feel as the good man does, nor sympathize at all in any sentiment he has, except as he has first attained the good man's spiritual disposition. The susceptibility to ^drtuous feeling is no where else but in the virtuous disposition. Constitutional nature as it is, the susceptibility to con- stitutional feeling, whether animal or rational, is already in it ; and the occasion needs only to be presented, and the feeling necessarily follows. But no modification of constitutional nature can give the spiritual susceptibility. That must be induced in quite another process. The spirit itself must dispose its activity to some determinate end, and thus have its perpetual bent in one direction and on one object, and in that disposition will ever be a 226 THE SUSCErXIBILITY Husceptibility peculiar to itself; capacitating the man to feel after its peculiar manner, and needing nothing but the appropriate occasion, and with this the specific feeling spontaneously awakes in exercise. With such a consti- tution, under given occasions the constitutional feeling must be ; and with such a disposition, under given occa- sions the spiritual feehng also must be. The process to fclie spiritual feeling is not at all any appeal to constitu tional susceptibility, but the securing of the spiritual di* position, and an appeal to the susceptibihty that is in it. Section II. Some of the prominent distinctions IN SPIRITUAL SENTIMENT. — When, as above given, there is the making up of the mind in reference to a particular occupation or pursuit in life, such a disposing of the spiritual activity wiU in itself give the susceptibility to the particular feelings and sympathies which belong to that employment, and which constitutes the tie of a elass. by virtue of whose connecting bonds all the members are held together in kindred sentiment. This is a most widely operative principle in human society, and is at the basis of the multiplied castes, associations and parties, into which mankind arrange themselves, and constitutes that esprit du corps which is so pervasive and effective in aU party movements. So soon as the disposing of the spirit in the direction to the party-end occurs, the suscep- iibility to its peculiar sentiment is possessed, and the tie cf the class attaches. There may mingle the influences and interests of many constitutional gratifications, but •juite independently of aU natural appetite or constitutional rBB SriRITUAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 22^ desire, tlie spiritual sentiment is the common bond of attachment among the members. Varied as this may be in the multiphed associations of life, it forms a distinct class of spiritual feeling, and whether for good or ba tion of free thought is thus this very conception of free will, a spontaneity of spiritual acti\dty going out lovingly according to its own law. There is conceived no law as an imperative, and thus a joyousness in the spontaneous obedience of moral rectitude ; but solely a law inherently directive, and the spirit gladly going through the process which its inner law fits it for. Other modifications of the conception of a will might be given, but the foregoing are among the most promi- nent of $nch as are deemed to be but partial and thus 262 THE WILL, erroneous, aiid these maj be sufficient to introduce us to the next enquiry. Section II. What is a complete conception cf THE WILL ? — The susceptibility, as we have seen, prompts to an executive act in the attainment of its end ; if tho object is agi'eeable, the prompting is to attain it, and if disagreeable, to avoid it. But thus far, the action ia wholly of the susceptibiUty, and is mere feeling. Beyond this prompting of feeling, the animal hfe may go out to get the object and gratify the want ; and there is found in this, an activity which is out of and beyond the suscep-- tibility, and is no more a feeling but an executive act to satisfy a feeling. This may be termed brute-will ; ani- mal-choice. But it is really animal impulse ; a living activity impelled by sense ; and not at all a will in hberty. It acts when the susceptibility prompts, and as this prompts, and can change its action only by a change of feeling in the susceptibility. When two conflicting feelings prompt, that which it is deemed will give highest gratification must nullify the promptings of the weaker, and the executive act is unavoidable. The occasion for an alternative act is not given. There may be thb faculty of judging, from apprehended consequences, what will give on the whole the highest happiness, and thus what action is prudent ; and if the higher gratification of self-love, on the whole, come in competition with only the lower present gratification, the prudential impulse must prevail, inasmuch as the less impulse is no alterna- tive And in the same way, the faculty of judging what THE COMPLETE CONCEPTION OF WILL. 253 will make others most happy may determine for us what action is benevolent ; and if this appeal is to a suscepti- bility which, in gratification, is highest happiness on the whole, the kind impulse must overcome and take tha action in that direction. In any way that highest grfe.ti- fication is judged as attainable, in that direction the executive act is unavoidable, for there is no alternative presented to it. The whole of animal being is bound in the necessity of nature, and all that we may say of brute- will must still include in its conception, the fact that the issue is unavoidable. Nature knows no Kberty, and the animal being is wholly within nature. The conception of will involves within itself something supernatural. The true conception of a responsible Will is in a capa- city to originate, from the spirit itself, an act in contra- vention of the animal impulse. It is a power that may counteract the executive agency which gratifies natural want, and in this- give a sovereign master over the animal being. This must be wholly a spiritual capacity, that it may originate action completely regnant over all natural appetite. This capacity for spiritual origination gives the competency to suppress animal gratification, and thus opens a proper alternative in permitting the animal execu- tive act to go out in gratification, or putting forth the spiritual act which snail preclude it. Nature may bo suppressed by the free action of the spirit. There is a freedom not only in the fact of unhindered activity, for this is true of the execution of appetite by the animal, but a freedom in the start ; a beginning, and not a pro- jection from something behind ; a true originjf^on in tho 22 254 THE WILL. spii-it, and not an impulse from the sense. In this capa- citv for free origmation, there is complete condition for a proper libration between the happiness of gratified want and the duty of secured worth, and which is tiTdy will in liberty. That the spirit can, from itself, so act in controlling the sense, secures a valid alternative to sen- sual gratification, and thus the freedom of avoidability. Looking, thus, at the human mind, which combines both animal and rational bemg, we say, that a concep- tion of will must involve something else than mere execu tive agency to gratify want, even spiritual origination of action in restraining and controlling gratification, and thus full capacity for alternative agency. The animal can have no will in liberty, since however free from prevenient hindrance in gratification, it is impelled by constitutional natui-e a' tergo. The angel, as purely spiritual, may have alternatives in spiritual ends towards which he may originate action, and paay thus stand between spiritual wickedness and spiritual holiness, and take on demoniac malignity or maintain angelic purity ; but man must be studied as only in the flesh, and what- ever soul-guilt he may contract, there will always be blended with his sin the inworking sensual lusts, and thus the human will must be conceived as capacity for avoid- ing sensual gratification by the claims of the reason. The Absolute Reason is above all occasion for alternatives to perfect rationality, and is free, in the absolute accep- tation of spiritual origination with no conflict. Deity cannot be tempted with any alternative to right, except as the divinity becomes incarnate ; but, as our psycho THE COMPLETE COIfCEPTION OF WILL. 255 logy is human, we have only the human not the divine will to investigate. Election may be used in a different sense from seleo tion; the last being only a particular taking, but the first a taking with an alternative. All natural causes select their ends in their effects. The magnet selects steel- filings from saw-dust ; the fire selects stubble from stones ; electricity selects metals from glass and resin ; and in all this taking to itself, ther»e is no capacity to the alter- native. But election is the taking of one, when it might have been not the taking of that, but some other. No a.nimal can do more than to select ; a spiritual being only can properly elect. With this apprehension of the mean- ing of terms, the definition of the human Will is a Capa- city for electing. In the more complete conception of this definition, the following considerations are all important. An act of will must have its end. — The capacity for wHling can no more go out into act without an object, than can the capacities for knowing, or for feeling. Even the brute-will must have an end in acting, or it would involve the absurdity of executive action with nothing to execute. A rational spirit cannot originate an act without an end for the action, for an aimless action cannot be rational. We may as well eat with nothing to be eaten, as choose mth nothing to be chosen. This end must have also an alternative in kind, and not merely in degree. — In order to all responsibility there must be avoidability, and every action is inevita- ble where no alternative is offered. With purely one 256 THE WILL. object, the act is not that of election. The one object may present the alternatives to take, or not to take ; to take part, or all, etc. ; but to strictly cne object, all alter is excluded. Nor can there be any proper alternativi in the wilHng, except as the ends differ in their kind. One gold eagle and ten silver dollars present no alterna- tive in kind, for in pecuniary value they are the same. One gold eagle and five silver dollars give alternative only in degree, and as end in the will, this is no proper alternative. The sole end of acting being for pecuniary value, the action must be for the greater when to this only the less stands opposed. The part of the same thing is absorbed and lost in the whole, so tar as all occasion for choice is given. To he an alternative in kind, there must he an end in the reason. — No matter how different may be the animal susceptibilities to be gratified, they offer no distinction in kind, but only in degree, as end of willing. The end, in both cases, is the gratification, and the two are really but one thing as motive to will, and that which is the greater has no alternative to it. Only as the prompt- ing of an animal susceptibility has set over against it the claim of a rational susceptibility, can there be any proper alternative in the human will. An occasion being given, for the origination of an act in the spirit that it may sup- press and control some lust of the animal, there is in this a full alternative in kind, and the fair occasion for an action in Hberty. The animal may crave, but the spirit may see chat the claims of taste forbid the gratification, and the end of THE COMPLETE CONCEPTION OF WILL. 257 beautj in the reason may control the end of appetite in the animal. The artist maj disdain to sell his product for any mercenary consideration. In. the field of art is freedom, for the originations of the spirit can here coun- teract the clamors of appetite, and there is a fair alter- native. So also the claims of science may forbid the offered happiness, and the end of truth be an occasion for the spirit to originate an act that is to suppress the execution of animal desire. Some Galilleo may resolutely say of the earth, " but it does turn," though he die for it. Philosophy is thus free, for it puts a dignity in the spirit as alternative to any craving for happiness. But more especially, the moral claim may be an alternative to any other end of action. The self-knowledge of the reason — clearly apprehending the excellency of its own spirituality of being, and thus knowing what is due to itself as against happiness, or above the claims of art and science, and in this conviction of duty possessing a con- science — may give a spiritual origination that shall sup- press all action which is in conflict with right. And when this self-knowledge is also connected with the know* ledge of God, and the insight of the finite spirit deter- mines that its highest worthiness is in loving and adoring the Absolute Spirit, there is an alternative in man's religious being, which makes every action colliding with it to be thoroughly avoidable. In this complete conception of an end in the spirit, wliich may countercheck all ends in happiness, is there occasion for free, pure, spiritual origination of action. Not because an outer object appeals to appetite, and 22* 268 THE WILL. awakes a want, and thus impels to greatest happiness ; but solelj because in the spirit's own being there is a claim for its own sake, and thus in itself alone originates the act, whose only end is that the spirit may be as / worthy of all moral accepting as it is due to itself that it should be. The capacity to the alternative action is in the »apem2ituial only. So far as nature reaches in man, all is without avoidabUity ; his spiritual being is capacity for true will in liberty. CHAPTER n. MAN EXEKCISES SUCH CAPACITY OF ^VILL. In the foregoing Chapterj we have attained a completed conception of a will in liberty; and now it is to be shown, that the human mind is endowed with such capacity, and that man actually so wills. It has already been made manifest that the human mind has susceptibility like the animal not only, but also that man's rational endowment capacitates him for feelings quite above, and other in kind than any animal can possess. Man is not left under the domination of appetite, with no alternative to the esti- mated highest happiness ; he has the interest of taste and science, and may free himself from the bondage of the animal in the open spheres of beauty and of truth. But quite above all, he is competent to know himself, and thus to find the rule within himself that detennines the ground of his duty to himself, his fellows, and his God. In this moral imperative, there is attained the spring to a possible election of righteousness against any and all other interests. Taste or science may control happiness, and virtue or piety may control all. The spirit may keep all natural craving in subjection, and in the end of its own dignity in taste and philosophy, and more especially in ethics and religion, it can originate acts subjecting all of happiness to its own moral worth. All the elements, necessary to the capacity of a will in 260 THE WILL. liberty, belong oiiginally to the human nimd. The cvi- dence, that man puts in exercise such a capacity, is found ill the following direct inferences from facts in conscious- ness, and is a direct fact in consciousness itself. 1. Consciousness of personal responsibility can stand 0)di/ in a capacity of will in liberty. — The conviction of personal responsibility for personal character and action is in every consciousness. Speculative theories and delu- sive conclusions may often beguile the logical judgment to deny such personal accountability, but no speculations of the lo^ncai understandino; can make the reason to behe its o^Mi insight. The spirit knows what it behooves itself to do for its own worthiness' sake, and that it must take in its own being the dignity of its virtuous, or the infamy of its vicious action ; and while speculation may err, the conscience must hold true to its own claims. No man, in the honesty of his rational apprehension, ever doubted the fact of his moral accountability. The tribunal and the judge, the w^itness and the executioner, are all con- sciously within himself, and if he speculatively deny his God, he cannot dethrone the authority of his own reason. lie must acquit or condemn himself, and be consciously elevated or degraded in his own eyes. But the consciousness is as clearly explicit, that for unavoidable results there can be no moral accountabihty. Power may crush in hopeless misery for actions that had no alternative, but no power can make the spirit see its own sin in that which it could not avoid, nor feel guilty desert for an act that could not have been otherwise. The soul goes quite back of all speculation on both sides. PUOQ-^ 01* WILL IN LIBERTY. 2(31 and not from any deductions in the understanding, but from an insight into its own being, decides that it ia responsible for personal deeds, and is not responsible for anything that is not voluntarily in its own personahty. Power has nothing to do with such convictions ; onmipo- 1 ^^ tence itself, must go in accordance with them, and be^ judged conformably to them. Not arbitrary infliction, not even infallible testimony from another, can wake the feeling of responsibihty in the spirit, except as that spirit is conscious of character and deeds of its own, which might have been avoided by it. A thousand liabilities to suffering there may be, which to the sufferer are wholly inevitable, but no such sufferings ever awoke the spirit to recognize any moral responsibilities . These conscious facts make the conclusion valid for a capacity of human election. Man knows himself respon- sible for his character and actions; he knows himself not responsible for anything to him utterly inevitable ; he has thus both a character and a life, that lie wholly within the capacity of a will in liberty. 2. The distinction between brute and humayi ivill is in this very point. — ^The animal is not rational spirit, and thus has no capacity for self-knowledge. To the brute there can be no insi<>;ht of rights and claims due on its own account, and thus no moral rule to direct a moral life. There is no element of the ethical ; all is perpetually the natural only. Experience teaches it in many things-J its highest happiness, and hence the animal learns the : law of prudence ; yea, experience sometimes teaches the animal what is kind, and so far the brute is pathologically: 2Ci2 THE WILL. benevolent ; but in all this, the animal never awakes tc Bee the right, and feel the claim of moral obUgation. The executive act goes out under the impulse of the strongest prompting, and appetite can be controlled only by arousing a stronger passion. Nothing can originate from within itself, but all the animal is, and does, has been determined for it in a previous condition. All is bound within the law of cause and effect in nature, and the brute can never lift itself above this bondage. There is no aspiration after freedom ; no dreaming of a spiritual world above the senses; but an entire resting in the gratification of its otnti appetites. Satisfy want, and the brute is contented ; the whole capacity is thereby filled ; and the stragglings of a free spirit to reach some higher station are never known. Its whole end is happiness, and I there is no quickening spring to rise to moral worthiness. But from all this, man wholly differs. In his animal wants, he is like the brute, and prompted to highest gratification, and quiet when animal craving is satiated. But in his spiritual being there is that which no sensual gratification satisfies. Even as depraved, and the spirit basely subjected to the desires of the flesh, he knows • that the claim is strong upon him, to crush his appetites ^ in subordination to his rational worth, and restrain all X their gratification by what is due to his spirit, and thus >^ stand out again in all the dignity and manliness of a good «v.? will that masters passion. He cannot make himself to lie down at rest, Avith the brute, when animal craving is satisfied. There are the imperatives of conscience to fulfil ; the dignity and worth of moral character to sus- PROOF OF \VILL m LIBEIITY. 26S tain ; the approbation of his own and other's spirit to , secure ; and though the means of fullest gratification ' were given, this cannot content him. There is a con Bcious wrong to himself, a foul debasement and degrada- tion of his manhness, if the behests of his spirit are not recognized and asserted against all the clamors of sense. lie cowers in secret beneath the reproaches of his own conscience, and stands self-abashed and speechless before the rebukes of his own spirit, and well knows that he can not hold up his head among his fellows, nor keep the blush of guilt from his face when alone, if he has sacri- ficed his loyalty to the right, and allowed gratified want fo usurp the control of imperative duty. On the other hand, he knows that he can bear all sufiering, and permit all that is animal within him to be crushed and die, and go to his spirit in its integrity for support ; all of which no brute can recognize, and in which nothing that is animal can participate. There is, to man, an alternative i to his whole animal nature, and that he should live under the law of highest happiness, like the brute, is clearly avoidable. He has a capacity of will in liberty. 3. It is only in this capacity of will in liter ty^ that man can discriminately determine what is personally his. All of man's constitutional being is conditioned in its own nature, and in the connections of surrounding nature ; and the supplied conditions bring the actions out with no alternatives. They really belong to nature, not to the man, except only as the onward causes in nature have wrought them out within the field of his consciousness, and made them necessarily to be a part of his patholo- 264 THE Witt. gical experience. That I am hungry and desire fooa or cold and wearj and desire warmth and rest, are no acts in which my proper personaUty participates ; they i are what nature is working in my constitution. Nature comes in and works upon me, and leaves its effects in my constitutional being, as the winds blow and the shadows pass over the landscape, and the sun shines and the ahowers fall upon it. These are not 'v>-illed by me into act and being, and I never call them mine, as at all belonging to my proper personality All such events are linked into the connected successions of nature without an alternative, and the chain that they compose is a unit, whether the hnked events be of matter or of mind. The tones have been struck upon me : they have not come up from the depths within me, and thus sounded through all my being as personal to me. In my constitutional nature, nothing is mine ; all is put there by another. I am never to value myself upon it, nor to charge myself with it. But, of all the originations of my spiritual activity, I am quite conscious that they sustain a very different relation to me. They are caused bj/ me, and not merely caused in me ; they are the product of an election, and not an unavoidable coercion ; and I know them to be mine, in a sense that will not allow that they should so be appropriated to any other personality, human or divine. That ideal beauty ; that poem or song ; that completed system of science ; each belongs to its author, as neither can be owned by any other. My disposition ; my plan ; «ny habit ; my purpose ; these are wholly mine and not PROOF OF WILL IN LIBERTY. 26^ to be referred to natui-e, as is my hunger, my thirst, or any other appetite. And so, also, that assent to temp- tation ; that enticing allurement ; that dishonest transac- tion ; that plan to defraud ; that direct falsehood, of which I may be conscious in my OAvn experience ; these have been wrought by me, and come back directly upon me, and jfix themselves inahenably within me, and forever belong to me, and not to nature, nor to my neighbor, nor to God, They were avoidable by me, and yet originated from me, and belong solely to me. I alone, in my own person, am responsible for them. And thus, too, that act of virtuous self-denial ; that fixed decision for the right ; that firm stand in duty ; these are mine, and no other personality in the universe, than me the doer, can feel any self-complacency in them. Influences from other quarters and agencies may have come upon me, which belong responsibly to their authors ; but these are products of my electing agency, and have originated in my capacity of will in liberty, and are thus my personal deeds exclusively. Only because of this capacity of will, can I detach what is mine from all else, and see myself and my deeds to stand out together, wholly discriminated from all other beings or facts in the universe. 4. Reciprocal complacency in moral character stands wTiolly in tJds capacity of ivill in liberty. — Most animals are more or less gregarious, but their collection in flocka and herds is from constitutional propensities. The working of nature within them brings them together, and not that there is any reciprocal moral complacency between them. So, also, there are various associations 23 266 THE WILL. among men, which are induced hj considerations of busi- ness, amusement or social enjoyment ; and indeed a large proportion of human attachments that go under the name of friendship, and even take on the form of conjugal con- nections, are based on no higher considerations than kin- dred pursuits, common interests, or congenial tempera- ment ; and in all such cases, the bonds that hold them together find all their strength in constitutional nature alone. They are merely joint-stock partners in attaining happiness ; held in connection only from the prudential consideration that they are useful to each other ; and they never rise to the elevation of that social communion, where the attachments are all induced and perpetuated by the reciprocal congeniahties of*moral character. But, one good man loves another, and all good men love God, from the congeniality of spiritual dispositions, and their reciprocal complacency is solely through the righteous character that each recognizes in the other. It is like communing ^Yith. hke, in free personality ; and each heart beats in sympathy with the same ultimate moral rule, and glows with tfee same moral sentiments. Their spirits are all disposed to the same end, and thus the whole spiritual susceptibihty, in each, is thoroughly congenial. They are kindred in spirit, and not merely held together as each can use the others for his highest happiness. God may be pleased with man in his constitutional being just as he is pleased with all the other works of his hand in nature, solely in the light of original adapta^ bons, and as he sees man to be fitted to the uses designed ; PllOOF JF WILL IN LIBERTY. 267 and he may pronounce man on this account as he did nature at the beginning, to be " very good." And in the same way, man may be pleased with God ; and, viewing him merely as a means to be used for his own advantage, in that by him he gets propitious providences, fruitful seasons, a healthy body, and a happy heaven at last, man may say of God, in all the attributes which he cannot afford to lose, " very good ;" his omnipotence ; his wis- dom ; his foresight ; his steady arrangement of nature ; all " very good." What ends the man could not get, these attributes get for him ; and he cannot do without them. They are all put to an excellent use, in govern- ing the universe for man's happiness, and are just as much a greater good than the sunshine and the shower, as they subserve a more important end in gratifying human wants, and securing greater happiness. But in all this, there is no reciprocal complacency between God and man. Not thus does a good man love his God ; not thus does God love good men. There is a mutual dehght, each in each, as objects of simple contemplation. An intrinsic excellency of moral character is seen, and on each side loved for what it is, and not for what it can be bartered away for. The whole spirituality of each person is fully set on righteousness, and for no selfish considerations will the good will turn from its steadfast- ness ; and in this solely is their communion, and not because they see that they are each necessary to the other's happiness. Take away from man the capacity of spiritual origination, in the election of highest worthiness above all happiness, and he can commune with liis fel- 268 *aE wtLL. lows only on the same basis as the animals herd together; and God can have complacency in him, only as he ia pleased with the adaptations and uses of nature. Reci- procal complacency in character can possibly stand in nothing else, than the free originations of congenial iroral 'iispositions. 5 . Only in this capacity of will in liberty can the aur^ rent of constitutional nature he resisted. — Constitutional nature works on, and I am hungry : in this condition I am conscious that the craving for food is unavoidable. I am weary ; and in this condition I cannot exclude nature's desire for rest. Let only this prompting of th& appetite be given, and there is no alternative to the exe- cutive act in gratification. Let only conflicting appetites crave, and there is no alternative to the act which goes out after what is deemed the highest gratification. A smaller amount of happiness can be no occasion for car- rying the executive action against a greater. A calcu- lation of consequences, and in this an attainment of the rule of prudence, can only appeal to a susceptibiHty for happiness, and whether considered as an aggregate of all susceptibilities, or as one generic susceptibihty, the only occasion given is that for the simple estimate of !iigher and lower degrees. All is completely conditioned in constitutional nature, and my prudence is as much a pathobgical law as my hunger or my weariness. The stream is one, and as it floats me onward in the direction of greatest happiness, I can work the rudder against no counteracting force in the current that carries me. Nature is thoroughly all in and around me, and I can PROOF OF WILL IN LIBERTY. 269 seize upou nothing to steady myself against it, nor wci'lj my way upward in resistance to it. I myself am liature, and can only execute the promptings of my nature within me. But, I am conscious, in my spiritual being, of the po» session of supernatural agency. When appetite craves, in weaker or stronger measures, I can see in my spiritual being another law than highest happiness, and feel the claim of spiritual worthiness ; and I can put this over upon the weaker appetite against the stronger, or over against all appetite that is in coUision with it, and I have ui this an alternative, in hind, to all that nature may present ; and a spring to throw myself against nature, and work my way upward in resistance of it. The desires of the flesh may be aroused to their most passion- ate excitement, and all circumstances may favor the indulgence ; prudential considerations may seem to lie on the same side, and even the promptings of kindness may also concur ; and thus, the unbroken current of nature may tend towards gratification ; but if I also see, that such indulgence would degrade and debase my spirit ; I shall, in this claim of my rational being, have a full alternative to aU of nature's promptings. Let constitutional nature do her best, or her worst, I may still stand in my spiritual integrity, regardless of either tlie happiness or the suffering that weighs itself against duty. There is, in this capacity of the spirit, that which is out of and above nature ; a measure and a test for ; aature ; a determiner when gratification may be, and when it may not be, with honor to the soul ; and in the: *23* 270 THE tHLL. alternative of worthiness to happiness, thus opened, no alluring temptation from constitutional nature can ever come upon man, and be truly unavoidable. It is the right of the spirit to control and use the sense for its own highest excellency ; and it is due to itself to put the flesh to any sacrifice and endurance which may preserve or exalt its o^vn true dignity ; and thus in its own behoof, the spirit may contemn all enjoyment, and all suffering, that nature can give. 6. Individual consciousness is clear for this capacity of will in liberty. — We do not say that any man is con- scious of " the power of contrary choice," as it is called, in the sense that he can take a less degree of happiness \\hen only a greater degree stands over against it. If only happiness appeals to a susceptibility, all conscious- ness is, that the greater must be taken ; for there is hterally no reason for anything else, and thus no alternar tive. But in all men there is a deep consciousness that, somehow, there is an alternative to present disposition and character, and thus an avoidabihty in all voluntary action. They may not be able to analyze the fact, so that they can represent it clearly in its conception to themselves, or to others ; but they all know, that there is responsibihty for their radical disposition of soul, and thus that its disposing is not without its alternative. It is not all the freedom a wicked man is conscious of, that he may change his action if he please. That pleasing is in his spiritual, and not in any constitutional disposition ; and he knows the bond is on him that he please to change ; %nd that his sin is in this very disposition which is not PROOF OF WILL IN LIBERTY. 271 pteased to change ; and that, in this responsibility of dis- position, the present evil one is avoidable. This fact may be made to stand out more perspicuous, by a com- parison with other activities. The Intellectual Capacity is consciously without any Alternatives in its activity. In all conditions of knowing, the knowledge must be as it is, in the given condition. When the occasion is given for perceiving a house, there IS not the alternative for perceiving, not it but, a tree. To the intellect, in that condition, the perception of the house, and just that specific house, is unavoidable. So in the concluding in a judgment ; with the conditioned facts, the specific judgment must be as it is. We can not say we can change the knowledge if we please ; for our pleasure has no control over it. All is determined in nature, and not at all in any spiritual disposition. So, also, is the constitutional susceptibility without any alter- native, in its activity. When nature makes me cold, I cannot change the feeling to warmth ; nor can I repress the desire to be warm ; and when I hear that my brother is sick, I cannot change the feehng to that which is induced when I hear he is in good health. The feeling is determined in the condition ; and all men are quite conscious, that, in order to change the feehng, there must be a change of conditions. To the constitutional suscep- tibility, all its activity is without an alternative; and every specific feeling is, in its given condition, wholly unavoidable. Not if we please, can we here feel diiffer- ently, for all these feelings are wholly in nature, and not at all in a spiritual disposition. 272 THE WILL. But when I bring my capacity of will within the liglit of consciousness, I know that in precisely thi i point there is a wide distinction. I feel that my act of will was not bound, in its given conditions, without an alternative. I know that I could have done differently, if I had pleased ; and I know, moreover, that if I was pleased to do wrong, that pleasing to so do was not inevitable. It was not detormmed in the conditions of nature, but whollv in mv spiritual disposition ; and to that, there was a full alter- native. My spirit wa,s bound, by the conscious claims of its own true dignity, to dispose its entire activity to a different end ; and I am fully conscious that the way was open to it, though it did not take it. The question of the certainty of fact in liberty will hereafter be investi- gated, but now the only question is of conscious avoidor hility ; and we have only to mark the conscious contrast, in this point, between the acts of the intellect and the acts of the constitutional susceptibiUty, and those of the will, and we find a clear decision. The last is with an alternative, and consciously avoidable ; the two former, we know, are conditioned in nature. 7. Universal consciousness. — There is a full opportu- nity to appeal to universal consciousness, on the question of capacity for election, or of will in Hberty. And this is affirmed, notwithstanding the fact that the speculations of the logical understanding must conclude against it. The operation of the understanding must be wholly within nature, and can possibly have no recognition of a super- iiatural. It can only connect conceptions, and can never comprehend the process, in an absolute beginning and PROOF OF WILL IN LIBERTY. 27S end. Thus, to the logical understanding, there can be only the conditioned, and never an absolute. There may be one circle enclosing all that has yet been, but not one that is absolute for all that can be. There may be a mounting up from effect to cause indefinitely, but not to aL absolute first; for the understanding can only con- nect, and in its highest cause is still obliged to conceive of something higher that conditions it. The great first sause, to the logical understanding, has still its imposed conditions within itself, and can develop its activity in only one way. It is as much nature as any succeeding cause, only that it is assumed to be a first one. But common consciousness has always testified to the convic- tion that there is an absolute first cause, though the understanding can never find it, nor even have a con- ception of it. Even so with liberty. The logical understanding can neither find it, nor get a conception of it. Absolute origination is to this faculty an absurdity. The origi- nator finds already within himself that which conditions his products, and he can choose only as he finds himself pleased to choose, but can make no alternative to this pleasing. He finds his disposition already within him, and does not himself originate it. The conception of his changing his disposition would involve a previous pleasing to do so, and conditioned in this, a choosing to do so ; and thus, endlessly, the choice must be conditioned already m some precedmg given viisposition. So, we say, the logical understanding must go. It is faculty for con- necting, and not beginning ; for conditioned producing, 274 THE ^VILL. and not absolutely' originating ; for knowing nature, and Qot at all the supernatural ; and if we have no higher faculty, we cannot possibly conceive of a God, whose disposition is in any other sense his, than that he finds it already originated in him; and then, that this determines till his acts of election, without alternative or avoidability. Nature itself thus runs upward through all the activity af the Deity, and both the finding, and the conceivings of an originating will in Hberty is an impossibility, and an absurdity. But the common consciousness never acqui- esced in these speculative conclusions of a logical under- standing. Universally, the common mind has recognized a God, whose disposing of his whole spiritual activity was his own, and not that he found it already disposed, and must condition all his choices by it. Though they may not have discriminated between the faculties of the under- standing, which must have its media for connecting, and that of the reason, which has its compass for compre- hending ; yet, have they always testified to the convic- tions of the latter, against the speculative conclusions of the former. No thoroughly labored system of a will, conditioned in its antecedent grounds of preference, has ever satisfied the common conviction. That has always mounted to the source of all pleasing and preference.: to the radical disposition itself; and affirmed that this was ftt the man's responsibility, and that it had ever its alter- native All human language, all legislation, all the history of man, speaks out what mankind in all ages have consciously felt, an alternative and avoidability to iheir inmost disposition. PROOF OF WILL IN LIBERTY. 275 The speculation of the understanding may at any time be counteracted, and corrected in the insight of the rea- son. TVhile the understanding always finds a law im- posed upon, the reason sees one inherent in, the agent. One holds to an end without an alternative, and is phy- sical law ; the other binds by the imperative of duty, admitting an alternative, and is ethical law. When the fact is clearly apprehended, that the spirit of man has the prerogative, which the animal nature has not, of knowing itself and its intrinsic excellency, and thus read- ing its duty in what is due in its own right, there is in this seen a full occasion for its own disposing of its activity, and not waiting for highest gratified want to determine it. There is capacity for originating an act in the end of its own worthiness, and for electing between this and any gratified want that may come in competition with this. And even, when a perverse disposing of itself has been efiected, and a sinful and depraved disposition con- tracted ; the conscious claim, of what is due to the spirit in its own right, has not ceased to press, and the alterna- tive is open, however it may be certain as a fact that it will not be taken, for the spirit to break from its bondage and obey the imperative to secure its highest wortliinesa CHAPTER ni. THE DISCRIMINATION OF THE ACTS OF THE WILL FROM ALL OTHER MENTAL FACTS. In the attainment of the complete conception of a will in liberty, we are prepared to make an accurate discrimi- aation between its acts and all other mental phenomena ; and such discrimination is necessary to a correct psycho- logy. A self-active being, which ' has its law within it, and not imposed upon it, must go out in its activity as no other agency can ; its acts are its own originations, and not productions from it by an outer causality working upon it. Wlien put forth there was an alternative, and thus an avoidability, and these are characteristics of all acts of will exclusively. In most cases, the acts of the will are readily distinguished from other mental facts. Intel- lectual acts are not liable to be confounded with volun tary acts ; knowing is so little similar to willing, that comitions never become mistaken for vohtions. But other mental activities are sometimes misapprehended as from the will, and not unfrequently common speech con- fuses both volitions and other actions under the same word. We will notice some particulars in their order. Section I. Simple spontaneity is sometimes CONFOUNDED WITH WILL. — Spirit is inherently self-ao- tive, and in given occasions goes out towards its ends THE DISCRIMINATION OF THE ACTS OF WILL. 277 spontaneously. We have already attained a number of such facts of simple spontaneity, as in the production of the General States of mind. The self-agency, on occa- sion given, goes of its own accord into the intellectualj emotive, or willing states ; and though the occasion {pi this may sometimes be that the will is exerted, yet, as in memory, this Avilling is not directly in the production of the fact, but rather the putting of the mmd in a fitting occasion for it. The remembering is not itself a voHtion, nor is the general state of either the knowing, feeling or wiUing, a volition, but is a spontaneous movement of the mind into the given state, as capacity to know, feel, or wiU. And, here we observe, that such spontaneous outgo- ings of mind are sometimes mistaken for vohtions, espe- cially if they occur on occasion of their being consciously wished for. Such has been more particularly confounded with volition, in the facts of observation and attention. Cousin directly ascribes attention to the will, and makes it evidential of personality. But the thorough analysis, which attains to what an act of attention specifically is, will at once determine its purely spontaneous, and not voluntary origin. When a discriminated sensation is given, the operation of constructing or defining it, so as to give its exact limits in either space, time or degree, is of the intellect and not of the will. The -will mav be an occasion for it or not ; but in any way, the intellectual movement, which limits and thus gives form to that which is in the sensation, is purely spontaneous and not willed lirectly. It is often quite beyond the reach of the will, 24 278 THE WILL masmuch as the will sometimes cannot prevent its being done, and at others cannot secure its being done. I maj wish to construct an object, but cannot ; and I may wish not to have it definite, but there it is, in full form before me. And precisely so, of an act of observation. I may wish to get an object distinct and cannot, or may wish not to have it distinct and cannot help it. Neither obser- vation nor attention are of the will, but from mere menta] spontaneity. The difference is in this ; all acts of spiritual will in liberty must come within an alternative of worthi- ness and opposing gratification, and constitute an election ; but pure spontaneity has no alternatives of imperative and appetitive, and merely a simple w^^ro-motivity to its object. Section II. The mere executive of appetite is OFTEN mistaken FOR WILL. — When animal susceptibility is excited, and the act goes out in attainment of the object for gratification, it is often spoken of as choice, and con- sidered as truly an act of will. Indeed, with most, as a speculative conception, no other apprehension of will is attained. It is not apprehended but that the brute has as complete a will in hberty, and as truly an election, as man. A choice between degrees of happiness is no pi-o- per election, inasmuch as no true alternative is presented ; the taking of the highest degree is unavoidable ; and this is all of will that any animal nature can know. When, in any way, the conception of will is confined to the cxe' cuting of some anterior pleasmg, and thus unavoidably THE DISCRIMINATION^ OF THE ACTS OF WILL. 279 conditioned by it, such conception is incomplete and erro- neous in its deficiency, and amounts to no more than mere brute- Avill. It is wholly in nature, and one of the conditioned links in its chain of causes and effects, and it does by no means take it out of this chain, to call it by the names of morality or spirituaHty. Its conditions are not reasons^ for it has no rationality. It knows no self-law in the light of its own excellency, and thus no reason why it should not float on in nature's strongest current. When I am hungry, or thirsty, and nothing but grati- fication is the condition for acting, I shall both eat and drink, and of that which will gratify my hunger and thirst the most ; and the brute will do the same. If some greater happiness is to be secured, or danger avoided, by not eating ; the prudential appeal will be the strong- est, and I shall yet restrain my appetite ; and the brute will do the same. There is in this no proper self-denial, but a real self-indulgence ; I am gratifying my strongest appetite. There is no election in the case, but an action unavoidably conditioned. But hungry and thirsty as I may be, and prudential in highest happiness as a given gratification may be, and I possess also spii-itual, rational existence, that sees in my own excellence of being what is worthy of me, and as such rational spirit, I hear the 3ommand from the? absolute, " whether ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God ;" I shall in this have a reason for denying appetite, and discarding prudential highest happiness, which no animal may ever know. Not at all the awakening another and higher *J80 THE yfii.^. prudential want, in the eternal happiness or suffering thai governmental retribution discloses ; but the opening of my spiritual eye upon the guilt, and the debasement which disobedience to God will fix in my consciousness. That I shall thus make the spirit unworthy, is sufficient occasion for an alternative countercheck to the act that would make the appetite happy. The certainty which will be taken is no matter of consideration here ; let that question be as it may, an alternative of kind, and not merely in degree, is here opened, and a proper election occurs, whether the act in certainty go out for sensual gi'atification, or for spiritual worthiness in seeking God's glory. In neither case was the act unavoidable. The man can stand here and elect ; no animal can reach this station. The brute must execute the conditions of his nature, for to the brute there is no supernatural reason to take hold upon, whereby it may resist and overcome nature. We may call the animal executive a will, but it is a long way distant from a spiritual will in hberty. Section III. Will and desire are not unfre- QUENTLY CONFOUNDED. — Desire is the mere craving of the animal susceptibility directed towards its object of gratification, and is thus the occasion for an executive act to go forth in attainment. The executive act, we have already seen, is not from a proper will, much Icsa then can the mere craving which prompts it be an act of will, and yet often is the mere desire taken as a volition. Indeed, in common speech, the word desire is sometimes put for will, and the word will is sometimC'S used for a THE DISCRIMIXATIOX OF THE ACTS OF WILL. 281 mere desii*e. The two facts widely differ, and a correct psychology demands a clear discrimination, and no equi- vocal terms should be allowed to confound distinct things. In tlie following examples, we have the word will put for desire. " Not my will^ but thine be done." — Luke, xxii, 42. This is the memorable prayer of Jesus to the Father, in the hour of his agony in the garden. Should we take the word will here for a proper election, we should have not only the impiety of a \vill in Christ opposed to the will of the Father, but also the absurdity of a will opposed to itself. The prayer expresses Christ's real will, and yet it is that his will may not be done. Manifestly, the will here is desire, the mere craving of the animal susceptibiliy. Christ, as human, had truly the animal nature, and this reluctated all suffering and he desired to escape it. But the will in the prayer is, that the Father would disregard the desire of the flesh, and carry out in him his own desired ends of human redemption. The same changed use of the term occurs in Lam. iii, 33. " For he doth not willingly afflict nor grieve the children of men." Speaking after the manner of men, it is not a congenial feeling, as desire, to afflict mankind ; but superior considerations induce the purpose, as will, to do so. So also it is said of God, " Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth."—! Tim. ii, 4. Again, we have the word desire put for will in the fol- lowing examples. " They desired Pilate, that he (Christ) should be put to death." — Acts, xiii, 28. " And he (the Ethiopiar eunuch) desired Philip that he would come up 24* 282 THE WILL. and sit with him." — Acts, viii, 31. "One of the Phari- sees dtsired him, (Christ) that he would eat with him.'* — Luke, vii, 36. " Then Daniel went in and desired of the king," etc. — Dan. ii, 16. In all these cases there is more than a feeling in the susceptibility ; a craving for an end ; there is truly an election, as will. The appetitive craving is one thing; the electing its gratification is quite another ; and no matter how common speech may interchange words, philosophy must accu* mtely discriminate facts. Section IV. The spiritual affections may SOMETIMES BE CONCEIVED AS VOLITIONS. — We are held responsible for our sentiments. Our spiritual feelings ai'e the subject of commands, and come within the reach of legal retributions. Love and hatred, joy and sorrow, in the sense of spiritual affections, are enjoined upon us in reference to certain objects. This may very readily induce the conviction that they are themselves volitions. But their distinction from all direct acts of the will is manifest in the utter impracticability to immediately will them in or out of being. In a given condition, no act of the will can secure them ; and in another condition, no act of the will can exclude them. In one disposition of spirit, I cannot will love to the right and sorrow for sin into exercise ; and in another disposition, I cannot will them out of exercise. There is a susceptibility to feehng that takes its rise, and is altogether determined, in the spiritual disposition ; hence we have termed it the spirit- ual susceptibiUty. Its exercises are properly feelings, THE DISCRIMINATION OF THE ACTS OF WILL. 283 affe3tions, not at all volitions. The election is altogethei in reference to the spiritual dispo.jing. and not at all to the susceptibility and its feelings when the disposition has been taken. It is only because the disposition has its alternative and is avoidable, that the man is respon- sible for the affections which are conditioned in it. The disposition may be termed a state of will, but the affec- tions are the exercises of the spiritual susceptibihty. In all cases, an open alternative, and thus an avoida- bility, will characterize all acts that are properly of the human will, and this will discriminate them from aJl other mental facts. CHAPTER IV. THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE ACTS OF WILL. The will, as cipacitj, is the power of election, and thus an avoidabilitj in the origination of the act will characteiize everj proper voHtion ; yet, in other respects, the acts of the will may have permanent distinctions among them- selves, and there are many advantages from having them classified according to their inherent peculiarities. One great benefit from it is a clearer apprehension of the point of responsibiUty, and of the fountain of moral character. Section I. Immanent preference. — Preference is an actual putting of one thing before or above others, and this may be done in the spirit's own action, without any overt manifestation of it, and as thus lying hid in the mind may be termed an immanent preference. An act of the judgment may decide which of two sources of happiness is the greatest in degree, and of worthiness and happiness which is the highest good m kind, but such distinction of estimate in the judgment is not a preference. And so also one desire may go out towards its object more intensely than another, or one impera- tive may awaken a deeper sentiment of obligation than another ; but no difierence in degrees of awakened sus- ceptibility should be termed a preference. There must be a proper election, a voluntary setting of one before fflE AOTS OF WiLL CLASSIFIED. 285 others, or it is not a proper act of preference. Want of occasion, or countervailing circumstances, may preclude tliis preference from manifesting itself anywhere on the theater of active hfe, and thus the act of preferring never pass over from the mind ; yea, the intention through all the duration of the preference may be, that it shall never come out in open action ; yet is there in it a real commit- ment of the spirit to the end preferred, and such inward election is a personal willing, which to the eye that searches the heart has its proper moral character. It is fidly within the person's own consciousness, and the con- science accuses or excuses accordingly. As examples for illustration, there may be mentioned the declaration of the Savior, " Whoso looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery already with her in his heart." — Math, v, 28. "Whoso hateth his brother is a murderer." — 1 John, iii, 15. And quite prominently, the tenth commandment — " Thou shalt not covet," etc. — Ex. xx, 17. In a good sense we find this immanent preference in the case of David, who would have built a temple for the Lord, but was prevented because as a warrior he had shed much human blood. '' It was in thine heart to build an house to my name, thou didst well that it was in thine heart."— 1 Kings, viii, 18. As a general apphcation on both sides, good and bad, we have Solomon's declaration of man, "As he thinketh in his heart, so is he." — Prov. xxiii, 7. This thinking in heart is a real electing purpose. The immanent preference of objects and ends must widely affect the entire personal character, though th« 286 THE WILL. action towards the object externally be always restrained. The whole inner experience of the man is modified by it, and all his habits of meditation and silent reflection become tinged with the color of his secret preferences. It is easy to see what was the inward preference of David, when he said of the Lord, "Whom have I in heaven but thee, and there is none upon the earth that I desire beside thee." — Ps. Ixxiii, 25. And while this induced pious meditations on his bed in the night-watches, the eSect upon his entire character would be in strong contrast to the impure and debasing thoughts springing from the immanent preferences of the sensualist. The inward influence must soon so far aifect the whole man, that the outward life will be colored by it, through all its communion and conversation, though the specific prefer- ences be stiU restrained to the heart. Section II. Governing purpose. — The spiritual activity may dispose itself towards an end, that may demand many supplementary acts before it can be attained ; in such a case the general election of the end is a purpose, and inasmuch as it prompts the executive acts and guides and directs them to its own issues, it is properly termed a governing purpose. The executive acts are solely that the general purpose may be efiected. Such governing purpose may be more or less comprehen- sive, proportioned to the number and complication of the means and agencies used to complete the end, and so far as it reaches it governs the process and is, to that extent. a governing purpose. A purpose to visit a distant place THE ACTS OF WILL CLASSIFIED. 28"^ will govern all the actions necessary in preparation for, and prosecution of the journey ; but such a purpose will not be so comprehensive nor engrossing as that which fixes upon the main end in hfe. The governing purpose has this peculiarity, that it is continuous and prolonged through all the process to the consummation. An act of election is at once, and may wholly cease in its instantaneous energizing, and in tins point of view volitions are transient and fleeting ; but when the election has been of an end that is to be attained only through a long succession of activities, the electing act does not die in its outgoing, but the spirit fixes itself upon its object and remains in a state of energizing towards it. That it has taken its distant end removes all the uneasiness of hesitation and suspense, and there is no farther place for choice, since the mind is already made up ; but the action, as will, has not terminated in the choosing ; it flows on in a perpetuated current towards its object, and the spirit may be said to be in a perma- nent state of will for the accomplishment of that end. A -purpose is thus a perpetuated will from an election. A person may not always retain the consciousness of having made the distinct and dehberate election ; nor mdeed, be conscious how deep and strong the current of his purpose has become. An absorption of all the mental energy may already be in a purpose to acquire and amass riches, and yet the distinct election of such an end may have no place in the memory ; and the purpose itself may have strengthened so insidiously, that the man has no conception what a very miser he has become ; but 288 THE WILL. there needs only to be suddenly interposed some threat ened danger to his wealth, or some obstacle to any farther gains, and at once the perturbed spirit manifests the intensity of its avarice. His will has yielded to passion so readily, that it has not known the strength of ts bondage. As the governing purpose is enlarged in the compre- hensiveness of its end, and the control it holds over all the mental energies, it comes to be known as a perma- nent disposition, and while a fixed and comprehensive purpose in business would not be termed the man's dis- position, yet when found so engrossing as to merge all else in the end of getting and of hoarding money, we should not hesitate to say of such a purpose, that it is the man's disposition. It goes so far, and is so controll- ing, that it gives character to the man. When we have an end so comprehensive that it includes all the action, and controls all the mental energy, we have in this the radical disposition, and thus the true moral character of the man. If the spirit is disposed towards happiness as its chief good, and puts that as end to the exclusion ot its own worthiness, it has become radically and thoroughly depraved, and its disposition is totally sinful. If, on the other hand, the end of the spirit is the attaining and keep- ing its worthiness of its own and other spirit's approba- tion, and is denying every conflicting appetite for it ; so far as such a disposition supremely controls, it is right- eous, and the moral character is pure and virtuous. Out af this radical disposition springs the spiiitual suscepti- THE ACTS OF WILL CLASSIFIED. 289 bility, or heart, of the man, from which flows all pui'O or depraved affections. The governing purpose is, in this way, distinguished from all the choices or volitions that are subordinate to it. They exist for it, and find their whole determination in it. They may change according to cn-cumstances, and often the good and the bad man's end may induce to the same outward action. A wordly end may some- times be best attained by putting on the semblance, and performing the ceremonials, of piety ; but the character of the subordinate act is to be estimated, not from the outward seeming, but solely from the governing purpose which it is designed to execute. The radical character can be changed by no change in the choices and voli- tions of the man, but only in a change of the radical spiritual disposition. Section III. Desultory volition. — An election of some comprehensive end may have induced a perma- nent state of will in a governing purpose, and this may still continue unrenounced and unchanged, and yet this governing purpose may not be so energetic as to preclude the sudden and strong awakening of some constitutional susceptibility, to carry out an executive act in gratifica- tion of it, against the direction of the governing purpose. Such turning aside from the main end, while the govern ing purpose towards it is not renounced, is what has been termed above a desultory volition. Observation and experience constantly give such facts, where a passionate impulse comes suddenly and strongly in, and the action 25 290 THE WILL. for a time is carried away from the main object before this counter-impulse of sudden feeling. But inasmuch as the governing purpose which it thus counterworks has not been discarded, the desultory impulse must at length subside, and the old unrenounced purpose again bear sway. The passion is satiated and subsides, reflection returns, and the main end again comes in clear view, and the governing purpose controls the subordinate acts again for its attainment. The man chides himself for his folly and Aveakness, and hastens on more determinately towards the predominant object. A famihar illustration of the intrusion of a desultory volition will make the conception distinct. I learn that a dear friend is dangerously sick in a distant city, and I take the purpose to visit him. This controls all my voli- tions in arranging for the journey, and from the start, onward for several days travel towards the place. Then an intensely interesting incident suddenly occurs, and my feelings are at once powerfully excited and attention absorbed by a surprising curiosity, or convivial opportu- nity, or chance for pecuniary speculation ; and I give way to this desultory impulse and lose sight of my main end for some hours. But at length this impulse becomes exhausted ; the main end and purpose of my journey comes vividly up ; and conscious that they have never been renounced, though inexcusably suspended, I hasten on to the prosecution of my ir tention ; reproaching myself for my weakness, and fearing that all may now be m vain, and that during my delay my friend may have died. And so once more, where the governing purpose TfiE ACTS OF WILL CLASSIFIED. 291 nses to a permanent disposition, — an exceedingly avarL cious man may be taken as an example, whose purpose fixed on gain may have made him a very miser in all his feelings and habits. There may suddenly come to him an appeal, from some interesting sufferer, that shall rouse his pity, and induce the gift of some of his idolized gold in relief of this deep distress. But his governing dispo- sition has not at all been changed in the intrusion of sue)* a desultory volition, and very probably, in a few hours . all this constitutional sympathy will have passed away, and he be chiding himself as a fool for his weakness, and more firmly resolving not again to be so overcome a^ thus to be cheated of the object of his ruling passion. The real character of the man is in his radical disposi- tion, and if this is not changed, no desultory acts affect his true character. A good man may have sudden and strong temptations, in appeals to constitutional appetite, and the impulse bear him away in sinful action ; but if the good disposition has not been renounced, the temj t- mg influence will at length fade, and the man come back from his fall with bitter tears and self-reproaches; a repenting backslider, but not a dehberate apostate. Against both a bad and a good governing purpose, such sudden impulses may induce desultory volitions, which are quite in contradiction to the main direction of the spirit, but we are not to estimate the man's proper cha- racter by them. If the bad man do a good deed, only through the impulse of constitutional feeling, all we can say in his favor is, that his depraved disposition was not too strong for some transient traits of humanity; and 1292 THE WILL. when a good man so does a bad deed, he is a sinner in that act, and should feel debased and humbled bj it, and repent of it ; but the real character of neither the bad nor the good man was in tliis way at all changed. The strength of character is in the decision and firmness of the radical disposition, and to be perfect, this should be so strong in the right that all desultory impulses should be resisted ; but no man is safe in supposing, and no man can at any time be conscious, that his governing purpose is so strong, that all desultory volitions against it shaU forever be excluded. EOUETH DIYISIOK m COMPETENCY OF THE Hl'MM Mil TO ATTABi THE END OF ITS BEING. GENERAL REMAEKS ON THE TRUE END OF THE HUMAN MIND. We have now attained the facts, general and particular, of the human mind, and their classification in an orderly system, according to the testimony of universal conscious- ness ; and have thus the conception of the human mind as a whole, and may thence determine what it is competent to execute. This is of much importance in many directions. All systems of education, and more or less all questions of responsibility in morals and religion, must be deter^^ mined from the true \dew of the capabihties of the mmd m its varied faculties. Merely to know what mind is, ought not to be the conclusion of our psychology. Tak- ing it as it is, what is designed to be attained by it? and how competent is it to fulfil such design ? These are enquiries yet to be prosecuted and settled. A farther reference to human consciousness, a careful observation 25* 29J: THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. of the facts which come within human experience, and fair deductions from all facts which have been above attained, are the sources from whence our answers must be derived. The end of the human mind is its own perfection. Every claim that can come upon it, and everj righteo^is wish that can be held for it, is fully satisfied, when eviry faculty is working completely according to the law of its adaptation in its place in the whole mind. When intel- lect, susceptibility, and will are in complete conformity to the SUMMUM BONUM, the highest good of the man, then is the great end for wiiich the human mind exists consummated. It may thus hold on its way in eternity, and in its action every faculty augment in energy, and thus the whole mind rise in efficiency and inherent dignity indefinitely ; but at any one point in such perpetual pro- gress, this conforming activity in the whole mind to the highest good is then and there in its consummated degree, and a higher could not have been attained at that point, and only by passing through it and beyond it. What then is the highest good^ to which the action of every faculty must be held conformable ? This can be conclusively answered from the data already found in the conscious facts of the human mind. The highest good of the animal portion of our nature is the gratification of its highest wants. An immediate gratification of a present want may be far counterbal- anced by a present denial, and attaining the coming gratification of a future greater want. The perfection of the animal would thus be found, in tVe cultivation of THE TRUE END LOST. 295 the sense to perceive, and of the understanding to judge, the most accurately in reference to such objects and such constitutional susceptibilities as, when brought together, shall secure the greatest gratification. Such estimation of greatest happiness would induce the strongest cra^ ing want, and this would direct the executive agencj accord- ingly, and the consummation of animal being would be found in the waiting for, and finally attaining, that highest happiness. It might so be found, that in the long run of experience, the gratification of kindness or benevolence would give decidedly the greatest happiness, and then this would be the greatest want and control the activity which must energize to satisfy it. It would be prudent to be kind ; and the perfection of the animal is in know- ing it, and feehng the strongest craving for the happiness of kind action, and thus doing and enjoying it. Its highest good is highest happiness, and its perfection is in knowing where to find it, and theoi it must go out con- formably to get it. The mere animal can propose to itself no higher end, nor by any action reach a higher consummation. But the spiritual in man can see an intrinsic excellency and dignity in spiritual being itself, which will not allow that any want shall stand in competition with its own worth. It can see its relationship to the animal, and that this, with all its wants, must be subservient to it, and not it to the wants of the animal. It can see its relar tionship to other spirits, and that in the excellency and dignity of their spiritual being, they have rights and claims upon itself. But no such relationship, either to 298 THE COMPETEXCr OF MIND TO ITS END. the animal or to the spiritual, can be an ultimate ground in which the man can find his highest good, but solely in tliis, that in all relationships he has looked to the kw written in his own spiritual being, and conformed to the claim of its worthiness. Other spirits, God, and God*a revealed law, all stand in a certain relationship to him ; but the last and highest question is taken to his o^vti soul — how, in this relationship to other spirits, and to God, and to God's revealed law, shall I so stand as to make mj own spirit the most worthy of its own approbation ? No other spirit, and no legislating sovereign, can approve of my spirit, if it has not sacredly and solely done *-hat, and been that, w^hich made it the most worthy of its own acceptance. Not that somehow I shall get, or God may give me, greater happiness for it; for if I have looked at the happiness as end, I shall have in that said, that my worthiness is nothing but a means to happiness, and that if I can barter it away for greater happiness, or get the happiness as well by something else, then my worthiness of spirit is nothing to me. That I may see myself to be worthy of my own spiritual approbation is my highest good, and I shall know that God and good angels can approve, only when my whole activity is in conformity to it. In this is conscience; an insight into my o^vn spiritual being ; knomng my ultimate rule in connection with the very fact of knowing myself. The susceptibility awakened by the knowing of this rule of right, is the source of all feel- ing of obligation, and is wholly in the spiritual man and can never be induced in the animal constitution. The feeling of obligation, thus induced, was designed to con- THE TRUE END LOST. 297 trol in opposition to all other feelings whatsoever, inas- much as the gratification of anj and all other interest, in conflict with this, would compel self-reproach, for which no possible gratification in happiness could compensate. To know myself to be worthy of my spiritual approbar fcion is my highest good, and to be and remain so is my highest end. This cannot be effected in any succession of specific vohtions, for such particular vohtions must be in execu- tion of some general purpose terminating in a final result, which gives its character to the general purpose, and through that also to all the subordinate volitions. The supreme controlling purpose must then be found, which holds sway over aU the vohtions of life. This is only reached in the radical spiritual disposition ; the bent of the spirit itself, as it goes out in its spontaneous activity. The man can be worthy, and thus attain his highest good, only in the possession of a radical spiritual disposition fixed in conformity to the claims of his own excellency. He obeys neither man nor God, ethically, except as he directly sees that the proper dignity of his own spirit demands it of him ; and that spirit, permanently disposed on that end, is a righteous spiritual disposition. That the human mind may attain the end of its being, it must be competent to attain and maintain such a spiritual dis- poation. It is quite manifest that such righteous spiritual dispo- sition is not within us, nor in our feUow-men about us, with the first openings of our conscious moral activity and onwani in hfe Our own consciousness, our constant 21)8 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. observation, and the whole past history of man, testify t€ the depravity of the radical disj^osition of man, as a race. It is not necessary to say, that ^^^thout consciousness, but that without any remembrance of the origination of the fact in consciousness, the spirit has disposed its activity to the end of sense-gratification in happiness, and not to the end of its own right in worthiness. WTien we awake in self-consciousness, and reflect on our acts and our ends of action, we already find a carnal and not a spiritual mind or disposition. We may need the light of revelation, and it may thus be a theological doctrine which determines the occasion and the origin of such uni- vei-sal human depravity ; but we need only the testimony of consciousness and observation, and it is thus only a psychological phenomenon, in which is determined vhe fact of the perverse and depraved disposition of man. It is as plain a truth in the book of human experience as in the Bible, " that men go astray as soon as they are born." With the opening dawn of consciousness, we find the spirit already has its bent, and is permanently dis- posed to self-gratification, not to self-dignity. The mind has already lost the end of its being, and is wandering alter ends that are self-destructive. Theology must account for this, and also for the rectitude of the Di\ine government in either efiecting or permitting this ; but psychology has nothing to do with the doctrines of origi- nal sin, and the justification of God's character in the permission of sin. We must here only take the fact of human sinfulness, and enquire how this fact bears upon the Qne point of man's capabiUty to attain the end of hia THE TRUE END LOST. 299 being. The end, lie finds with his first self-consciousness, is alrea \j lost ; the enquiry thus is, what is man's com* petencj to regain it ? Here there should be allowed no side ends to come in, and perplex and confuse the investigation. Not at all, how can he be forgiven for the past ? how stand justified before a legal tribunal ? how avail himself of any provi- sions of a gracious Divine influence ? All these are within the rehgious sphere, and appropriate only for theological speculation. But, taking the facts of mind, just as expe- rience gives them to us, how competent is man to stand forth among his fellows, and in his own consciousness and to the observation of others, manifest a spiritual disposi- tion, that controls the whole mental activity to the grand end of spiritual Avorthiness ? This is properly and wholly within the psychological field, and must be found as a fact in mind from conscious observation; and which, when we go to revealed theology, will be found to have been already settled, and the fact itself taken for granted. A range of collateral investigation somewhat extensive is necessary to this question, and we now pursue it through ♦he severa.' remaining Chapters. CHAPTER I. THE TRUE CONCEPTION OF CAUSALITY. We have found the mind to be self-active, and the source of various states and exercises which spring out from it, and thus that the mind is a cause for various specific effects. But we have given no distinct attention to this fact of causahty, that we might attain a complete concep- tion of it, and discriminate fully between all varieties of it that may present themselves. We have the operation of causes in the world of nature about us, and in our own constitutional nature, as well as in the spontaneous activ- ities of our spiritual being ; and, while all without and all within is kept in ceaseless flow and change by these acting causes, it is important that we attain a correct and complete conception of what causality is, and that, in attaining its varieties, we may clearly discern how causes in matter and causes in mind may differ from each other. Such conception and discrimination is quite essential in the investigation on which we now enter. We cannot proceed a step, intelhgently, in settling the fact of the mind's competency to attain its end, till this has been effected. To this end we devote this entire Chapter. Causes and effects stand to each other, in time, as sequents ; the cause is the antecedent, and the effect is the consequent. Even when we have the effect as instan- taneous upon the operation of the cause, we still conceive THE CONCEPTION OF CAUSE. 301 the cause to be first and the condition for the effect, and that the effect is wholly conditioned by it. And it is in this point of the connection between cause and effect, that all the difficulty is found, and about this one point have all the theories for conceiving and explaining cans ahty been made to turn. In common acceptation, there is Avhat is termed power in the antecedent, and this power in exertion is that which constitutes the antecedent to be cause ; making or effecting the consequent, and determ- ining all its peculiarities. This conception of power is thus made the connecting medium between the antecedent and the consequent, and is really the conception which contains all the mystery. The whole difficulty in the conception of causation will be found, in reference to this interposition of power as the connecting medium between the sequences. What, then, is the true conception o^ power? Power itself is never phenomenon, and can in no way be brought within the light of consciousness. One fact precedes, and another succeeds, and these successive facts are given in consciousness, and as distinguished and defined become clearly perceived in the sense. But no reflec tion upon the antecedent, no analysis nor generalization no comparison nor contrast, no combining nor abstracting, no mental elaboration whatever can lay open this antece- dent phenomenal fact and make its inherent power to appear, nor take the fact itself and make power, as a phenomenon, to come out of it. Power is whoUy irrele- vant and insignificant to the sense, and can thus be made in no way a sense-conception. As in sense, we have the 26 302 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO IIS END. qualities and not the substantial thing in which they inhere, so in sense we have the successive events and not the causal power on which thej depend. And this is as thoroughly true in the internal sense as in the external. It may be deemed to be a phenomenal fact, that when I energize in thinking or willing, I really become conscious of power, and that here power becomes a proper pheno- oaenon. But the feeling, which accompanies muscular or mental exertion, is by no means the power itself that goes out into effect, and is only a fact that appears in us when we energize, and as a phenomenon, wholly depen- dent upon the exertion and is not the power exerted. It is a phenomenal effect of our energizing, but is neither the efficiency of causality itself, nor anything that can be made explanatory of it. When our power goes out in effects, we have such phenomena in our experience ; we feel ourselves energizing ; but we do not feel nature in htr energizing, nor deem that nature so feels herself in htr ongoing of efficient causes and effects. This pheno- menal feeling accompanying personal power is not the power, nor anything that at all helps to explain what power itself is. The sun shines upon me, and I perceive warmth ; the mind goes out in thought, and I perceive the exertion ; but in neither case do I perceive the power warming, nor the power outgoing. Power is thus no possible object for either the external or the internal sense It never appears in consciousness, and is not at all phenomenal. W^ have gained much, when we have leam»>i that neither sense, nor any reflection upon wha THE CONCEPTION OF CAUSE. 303 jcnse may give, can help us at all in attaining any con* ception of power. Power is wholly notion^ and not phenomenon; it is altogether thought in the understanding, and not at all perceived in the sense. When any change occurs, and tlius a new fact eomes out, we term it an event ; and we think that some modification has been made in the ground which gave out the old fact, and that this modification has introduced the new fact. The successive facts we perceive, but the modifying power we do not perceive ; it is only thought ; and this notion as a thought we put between the two facts, and judge that it connects them as cause and eifect. Thus, we perceive the sun shining upon the sohd ice, or the yielding clay, and we find the new facts that the ice has liquified, and the clay has indurated ; we think the shining sun has so changed the two substances that they now give out their altered quali- ties, and we thus judge that there has been an efficiency, or power, in the sunshine, that has made the new events, and, as efiected by it, we say, that they stand connected as cause and eifect. The notion of power is thus condi- tional for the connection. Take it away, and the under- standing could not make the connection ; there would be nothing in the first on which the last depended, and thus no possible judgment of cause and eifect could be formed. We cannot think in a judgment of connected cause an culty ; for this third thing, called power, must be only another phenomenon added to the antecedent and conso* quent, and itself just as difficult to be apprehended in its connection with either, as would be their connection together without it. It, in truth, makes aU the mystery, and when wholly excluded, the whole conception of cause and effect is thoroughly perspicuous. All notion of power being discarded, there remains simple invariable ness of succession in certain sequences, and this concep tion of invariableness is the peculiarity of the succession called cause and effect. K the succession might some times fail, then would the conception of causality be excluded, but when the sequences are deemed to be unfailing, then is it the connection of cause. To say, that a certain degree of heat in a metal is invariably followed by its liquescence, expresses the same thing as to say, so much heat is a power to melt the metal, and both are tantamount to saying the heat is the cause of the melting. But, if nothing efficiently connects the antecedent and consequent, the enquiry must arise, whence can come the conviction of this invariableness ? We must not attempt to interpose the notion of power, which may make the consequent to be a production from the antecedent ; we must wholly exclude such notion ; and hence the query — whence is this conception of invariableness possible ? How can we tliink invariable succession in the absence of all efficient production ? This knot is cut, with no 312 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. attempt to loose it. All is resolved into the constitutior. of the human mind. We are so formed, as to anticipate infallibly, in the appearance of some phenomena, the sequence of their respective fellow phenomena. We dc not need a repetition; but instinctively, if one comes, we forecast the other. It is " an internal revelation, lika a rcice of ceaseless and unerring prophecy." K there is nothing in the antecedent efi&oiently to pro- duce the consequent, then is it as philosophical to refer the conviction of invariable connection to a peculiar mental conformation as any way. But it will not reach to the real conviction which we find has some way come into the consciousness. Simple invariable succession is not our conviction of the connection in cause and effect, nor at all hke it. Night invariably succeeds the day ; one o'clock invariably succeeds twelve o'clock; one fixed star invariably succeeds another fixed star in crossing our meridian ; but none of these invariable successions is our conviction of causal connection. If we assume two pair of wheels, one of which has each wheel separately driven, so that the cogs in their periphery exactly match in every revolution ; but the other pair is so constructed, that, one wheel being moved, its cogs drive the other ; there will be alike invariable succession in each case ; but we must carry the mind quite beyond the fact of invari. able succession, to some efficiency in an antecedent that produces the consequent. No conception of simple suc- cession, no matter how invariable, is our notion of cause. The sequences belong to the perceptions of the sense, and perpetual perceptions cannot give connections in a THE CONCEPTION OF CAUSE. 313 judgment of the understanding without the notion being thought ; the notion of power must be there, or the inva riableness of succession comes from a void. The doctrine that causality is only a regulative concep- tion in our own minds. — Kant assumes the phenomenal sequences to be real ; but what the substances as things in themselves, of which these phenomena are only quali- ties, truly are, can never be known by human intelli- gence. The mind, as a regulative principle for its think- ing in judgments, is obliged to use the conception of causality, and bring its sequences into connection under this category ; but this notion of causahty is altogether subjective ; a mental conception for regulating the mind's own thinking ; a^.d we cannot say that the phenomenal realities have any such connections in the things them- selves. The mind has such original forms, as pure con- ceptions, from itself; and, in thinking, it fits these forms on to the real phenomena, and brings them into orderly connection thereby ; but it is the mind which makes the connections, and not that the connections are in the things themselves, and that they make the mind to know after their conditions. Section II. The true conception op cause. — It may be said here, that it is competent to demonstrate in national Psychology, that the subjective notion of caus- ality must have also its objective being in things them- selves, or the human mind could never determine the passing phenomena to their successive periods in a wliole of time ; and that because we do so determine successive 27 314 THE COMPETENCY OP MIND TO ITS El^B. phenomena in our experience, thereforfc nature is trulj successive in her causes ; but such statement, and espe ciallj such demonstration, have here no relevancy. Experience, as such, must rest on her own conditions . ctnd cannot itself question and examine that which must first be in order that itself should be. To it, the notion of power, and efficient production in causality, must be valid ; and an Empirical Psychology is not to be dis- turbed, by anything that lies out of and beyond experi- ence. K any such questions come up, they must be wholly ignored here, and referred over to their proper transcendental sphere. In experience, the conviction plainly and universally is, that nature has its powers ; that an efficient working goes on in both mind and matter, and produces, in each realm, its changes, which manifest themselves in perpetually passing phenomena ; and the true conception of cause can be equalled in nothing, that does not put an efficiency in the antecedent, which makes the consequent to be its conditioned product. Experi- ence founds on nothing short of this ; and for an Empi- rical Philosophy, this foundation must be unquestioned. We are not to say, the phenomena come in succession, and habit makes us deem the successions necessary ; nor, the conformation of our mind makes us to predict them as invariable ; nor, that a subjective conception of cause regulates our thinking of these phenomena together ; but we are to say— our conscious conviction of causality is a power in the antecedent to make the consequent. They (wre not mere sequences, but one springs from the other, TflE CONCEPTION OF CAUSE. 315 and is thus event ; one is the product of the other, and is thus effect. With this conception of causality, we are now readj to discriminate different causes. Section III. Classification of the varieties of Ci USE. — It will be more conclusive if we also give a place to all distinctions of succession, and thereby show, in one view, the gradations from simple succession up to the most perfect causality. We shall draw the lines rapidly, though still distinctly, between the varieties. Mere succession may be given in two varieties. Sim- pie succession is when one phenomenon foUows another casually; occurring once in that order of sequence, but no probability or expectation of a repetition. There was a cause for each fact in the sequence, but their causes are not regarded, and they are viewed only as independent occurrences, and which we say, somehow so happened to come in succession; as "he went out into the porch, and the cock crew." — Mark, xiv, 68. Invariable succession gives the same sequences at all times, while both pheno- mena are the results of independent sources of appear- ance. Thus, of the invariable order of the seasons ; of day and night in alternation ; of one place on the earth invariably passing under the meridian consequently to another that is at the eastward of it; etc. In aU such cases of succession, though the sequence be mFariable, we have only concurrence, not adherence. Th^ .«seq""»«ai^ cea have no connection as cause and effect. 316 THE COMPETENCY OF MINI) TO ITS END. Qualified causes are destitute of all proper efficieucy, and yet stand more intimately related to their conse- quents than in mere succession. They are familiarly termed causes ; but, since they involve no conception of efficient production one of the other, they have theii qualifying adjuncts to mark their distinction from all efficient causes. Conditional causes are such antece- dents as must be given as occasions for the consequents. The efficiency, which is in the proper cause, cannot work in the production of the effect, except on the condition that this qualified cause is also given. This may be the removal of a hindrance to the efficiency — as, the with- drawment of the support, and the fall of the body resting upon it ; the shutting off of the moving force, and the stopping of the machinery ; the taking away of life, and the corruption and dissolution of the animal body ; etc. In all the above cases, no real efficiency for the conse- quent is supposed in the antecedent ; it is only the taking away of an efficient counteraction to the power which is to produce the consequent. In another form, there may be the direct supply of an occasion — as, in bringing the fire and gunpower in contact ; or, the flint and steel in collision ; or, the presence of some object to the sense ; hi which cases the explosion, the spark, the perception, are effects, not directly of these antecedents, but only by occasion of them. Such cause was Imown by the old schoolmen as causa sine qua non. Final causes are the terminating ends of actions, and are viewed as the objec- tive motives to the act, or as the consummation for which ihe work was designed. Thus sight is the end for which THE CONCEPTION OF CAUSE. 317 khe eye was designed ; and hapj iness the end for which the animal acts ; and virtue the end for which the spirit is given ; and as such inducements to the being of the means, the ends are called causes, yet as they are not the efficients in producing the means, they are causes in only a qualified sense, and are known as teleological or final causes. They are that for which the efficient cause is exerted. We now come to those sequences which are properly causes and effects, and though differing among themselves in other particulars, they will all agree in this, that the antecedent is efficient in producing the consequent, and herein will they all be distinguished from the foregoing. Mechanical cause is an appHed force for directly counteracting other forces., chiefly that of gravity. Its action is the push or pull of some mechanism. They may be considered as modifications of two simple mechan- ical powers — the lever, including the proper lever, the flexible lever or pulley ^e wheel and axis, and the cog wheel and loco-motive- ,»xieel ; the inclined plane, includ- ing the simple form, the wedge, the spiral plane or screw, and the arch. Here, also, may be placed, as a mechan- ical force, all direct action by impulse. Physical causes are the forces inherent in nature, and which are perpetually in action to make the succes- sive changes of the material universe. They are other than mechanical impulses, and include all the primorUal forces which belong to material being, and which are giving unceasing motion and change to matter, both in its forms and locahties. Without assuming very exact 27* 318 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END delineations, we may recognize them as gra\dtating force, including repulsion as "vvell as attraction ; bipolar-forces, magnetism, electricity, galvanism, and perhaps as bipolar, combustion, illumination, chemical affinities, crjstaliza- tion, etc. They may all be conceived as simple acts in different directions of counteraction, and in their com- mingled working, showing their effects in the planetary motions, and producing all cosmic changes, pneumatic, hydrostatic, or telluric. Vital c^use is a living force inherent originally in the germ, and in its activity producing an organic develop- ment of all the rudimental elements. It may be viewed as a simple activity, pi educing itself and thus ever advancino; ; statino; itself and thus ever abidins;. The hfe of the plant ever produces itself in the advanced bud, and also ever states itself in the permanent stock ; as does the life of the animal advance in the assimilation of new elements, and remain in the incorporation of the old. Life has two aspects in its activity, viz. that of develop- ment, as above, in which the vital cause goes on to its maturity in the parent stock; and then, that of propaga- tion, where, through the medium of sex, the life passes over into a new germ, and by refusing to state itself and thus posit itself in the old stock, it thereby separates itself from the parent, and is the organic embryo of another being after the old type. Vital causes thus work on from age to age, maturing the present and pro* pagating the future being. Spontaneous cause is the originating from itself some thing wholly new, and not a mere production of itself intc THE CONCEPTION OF CAUSE. 319 Another. In all mechanical, physical, and vital causes, the cause itself is caused in its action, and produces itself into its eflfects; in spontaneous cause, the activity originates in and from itself, and creates that which is other than itself produced. It is solely the prerogative of spiritual being. Nature, neither as material, vege- table nor animal, has any proper spontaneity. There ia ever causality, a tergo ; securing only a production of what is, onwards to another form of the same in the becoming. Nature, thus, from first to last, has no new originations, but only a change of what already is, into another form, and which is only a propagation. New animals, and new men, exclusive of their spiritual being, are as much propagations of the old stock, as new trees, new herbs, or even new wine from the old cluster. What comes from nature is itself natured ; what comes from spirit is a spontaneous origination. So nature came from the hand of its Creator at first ; a spontaneous origi- nation, not something already in being, and only pushed forward in another form by a conditioning nature still behind it. So rational thought, and spiritual feeling and volition, are new originations, and not old existences pro- duced in new forms. The whole consenting spirit, of its own accord, sj)onte, originates the new thought, the new affection, or the new purpose ; and these are altogether its own creations, and not nature's, nor another spirit's, nor God's workmanship. But mere spontaneity is still conditioned in its occa- sion. It truly originates, with no conditioning nature working back of it, but is cause for origination only in 320 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITb END. given occasions. The reason's eye must see the neces- sary and universal principle ^nthin the reason itself, and the intellectual movement goes on in glad accord under its guiding light, and thus the free thought is consum- mated ; but the spirit is cause for thought only in such- occasions ; and with such occasions, only in that ono direction. So with the affection ; the object must be iu the spiritual vision, and the whole according soul assent- ing, and in such occasion the affection embraces its object ; but the spirit is cause for that affection only in that occar sion, and can have no alternative. The thought and the affection are free from all conditioning in nature, but they have open to them only one direction by conditions within the spirit itself. Cause in Liberty is not only spontaneous, but with an open alternative. It is the capacity of the spirit, knoAnng its ethical rule in knowing what is due to itself, to hold firmly by it against all the colliding appetites of a lower nature. It may spontaneously dispose its activity in this direction, though another direction be 9lso open before it. In the disposition, unlike the thought and tlio affection, there is an alternative, and an occasion given to either course ;. and the spirit is potential for ^. right disposition, and responsible to its own tribunal and to God, that it effect and maintain such a consummation. As spiritual intellect and susceptibility, the soul is cause for spontaneous origination ; as spiritual will, the s^ul is cause for originating one result, when there was also an open way to another. Cause in liberty is will, and l« the highest conceivable causality, supernatural, and ethicallv iHB CONCEPTION OF CAUSE. 321 •csponsible. In man, though fallen, the alternatives still lie open ; and the self-conditioning of the spirit onlj, and no necessitating condition of nature, perpetuates the depravity. In all holy beings, the spiritual disposition is maintained in its integrity, though to such the alternative in penr^o'wnr > Atiil ^uxieeivable. CHAPTER II. THE GROUNDS OF CERTAINTY. SSoME sequences have no connection by a direct efficieiicy j some stand in the nature of the case itself, without any interposition of power ; and others are connected bj a rlirect efficiency in their production. Even where effi- cient causes make their effects to be, there is a wide difference of degree in the clearness with which the efficiency reveals itself, and the pounds on which it can be determined beforehand that tne causal efficiency will be exerted. The certainty of events must, thus, stand on quite different grounds, and one be certain because of tms, and another certain because of that interposition. This whole ground of certainty needs to be examined, in order tx) the settlement of the question, how far the human mind is competent to gain the ends of its being ? We need not attempt any explanation of the mode of know- ledge, or ground of certainty, to the Absolute Mind, save that to God knowledge cannot be mediate and derived ; but we enquire only for the grounds of certainty in refer- ence to man, and the connections which stand in our human experience. From the comprehensive view already taken of the successions of phenomena, and the different connections of causal efficiency, we are prepared to attain and accu- rately discriminate the different grounds of certaiLty, in THE GROUNBS OP CERTAINTY. 823 reference to all the sequences in human experience. We will find these grounds of certainty in the varied order of connected events, and shoir the bearing of each upon the certainty of the fact itself, and upon the knowledge of the fact, as made to stand in the convictions of our own consciousness. Section I. The negation of all ground op CERTAINTY. — -For all that has been, is, or will be, there must be some ground on which the certainty of the being of such facts rests, and without which no such certainty could be predicated ; and thus for all facts, past, present and future, there are positive grounds of certainty. But some assumptions may be made of the origin of all facts, which would do away with all ground of certainty in reference to any fact, and which need first to be pre- sented and their absurdity exposed, in order that we may proceed intelligently and confidently on the conviction that all facts have their grounds of certainty. These negations of all ground of certainty are perversions of the very laws of thought itself. The assumption of chance. — A common use of the word chance is in reference to such events as occur without a recognition of the causes inducing them. Because we were quite ignorant of the operating causes, and the event has come unexpectedly up in our experi- ence, we say, ' somehow it has so happened ;' or, ' it chanced to be.' So, because the connections, which link events in their series, are not recognized, we say that " time and chance happen to all." — Eccl. ix, 11 B24 THE COMPETENCY OP MIND TO ITS END. In the turning of dice, or any form of casting lots, we also speak of leaving the event to the determination of chance ; but the real meaning in all is the same, m. that we withdraw the mind from all recognition of the acting efficiencies that must secure the event, and because we exclude all control ourselves, and leave unseen causes to control, we say we have left it to chance. But the philosophical conception of chance utterly denies all causation. All efficiency is excluded, and something comes from nothing. Not as creation from nothing external to the Creator, but creation exclusive of the Creator himself; origination from an utter void of all being. Such a conception, were it pos<^ble, would of course annihilate all ground of certainty. There is no ground for the being itself, and can, therefore, be no ground for any certainty about it. It comes from nothing, exists in nothing, and goes out in nothing, and can have no determination in any possible certainty. But such negation of all causality is impossible to the human under- standing. It is not merely a ghost which appears with out substance, and may be a phantasm made by the mind ; but a ghost that has no maker, subjective noi objective ; inhering in nothing and adhering to nothing. The understanding can connect it in no judgment, nor bring it within any possible form of thought. It is that about which the mmd cannot reflect, and concerning which it can deduce nothing, and conclude nothing ; and which is thus the absurdity of being understocd, without its coming at all within the understanding. THE GROUNDS OF CERTAINTY. 325 To exclude all ground of certainty in chance, is thus wholly to exclude all causality. If we merely ignore the cause, while we yet do not deny that there is cause, we leave all its ground of certainty, both that it must be, and what it must be, and only exclude the certainty from our cognition. The common use of chance excludes nothing of certainty ; the philosophical meaning, which is a nega- tive of all causality, is, in that, a negation of all ground of certainty. The human mind cannot so connect in any form of judgments, and cannot, therefore, exclude from its. facts their grounds of certainty. The assumption of fate. — The common acceptation of fate is that an event is made inevitable, and the issue bound in its connections beyond entreaty or resistance. But with this view, the ongoings of nature would be fate. The determinations of infinite power and wisdom would be fate. This is destiny ; an event destined by omni- science, and executed by omnipotence. There may sometimes be added the conception of arbitrariness, as if the sovereign disposer consulted only his own will, as in Mahomedan predestination ; but this still is not the proper meaning of fate. In all the above, there is a ground of certainty, and this of so fixed a nature as to be inevitable. But the true philosophical conception of fate is that of blind causation undirected and undeterminable by any conditions. In all natural causes, the thing on which the cause works is as determinative of the efiect as the working of the cause itself. The sun-shine, as cause, is conditioned to one efiect by the nature of the wax, and 28 326 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END to another effect bj the nature of the clay, and \.y know- ing the cause working, and the substance on which it works, there is the ground of certainty in reference to the event. But the conception of fate, is that of cause merely, without any conditions. It is positive of an effi- ciency to produce, but negative of all conditioning in that which is to be produced. There is an acting efficiency to originate something, but there is nothing to react upon that efficiency to give to it any quaUfication. The blind giant will work, but he has no directory ; neither end nor aim ; no pity nor fear ; no rule nor restraint. There is nothing to heed prayer ; and thus nothing to pray to, nor to pray for. There is no destiny to work out, for no result is destined ; and no consummation to reach, for no end is proposed. There is simply a power fated to work on incessantly, but nothing in nor out of itself to deter- mine the direction or the product of its working. Heart- less, aimless, lawless ; man is placed beneath it, and it is his wisdom neither to hope nor to fear, but patiently to endure. The old Stoic philosophy put both gods and men beneath such a blind power, and thus required the patience of hopelessness and the fortitude of despair, and made it the highest evil to be disquieted by anything. There is here ground for certainty that something will be, for there is causality working ; but there is no ground for certainty what the effects will be, inasmuch as there is no conditioning of this blind and senseless efficiency. But such a conception of blind, naked causation is as Impossible for the human understanding as chance Physical causes must have their reaction from the sub* THE GROUNDS 01 CERTAINTY. 327 /Btances on which thej act, or the understanding can connect no causes and effects in a judgment ; and moral agents must have a reflex bearing of all their acts upon themselves, or they can be brought within no judgment of moral responsibiUtj. That any power should be wholly unconditioned is inconceivable. It would require the understanding to be as crazy in its thinking, as the fatality is lawless in its working. Section II. The positive grounds of certainty. — Under this head is included all connections of pheno- mena which are held in necessity. They are opposed to chance, inasmuch as there is a ground of their being, and they are opposed to fate, inasmuch as they are conditioned to be what they are. They are of several varieties. By necessity, in common acceptation, is meant an event that occurs in the face of all opposition and hin- drance. The cause is conceived as overcoming a coun- teraction. Individual necessity is a cause overcoming in that particular case ; and universal necessity is when the cause must overcome in all cases. But this concep- tion, of opposition and resistance overcome, is not essen- tial to the true meaning of necessity. It is more properly impossibility of prevention^ and is only one species of necessity. In a philosophical acceptation, necessity is inclusive of all that which has no alternative. Whether opposition be conceived or not, if there is no alterna^ve to the event, it is necessary. The word necessity should be used in no other application, when philosophical precision 328 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. is designed by it. It cannot admit of alteration, foi there is no alter; it can admit of no negation, for a nega- tive would itself be an alternative. When, therefore, ao event is grounded in necessity, its certainty is infaUible, in the sense that no other event can then and there be. In as many ways as we conceive of connections without an alternative, in so many ways may there be events grounded in infallible certainty, and it is important that we be able clearly to distinguish each in its own peculiar ground. Absolute necessity is when in the nature of the case there is no alternative, and thus the result Hes beyond the reach of all efficiency. It is not the product of power, and must thus be unconditioned by power. Power, or causality has no reference to it, can neither unmake nor change it ; but the truth stands out unalterable in its own absolute being. All such truths are given in the insight of the reason. Such is the certauity of the Deity, and of all his perfections in connection with his being. God is, and as he is, from no causal efficiency. His ground of being stands beyond the reach of all power, finite or infinite, and as thus absolute, its certainty ia absolute. In the nature of the case, there can be no alternative to his being. So also, with aU necessary and universal truths. Their certainty is grounded in the nature of the case, and no conception of an alternative in their case can be possible. All mathematical intui- tions are of this kind, and their certainty is absolute, oecause grounded in the very nature of the case. The radii of the same circle must all be equal ; any three THE GROUNDS OF CERTAINTY. S2S points must lie in the same plane ; the two acute angles of a right angled triangle must together be equal to a right angle ; etc. An alternative is inconceivable as it would involve an absurdity. So, in the same way, of necessary physical principles ; they have an absolute certainty in their own ground. Matter must have place and dimensions ; must be divisible and impenetrable ; force must involve counteraction; action and reaction must be opposite and equal; etc. If the conception at all be, the very case contains these truths ; and all con- ception of an alternative would make a wholly different case. Here is absolute necessity. Physical necessity is grounded in the efficiency of physical causation. In the ongoings of nature, the ante- cedent conditions the consequent, and the whole series is truly determined in the first link. If only nature work on in its causes, there can be no alternatives, and all change must be effected by a supematui'al interposition. There is a ground of certainty in each link what all its successors must be, inasmuch as the causal efficiency that is to produce future changes is whoUy contained within it. Any new originations of efficiency in nature cannot spring out from nature, inasmuch as the addition would be wholly from a void, and all nature may have sprung by chance out of a void as readily as that additional por- tion. A power above nature must put aU new things m nature, so that nature alone must work on through all her processes with no alternatives. Her inward efficiency necessitates her processes, and the certainty what they must be is grounded in this efficiency, and the events are 28* 330 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. as inevitable as the ongoing of nature. Thej are only not absolute, because an alternative can be conceived through a miraculous interposition. Nature is unaltei^ able in her course to all but a supernatural efficiency. Hypothetical necessity has its ground in the originar tions of spontaneous causality. Pure spontaneity is always supernatural, for it originates new things of its own accord, sponte; and thus, it is not a mere production of somewhat that already lay back in nature. Nature ia alwaj^ caused cause, and never spontaneous cause. What we term spontaneous production, spontaneous com- bustion, etc., is still nature acting according to her inner conditions, and producing in another form what already is. and not any origination of wholly a new thing. It is spontaneous, only as no efficiency is supplied from some foreign causality. But rational spirit originates from itself new things, in its thoughts and emotions. They are not productions of somewhat that already is, and only an old thing put forward in a new form ; they are really new creations. They come into nature, as something not at aU of nature ; but as wholly born of the spirit. A poem is a new creation, a thing made by the spirit of the poet, and added to nature, as truly as that poet's spirit is put into nature by its maker. And so with a science ; a philosophy ; an idea ; they are spontaneously origin- aksd from the rational spirit. But all such originations are hypothetical. They difFei froiz; the causality of nature, in that they are not condi tioned by something l)ack in nature ; they do not como ftlong down tlrrough nature's connected series. They THE GROUI^DS OF CEKTATNTY. V^l involve a superinduction upon nature, of that which is not of nature. A spiritual existence must be, and must be so placed in relation to nature that it maj operate in and upon nature, and find the occasion for its thinking or feeling through nature ; and then, with such an hypo- thesis, the effect is necessary. The spirit, as cause, ia as efficient as nature, and, on such occasion, is cause for such origination and for no other; and, therefore, the occasion being given, the cause must go out in action, and the particular thought or emotion is necessary. The freedom of thought and feehng is not at all will in liberty; it is omy causation free from nature, and acting in its Qwn spontaneity ; but still, cause in that occasion for only that one thing. With such occasion, it must be thought, and such thought ; and with another occasion, it must be emotion, and such emotion. It is cause, in that occasion, for that one thing, and has thus no alternative in its occasion ; on that hypothesis the event is neces- sary. The ground of certainty, thus covers both the efficiency of the spontaneous cause, and the occasion for it, and is certain without alternative if the efficiency and its occasion be ; and is only not absolute certainty, inas- much as such hypothesis may not be fact. The certainty is grounded on an hypothesis becoming a fact, and is then a certainty from necessity ; for, to the event there is then no alternative. The term hypothetical necessity is sometimes applied in physical causation, where a conditional cause must intervene. On condition of contact, fire exj lodes gun- powder; aiid on the hypothesis of such contact, the 332 THE COMPETENCY HF MIND TO ITS END. explosion is necessary. But with mere physical cans ality, there can be no such hypothesis. What already ia must condition all that shall be, and the contact and explo- sion are already determined in the present conditions of nature. Not so with spontaneous causes. Nature can not determine their being and relationship to itself. There is here a genuine hypothesis, depending on the interposition of some supernatural author. A spirit must exist, and stand in certain relations to nature ; and this nothing now in nature can determine, but must depend upon the working of a supernatural efficiency ; and only so, is the event certain with no alternative. And now, in all the above varieties of necessity, we have grounds of certainty which differ in reference to their truths and facts as the necessities themselves differ. They are all without alternatives, in their respective cases, but the exclusion of all alternatives is from quite different sources. In absolute necessity, no alternative can be from the nature of the case, and no conception of any application of power could make an alternative. In physical necessity, no alternative can come from nature, nor from that which does not counteract nature, and thus only from a supernatural being. In hypothetical neces- sity no alternative can come from anything, provided the hypothesis be fact ; but nature can neither secure nor hinder that the hypothesis be fact. The highest cer- tainty is grounded in absolute necessity, for no applicar tion of power can demolish it. The next in order ia physical necessity, as a ground of certainty ; for nature already is, and is working out her conditioned processes, TflE GIIOIJNBS OF CERT^AmT-J 83^ aad she reveals nothing that is about to counteract her working. Hypothetical necessity is the least certain to mai, for he has the least data for determining the validity of the hypothetical fact. But all are alike inevitable in their own grounds, for the ground being given, they have neither of them any alternative. Section III. A possible ground of certainty in CONTINGENCY. — Contingency is used, in common accep- tation, with much the same latitude as chance. An event is said to be contingent, when it is supposed to happen without a foreseen causality determining it. Especially is that event denominated contingent, when it it'- supposed to depend upon some other event which is yet indeterminate. It has been used with a more pre- cise definition, as " something which has absolutely no ground or reason, with which its existence has any fixed and certain connection." This can hardly be made, to differ from the true conception of chance, which is origin- ation from nothing. But all conception of contingency, as a happening, chance, accident, fails to reaxjh the pre- cise meaning. It is an event which comes with a touch. It hangs in suspense, and a voluntary touch determines it. The true philosophical application is to an event that has an alternative. It is the converse of the word neces- sity, not in the sense of uncaused, but of being avoida- ble. A contingent event has its efficient cause, and also has its occasion for the efficiency to w^ork, but the work- ing is not shut up to one issue. At the same time that KDu toucii brought tnat event, the alternative was open to 584 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. touch and bring in another event to the exclusion of the former. When the touch was given, it was not inevita- ble ; not a necessity ; but had an open alternative. All physical causes work with no alternative, and thus in necessity ; all free cause works with an alternative ; an avoidability ; a liberty ; and thus contingently. The word truly applies only to an event that depends upon a will. It stands opposed to necessity solely in this sense, that it always imphes avoidability, while necessity is inevitable , And, here, the point of enquiry is, has a contingent event any ground of certainty ? The very definition excludes the certainty that is unavoidable ; necessitated ; is there then an opportunity for predicating any certainty of a contingent event ? The answer to this is made plain, only by a clear conception of what is a will in liberty, and the occasion of its action. To the human mind, which must attain its knowledge through some media, in all facts of future existence, there can be no ground of certainty in the mere efficiency. The will in liberty is cause for either alternative, and may dispose its activity for the right of the spiritual being against the sensual appetite, or it may yield to natural inclination and make carnal gratification its end ; and simply, that it has a capacity for these alternatives affords no ground of cer- tainty, which event will come out. When we know a cause which has no alternative, the cause itself is suffi- cient means for determining the event. The ground of certainty is in the efficiency of the cause itself. But when we know a cause which has an alternative, the THE GROUNDS OF CERTAINTY. 335 cause itself is no ground for determining wHcli alterna- tive will come. No ground of certainty can be found in the bare efficiency. But, if that cause has already con- ditioned itself by a previous action, we have in this some thing more than the bare efficiency, even the conditioning which its own directing of its activity has already given to it, and this may now be taken as a fair ground for determining the certainty of its future action. What ia the ground of certainty given by this conditioning of itself in a previous act ? When the spirit has already gone out in its activity towards an end, there is in that a disposing of itself in reference to that end ; and as all ends must ultimately resolve themselves into worthiness or happiness, this dis- posing of itself in reference to any end truly gives to the self-active spirit a radical disposition, and which is virtu- ous or vicious according to the ultimate end towards which the activity is directed. If then, this disposition be how considered, there is in it a condition which gives its ground for certainty in the events to come. That it is a virtuous disposition will give the stronger confidence, that it will not turn back on itself and go out after appe- tite ; or that it is a vicious disposition will give the less hope, that it will convert itself to the end of its highest worth, and resist appetite. The confidence of the one, and the hopelessness of the other is each proportionate to the strength of the disposed spiritual activity towards ita respective end. This may be to such a degree, that we ehall have no hesitation in affirming what the event will be, ii[>r in risking any interest upon the issue. At the ^^(o THE COMPETENCY OP MIND TO ITS ENt). very strongest degree, it will not rise to necessity, for the alternative will still be open ; the event will be avoid- able ; but there may be the certainty that though avoid- able it will not be avoided, and thus the event may be infallible. But the disposition is not the only conditioning that should be regarded. The constitutional susceptibihty may itself be more or less readily and intensely excita- ble, or the objects appealing to it may be of more or less motive-influence ; and accordingly as these may concur with the disposition, will the certainty of the event be augmented. The stronger virtue with the less tempta- tion, or the deeper depravity with the stronger tempta- tion, in the absence of the contrary influences in each case, will proportionally strengthen the grounds of cer- tainty : yea, if it be apprehended that, at the point o^ beginning spiritual existence, strength of subjective sa ceptibihty and objective influence be all on one side, or very largely predominant ; this may even be a ground of certainty, how the spirit shall dispose its activity and give to itself an original and radical disposition. In none of these cases is there at all an exclusion of the open alter- native, and the event is thus wholly contingent, and yet it may be certain that the touch will be on one side. To an insight so keen and comprehensive as to detect all the conditioning of temperament and appUed motive, and especially the direction and strength of radical disposi- tion, it might be no difficult thing to predict infallibly what events were coming from the efficiency of free causes. The certainty differs in its ground from all cer* fliE GROUNDS OF CERTAINTY. 337 taintj in necessity. In necessity the event must be, and there is no alternative ; in contingency there is an alter- native, and it can never be said that from the very efficiency it must be, but only that in the conditions it certainly will be. To mark this distinction, the first is Bometimes called physical certainty, and the last moral certainty ; though each may be infalhble. It should be imderstood that all these grounds of cer- tainty are in reference to human forms of judgments. Without such grounds, it is not possible that we should connect events ui any judgments, nor can we conceive of any other forms of thinking in judgments except through the series of conditions and conditioned. But we know that, to the Deity, some other form of knowing, altogether inexplicable by us, must be possessed. His knowledge cannot be mediate, through organs of seuse and connec- tions of substances and causes. He must know thinors as. they are in themselves, immediately, intuitively, thoroughly. The future and the past must be wholly irrelevant to God's mode of knowledge, though he knows what quality and succession are to us. To God, there ij3 no cold nor heat ; no nervous pain nor muscular weari- ness ; no phenomenon of sensual appearance ; and hence, no thinking of them in connected judgments ; but to him all things in themselves are plain and naked. As he knows what a guilty conscience is, immediately without experience, so he must know what all our sense and understanding-cognitions are without experience. God does not think, and conclude ; he n\iist know by imme- diate insight. Grounds of certainty, thus, are all irrela- 29 838 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS KSD. vant to God. He knows the things that are future to us, and needs not to look through their conditions to determine them. Man knows the future conditionally. Govl knows it absolutely. Section IV. Different applications op cer TAINTY. — There is, as tlie primary and most comprehen- sive application of certainty, that of infallible being, and which may be termed the certainty of truth. It wholly excludes all regard to the grounds on which anything ia certain, and also to the knowledge of the thing or itf» certainty, and is only the truth of that thing in itself. That a fact is, and th^-t the fact is so conditioned that i*. may be known, are two quite different things. And so also, that a fact will be, or has been, is quite different from the fact that some being knows it. The certainty of truth is wholly independent of all grounds on which that certainty may be determiyed. Though no intellect knew, the certainty of being would not be thereby at all modified ; and no matter on what ground the certainty rests ; necessity or contingency ; that there is certainty makes both alike infaUib' ;. The future, that shall be, is equally certain as the past, that has boen ; and the whole stream to come has its truth, as fully as the stream that has passed by. What events, all future actions of free causes shall produce, can have no greater certainty of truth when they shall already have come, than they have now. We may thus exclude all grounds of certainty and all knowledge of the fact, and may yet conceive that as tttE GROUNDS OF CERTAINTT. ^30 event is infallible in its true being, and which will be the conception of certainty of truth. Infalhble truth of being may be somehow known, and we have in this, certainty of knowledge. As already said, to God, this knowledge is independent of conditions. That there is the certainty of truth is enough that, U God, there should be absolute knowledge. But the human understanding can know facts only mediately and conditionally. Phenomena must be given in the sense, und connected in the notions of substance and cause in the understanding, or there can be no determined expe- rience ; and such experience must have its conditions, or we can judge nothing in reference to any future events. Our certainty of knowledge must, thus, rest upon the apprehension of the grounds of certainty. That there is the certainty of truth will be of no help to our knowledge, except as the conditions which form the ground of cer- tainty come into our apprehension ; and then the certainty of the knowledge is as the infallibility of the ground on which the facts rest. Thus, I may know that the radii of the same circle will always be equal to each other, but it will be certain knowledge only as I apprehend the ground of its certainty in the nature of the case ; the very conception of the circle itself. I may foreknow the certainty of natural events, but only as I know theii ground in the connection of physical causes. I ma^ know spontaneous events, but only as I know the hypo- thesis, which is to be their occasion, to be also an actual fact. And so, lastly, I may know the future action of free beings, but only as I know the conditions of their 340 tHE COMPETENCY OF MIXD TO ITS END. action in their disposition, temperament, and circumstan- ces. Certainty of truth will not give me certainty of knowledge, unless I also apprehend the grounds of this certainty ; and my knowledge will be wholly modified by these grounds. Certainty of knowledge cannot be the same in necessity as in contingency ; and of that grounded in necessity, there must be a difference of certainty between absolute, physical and hypothetical necessity. Though in all, there may be infallible certainty of truth ; yet in certainty of knowledge, the degree will vary sa the apprehension of the grounds of certainty vary. When the gromids of certainty are apprehended by another, and we depend upon his testimony, we may have the assurance of faith. The highest assurance of faith differs from knowledge, in this point ; tliat know- ledge has the grounds of certainty in its own apprehen- sion, and faith is always through the medium of another's testimony. Confidence in the testimony may rise to what is termed the faith of assurance, so that there is nohesita tion in resting the most important interests upon it ; but it is still faith, and cannot be knowledge. Grod may fore- tell the future, and the confidence in the prediction may be so strong, both from his knowledge, his power, and his veracity, that it may exclude all doubt; and the faith may thus be "the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen ;" yet the man can still only say, "I believe," and have no need to say '• help my unbehef ;" while he cannot strictly say, I know, until liia faith is actually " swallowed up in vision." THE WROUNDS OF CERTAINTY. tiil Thus we have certainty of truth, when the event is infallible in re; the certainty of knowledge, when the ground of certainty is apprehended ; and assurance of faith, when the confidence in the veracity of the testi- mony is unquestioned. Absolute truths, physical facts, and spontaneous events stand on different grounds of certainty ; but aU in necessity, because all in their way are without an alternative, and unavoidable. Contingent events may have their infallible certainty, and may be forekno^yn in knowing their conditions ; but they never come -within the sphere of necessity and ever stand upon ihe ground of responsibility, for they have their open alternative, and thus their avoidability. CHAPTER m. NATURAL AND MORAL mABILITY. Til]] animal bodj has its gi-avitating and chemical forces working within it, as in the case of all other material being ; and also its vital forces, like the rest of animated existences ; and has thus a physical efficiency as a com- ponent; part of miiversal nature. But this physical efficiency, in working its eflfocts, is as much of nature, and as little of the personal possession, as any of the ongoing causes and effects in the world around us, and does not need to be examined, in connection with the enquiry for man's competency to attain the end of his being. We have found the human mind to be a peculiar cans' ality ; a self-active, spiritual existence ; competent to originate wholly new things, and not merely to take on conditioned changes in what already is, as the causes and effects in nature pass onward. It is a supernatural exist- ence, and has thus a powder independent of nature, and competent to work in, upon, and against nature. It can originate an efficiency, that shall awake and direct mus- cular activity, and through the use of its ow^n bodily members can modify matter, and make changes in the physical world. It can also hold communion with other minds, and from the originations of its o^vn plans and purposes within, can throw its influence upon the mental NATURAL AND MORAL INABILITY. 348 world, and work its modifications in other spiritual exist- ences. But aU this power of the human spirit, over matter and mind, has its limits. It is conditioned within its own sphere, and which is very limited compared with the omnipotence of the Absolute Spirit. This condition- ing and limiting, of the supernatural causality of the human spirit, may be from obstacles in outward nature too powerful for its counteraction; or, it may be from hindrances within itself, which come from its own neglect or from its positive perversion. This spiritual efficiency \t is, that we need to examine in its entire capabilities dnd hindrances, as it is only this efficiency which is con- cerned in the attainment of the end of human existence > K we confine the attention to the one point of the limi- tation of spiritual efficiency, we shall gain all we need the most directly, since by an undivided attention we shall get clearer views of the limitation of human power ; and having thus a complete view of human inability, from all sources of mental limitation, we shaU in that have also the most completely within our vision, the whole field of human ability and direct personal responsibility. How is the human spirit limited in its efficiency ? And what bearing has this limitation, upon its competency and responsibility in attaining the end of its being? It has already been said that the limiting of spiritual efficiency may be from obstacles in nature out of the spirit, and from hindrances which the spirit puts Avithin itself. Both may be an infal- lible prevention to the attainment of many ends for wliich the spirit might act, but the first hindrance will be from without itself and thus excluding all moral accounta- 344 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. bility ; and the second, being -Nvholly from itself, \vill stand wholly chargeable to its own account. The end of spiritual being can be gained, notwithstanding all out- ward hindrance to efficiency ; it is only the subjective hindrance, that can exclude the spirit from completely consummatinor the end of its beino;. The obstacles to efficiency in the first will give a natural inabilitj/ ; and the subjective hindrances will be a moral inability ; both of which will be here adequately investigated. Section I. Natural inability. — The way is fully prepared, in the results of the preceding Chapter, to make an exact and universal discrbnination between the two kinds of inability, natural and moral. The distinc- tion is not at all of degree, but of kind ; the two differing as two distinct things, having each their own separate and peculiar identity. One cannot -displace the other, nor be at all equivalent in meaning to the other. Natu- ral inability is a limitation of spiritual efficiency by neces- sity. When, in any case, an alternative is excluded and the event is unavoidable, it is an obstacle necessitat- ing the spirit in its efficiency to one event, and making a natural inability to any other event. In every such case, there is a complete exclusion of all personal accountability. This may stand in each ground of certainty in necessity, as before attained, and will in each constitute a variety of the inability, but all of the same kind as natural inability. Spiritual efficiency may he hindered by absolute w^ces- si7y.-i— Universal and necessary principles stand out quite NATURAL AND MORAL INABILITY. 345 beyond the sphere of eJEcient causes, and cannci be brought within the conditioning of any efficiency. The principle must control power, and not the power control principle. That, in which all power is from the very nature of the case limited, must subject to a necessitj that is absolute. The spirit, as rational, is limited to the measure of its own reason ; and, that it should be able to nullify its own principles, would be the absurdity that reason should make itself to be unreasonable. As mathe- tician, the spirit cannot modify its own axioms ; as philo- sopher, the spirit cannot condition its own scientific laws ; and as moralist, the spirit cannot abrogate its own impe- ratives. The spiritual efficiency is thus necessarily held to all ultimate truth. The spirit has the capacity of will in hberty, only because, in knowing its own intrinsic dignity, it finds its ultimate rule, and is thus competent to hold itself against any end that may conflict with it. This will cannot, then, change its ultimate rule, for only in the apprehen- sion of such rule is there the capacity of will at all in being. As spiritual being, also, the spirit's own intrinsic excellency legislates, and this legislation is absolute, for the spirit goes to no authority out of itself; as spiritual activity, the spirit's competency to exclude all ends but its own legislation becomes a capacity of will, and ia responsible to the legislator ; the will, as subject, cannot, therefore, rise above the absolute sovereign and meddle ^ith his immutable laws. Both in the very nature of will, and also in the necessary subjection of will to respon 346 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. sibilitj, there is a natural inability to modify the founda tions of immutable morality. The will may he limited by physical necessity. — The human will, inasmuch as it is spiritual activity, is supernar tural ; and as such, it is a capacity to resist and modify nature. It is higher than nature, and cannot be crushed by nature ; but becomes servant to nature, in no case, except by its own consent. Still, though it cannot be coerced by nature, and may hold on to its own ends in spite of nature ; yet cannot it become the sovereign arbi- ter of nature. It can exclude nature from its own sphere, but cannot bring all of nature within it? own sphere, and hold it there in subjection to its own purpo- ses. It may use nature in many things for its own pur- poses, but such use is comparatively limited, and such limitation is necessitated in physical causation. Nature is the product of supernatural efficiency. It is ; and, through all its incessant changes, it still goes on, ever the same identical existence in its real substan- tial being. Its ongoing adds nothing to itself, and drops nothing out of itself, but only perpetually varies the modes of its being. If anything is either new created or annihilated in the successions of nature, it is a mirar culous event, and must have come from a hand which holds nature in its power. Now, man may originate, and m this sense create new thoughts, new emotions, new nurposes ; and these may in various ways make their modifications of nature, but they do not become incorpo- rated into nature. They are still the offspring of the mman mind, and perpetuate themselves only within the NATURAL AND MORAL INABILITY. 347 realm of the spiritual, and make no additions to, nor sub- tractions from the realities of nature. Human efficiency is not competent to create nor to annihilate anything of nature, and has thus a natural inability to counteract any inherent law of nature. In the various modifications which man is competent to make in the ongoing of cause and effect in nature, it IS rather by supplying occasions for nature to act differ- ently upon herself, than that his own efficiency is the producer. He puts one power of nature to act upon a different material, or in a different direction, from that in which the natural course of events was tending, and thus manages and combines and uses the powers of nature for his own ends. But in doing this, he must himself con- form to nature, and cannot make nature serve him in opposition to its own laws. And many powers of nature cannot be at all managed by him, but stand out wholly beyond the reach of all his efficiency. He may study xtA learn new and surprising ways of subjecting natural powers to liis service, but he will ever find physical causes still too mighty for his control. In aU such hin- (rances there will be cases of natural inability. And even in cases of direct muscular action, and the Lombination of all practicable mechanical operations, by which immense masses of matter are detached and dis^ placed, the power of man soon finds its limit against the gra vita; ions and cohesions of nature. He may mov^e certain 'hings and not others ; to a given degree and not beyo'i»i; and though he may think how, with given pngines » ^^ iheii' place to stand, he could move tho 848 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. world, yet must his actual execution come far short of his ideal projections. His physical efficiency is weak- ness compared with the overwhelming forces of nature. Thus, in all creations and annihilations of nature ; iD all modes of bringing nature to act upon herself ; and in all direct counteraction of nature's forces ; man ?oon finds a limit to his efficiency, and comes to events that to him have no alternative. The efficiency of natural causation shuts out his volition in necessity, and he stands helpless from natural inability. The will may he limited in hy'pothetical necessity. — The spii'it is self-active, and a cause for originating thought and sentunent as wholly new products. On occasion being given, spontaneously the spirit thinks and feels. But its spontaneous activity as knowing and feel- ing is conditioned by appropriate occasions. The spirit does not always think the same thoughts nor always feel the same emotions. Specific occasions, w^hich lie in both the subjective state and the objective circumstances, must be supplied, or the spirit is not efficient for given thoughts and feelings. The occasions do not think and feel, nor do they cause the spirit to think and feel ; the whole efficiency is from the spirit ; but this efficiency does not become a cause for such products, except as the occasions are given. The spirit cannot conclude in a judgment without the requisite data^ nor put forth a particular aflfection without the presence of the appro- priate object ; but when the occasion is given, it is the spirit which is the sole cause of the judgment or of the affection. In such occasion it spontaneously originated NATURAL AND MORAL INABILITY. 849 the new product, and was cause for that, and for nothing other than that. While spontaneous, it still has no alter- native. It is a cause causing, without being a cause caused ; but the presence of one occasion and the abser ce of all others, gives no alternative to the originating, and to the origination of just that product. All is hypothecated to the presence of the appropriate occasion, and when that is, the spirit is efficient for such a judgment, oi juch an affection, and the product is given in complete spon- taneity. The conditioning is solely through the occasion, and not at all by a physical causing ; it is thus una void able and in necessity, and the event without alternative, and thus to the spirit there is a natural inability to any other issue. The above covers all the varieties of necessity, and thus all the grounds of certainty in which there is no alternative, and in this comprehends all possible cases of natural inability. The event is strictly unavoidable by the spirit, and thus entirely beyond the domain of will in Uberty, and in this view is whoUy destitute of all personal responsibility. So far as the occasion depends upon a vohtion, in hypothetical natural inability, there is indirect responsibihty ; but this responsibility is solely at the point of the voluntariness, and where there was an alternative ; when that point has been passed, all mergea in necessity, against which there is a natural inability, and under which there is no ethical responsibility. Natural inability cannot come wifhin the constrauit of an imperative , 30 350 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. Section II. Moral inability. — This is always a hindrance within the sphere of a complete contingency. It knows nothing of any form of necessity, and has, in its strongest hindrance, a full and open alternative. The event is not excluded because its exclusion was unavoid- able ; but solely because, from some hindrance within the spirit itself, the event was not secured though it might have been. We need not attempt to give all the forms of moral, as before in the case of natural inability. They all come within the one form of contingency, and find theii' liindi'ance within the spirit itself, and their modifi- cations need only to be illustrated by some prominent examples. The spirit may he hindered hy a strong desire. — When an agreeable object is presented to the animal suscepti- bility, a craving, as a desire, is awakened, and the impul- sive prompting is direct to an executive act in gratifica- tion. Such impulse may be of any degree in strength, from some faint appetite up to the strongest passion. Were there nothing but the animal nature, Ihere would be no alternative to the strongest impulse, and w^hat was aeemed the highest happiness must govern the action in necessity. In such case here could be no moral accountability. But in the human being, the spirit may apprehend a direct prohibition to this animal gi'atification, in the claim of its own excellency, and thus the rules of greatest hap- piness and highest worthiness may seem to be in direet collision. To one who well knows all the conditions in which such a mind is placed, both subjective and objec- NATUKAL AXD MORiL INABILITY. 351 tive, it might be foreseen, as a certainty that this man would gratify the desire and violate the imperative. Quite strong language might be here applied in express- ing the certainty of the event, and the man may say of him ; I foresee that his passion will overpower him ; that under its power he cannot control himself; that he can not resist such a temptation ; but in all such expressions, we moan only to include the certainty of the prevalence of passion, and not that the gratification was unavoidable. We recognize a full and open alternative, though we speak so strongly of inability, and feel no impropriety in any application of terms expressing guilt and moral responsibility to the sensualist. The spiritual end in worthiness ought to have ruled, and we know might have been taken ; and no matter how high the passion, and the certainty in his case that it would prevail, nor how emphatically we say he could not resist it ; we never mean by it that an alternative was shut out, and that the guilty gratification was a necessity. The inability did not stand in any ground of necessity, and was only a moral inability, as whoUy a difierent thing from all natural hiabiUty. A regard to human infirmity may induce us to palliate an ofience committed under strong temptation, but in our strongest apology we shall not speak of it, nor judge of it, as of an event that had no alternative and was wholly unavoidable. If we allow ourselves to get a full view of all the truth, that the very force of the tempta- tion gave an occasion for higher virtue, and more exalted dignity, in manfully resisting and expelling it ; and that a thousand oflered helps were near, making a way of 352 THE CO.MPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS ErTD. escape that he might be aMe to bear it ; we should bi more hkely, in our consciences, to hold him to a rigid responsibility than to j l( ad for him apo.ogies and pallisr tions. The strongest desire against the claims of duty will never make a necessity; but, the very fact, tliat duty is set over against desire, opens an alternative ; indicates a spiritual and not merely animal being ; and installs a will in liberty, that should be, and will be, held accountable. Its highest certainties are in contingency, not necessity. A Jiindrance from balanced desires. — Animal desu'es may often counterwork each other, and while the impulse from both is strong, and the two presented, gratifications are of nearly equal degrees, there may be much hesita- tion. An exigency, in which great interests are so nearly balanced as to confuse the judgment, and yet where a prompt and decided conclusion must be formed, may very painfully perplex and very violently agitate the mind. The man may express his hesitation very strongly by sa}^g, ' I cannot make up my mind' ; ' I cannot choose between them.' Animal impulse is under neces- sity, and the strongest must carry, unavoidably ; and, perhaps, if a perfect equilibrium of desire could be induced and kept up, it might be a necessity that the animal should stand between its objects of equal desire, and take neither. But not thus with a rational Mpirit. A reference of each to the end of his worthiness will bring in an ethical claim on one side, and reveal that one is imperative as well as desirable. Even if we c )uld conceive of two objects of equal desire and equal duty. NATURAL AND MORAL INABILITY. 353 one only of which could be taken, then one only would be duty, and the indignity that the man should perpetu ally stand between them, and make himself an animal, would constrain him soon to cut short all hesitation and even blindly take either, rather than longer stand with none. No such position holds man in any necessity. The claim of his own excellency comes in and settles the o])ject to be taken, or, that in the absence of sufficient grounds for a decision which, the mind make to itself a ground, and say ' first seen first taken,' and fulfil the duty in taking one, rather than, in the suspense, do wrong by rejecting both. All inability in such decision is moral inability, contingent and avoidable. Hindrance to desultory impulses from the governing purpose. — When a purpose is fully fixed on the attain- ment of some remote end, there necessarily intervenes a great variety of subordinate acts in the fulfilment of the main purpose. When all the process passes on equably and uninterruptedly, the subordinate acts go out sponta- neously under the control of the main purpose, and the general plan proceeds on to its consummation. But it may often happen that appetites and interests shall, in the meantime, be awakened in conflict with the main purpose. Great inducements may arise to turn aside from the gi*and end, and do that which is quite inconsistent with it. The strong desultory influence is to gratify this sud. denly excited passion, and for tlie time forget the maic end in view. But under the most impulsive passion? and the strongest bribes to withdraw the attention and energy from the main pursuit, the governing purpose ma^ 30* 354 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. be so fii'm and constant to its end, that the awakened passion does not take hold, and the will does not at all go out after it. In such case it may be strongly said, * nothing can make him forget his purpose ;' ' it is impos- sible to draw him aside from his chosen object.* But it is manifest here, that the hindrance to nature is in the will itself. The appetite strongly awakened would at once go out in executive acts, and gratify the craving desire, but the strong will watches it, and guards against it, and thus hinders it from all interference with its own end. Not nature here hinders will, but will holds nature in check, and thus, of course, the strongest asser- tions of inability and impossibility can be only of a moral kind. That purpose can relax its tension ; that watchful decision may become sluggish and careless ; and thus appetite work the hindrance or defeat of the main pur- pose. It is only because the will has taken one alterna- tive so strongly, that appetite has not before this con- quered ; the other side is still open, and a voluntary eflfort must constantly be made or that will be taken. Inability to change the governing disposition. — In aU cases of a settled governing purpose, there is a state of will directed to its main end ; and then, many subordi- nate volitions to carry into execution this main purpose. It would be absurd to suppose, that the subordinate voli- tion should change the governing purpose ; that an execu- tive vohtion should reverse a state of will ; since the former, in both cases is only prompted and determined m the latter. The radical disposition is the spirit itself, disposed in a direction to an ultimate end of all action. NATUBAL AND MORAL INABILITY. 355 Jt must be comprehensive of all on one or the othei side of worthiness and happiness; or, which is the same thing, of dr.tj and gratifioation ; God and mammon. When in the first direction, the disposition is righteous ; when in tl;e second, it is depraved. The radical disposition ia thus a governing purpose, differing from other governing ] urposes in this, that it is ultimate and comprehensive, while the most general of others is still partial and con eluded by a higher end. It would thus be the same absurdity, as above, to suppose that a radical disposition could be changed by any action of an executive will. The spirit itself, disposed on the ultimate end of its attairment, must carry all its executive agency in that direction. There is thus a hindrance to all change or reversing of the disposition, in the very comprehensiveness of acti- vity included in the disposition. The entire spiritual activity is directed to its ultimate end ; and as righteous, the spiritual activity goes out in duty; or, as depraved, the immortal energy of the spirit bows itself in the bond- age of making gratified appetite its end. The strength of this disposition may be of indefinite degrees, on either side ; but on both sides, of whatever strength, it is com- prehensive of the entire spiritual activity. If on worthi- ness ; it is completely righteous, though not as perfect in strength as it might be : and if on happiness, it is totally depraved, though not as strong in its depravity as it may De. And now, this wholesoulness of disposition may be expressed m strong language, on both sides ; by saying »f the righteous, " he cannot sin ;" and of the depraved. 356 THE COMPETEXCY OF MIND TO ITS END. '* ye cannot serve tlie Lord :" and may indeed b6 expressed by allusions to, and comparisons with, phj^sical necessity ; as when we say of a Washington, ' the sun may as well turn in his course ;' or, of the incorrigibly wicked, " can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots, then may ye also who are accustomed to do evil, learn to do well." But in none of these strong exprea* sions, though likened in certainty to physical necessity, do we include a natural inabihty. If we conceived the spirit to stand connected in the causalities of nature, and that its disposition was itself an effect of a physical eflBciency wTOught into it, then would it come within physical necessity and be unavoidable, and like all cases without an alternative, be a natural inability. Nature would have to turn itself back upon its old course, when nature is only causality going on in one course. But since we know spirit as the supernatural, and com- petent to originate its own disposing ; we may well con- ceive that when it has its disposition, good or bad, there is still the alternative open to both, and neither the good disposition nor the bad disposition are henceforth inevit- able. The good spirit has still its animal appetites, and the way is open to passionate impulses ; the depraved spirit has still the conscious apprehension of what is due to itself, as spirit, and feels the pressure of obligation to reassert its own sovereignty over the appetites, and the way is open to do so ; and hence, with all the certainty on either side, that both the righteous and the depraved will persevere in their old disposition, it is not a certainty grounded in any necessity, but a certainty in full contiiv NATURAL AND MORAL NABILITT. 3r>7 gency and avoidability, and hence admitting only of a Tioral inability. The enquiry may here be made, Why apply this term inability to two so distinct cases ? or, indeed, why apply the term inabihty at all to the mere self-hindrances of action, when it is plainly practicable that the hindrance the man himself makes, he himself can remove ? We answer, that in the case of going against a radical dispo- sition, or of changing that disposition, the deep conscious- ness of moral impotence in the human mind will never be satisfied to clothe its conviction, in any other form than that of directly expressed inabihty. A sense of great guilt, and of great danger, may press upon the spirit in the conviction of its perverse and depraved dis- position, and the man may know and own his responsi- bility for every moment's delay to " put off the old, and to put on the new man," and yet be deeply conscious that his spirit has so come to love its bondage, and to hate its duty, that he can only adequately express his sense of his helplessness by emphatically saying ' I cannot change ;' ' I find myself utterly helpless ;' ' I am sold under sin ;' ' some one else must help me, for I cannot help myself.' The deep conviction cannot rest in any weaker expressions. And where strong appetites, desires and passions, prompt to action, and the man speaks out from the full- ness of his heart the difficulty he finds . in restrahiing from gratification ; or, when he is under the deep con- triction of a depraved disposition and the obligation to return to righteousness, and he spontaneously utters the 358 THE COMPETE^^CY Ot* MIND TO ITS EiVD. deep sense of his helplessness, he "vvill naturally and cer tainlj use the strong expressions of inability and impo- tence. It is no hyperbole, but honest, felt conviction. Inability may have its primary meaning in necessity, but when the deep hindrance to action is in the will itself, and the disposition reluctates all agency but in the line to its own end, and thus the inability is wholly of a mora. kind, still the consciousness of weakness, in promptly effectinor so thorouorh a reformation as the worthiness of the spirit demands, will infallibly secure the application of the terms impljHng inability to many cases of contin gency only. Nor does the use of such language mislead us. The perceived nature of the case readily furnishes the proper interpretation, and we know at once from the subject given, whether the inability is in inevitable necessity or avoidable contingency. It would be a vain labor to attempt to preclude any fancied danger of ambi- guity, by excluding all use of inability in cases of moral liindrance. All books, the Bible itself, will give multiplied exam- ples of such expressions, and except through some per- version of a speculative or dogmatic interest, there will be no liability to misapprehension. When God says to Lot, '' Haste thee, escape thither ; for I cannot do any thing till thou be come thither;" — Gen. xix, 22, we need have no fear that common sense will ever mistake it, as if God was denying his OAvn omnipotence. So of the following, no mistake can be made. The brethren of J;seph ''hated him, and could not speak peaceably anto him." — Gen. xxxvii. 4. " My children are with NATURAL A25-D MOEAL INABILITY. ^ 559 me in bed, I cannot rise and give thee." — Luke xi, 7 "I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.'* — Luke xiv, 20. And just as little will plain common sense mistake the following, and make them to be natural inability, grounded in necessity, without some previous perversion. " Joshua said unto the people, ye cannot serve the Lord, for he is a holy God." — Josh, xxiv, 19. " No man can come to me, except the Father which hatli sent me draw him." — John, vi, 44. " Having eyes full of adultery and which cannot cease from sin." — 2 Pet. ii, 14. The real distraction between the applications of inability is preserved by the qualifications of natural and moral ; axid the fact of necessity and irresponsibility in the first, and of avoidability and accountability in the last, makes the two to be permanently and consciously diverse from each other. Section III. Cases where natural and moral INABILITY are MORE EASILY CONFOUNDED. In all CaSCS of doubtful meaning, the ground of certainty is the crite- rion. K that be in any form of necessity, the case is one of natural inability ; and if the ground of certainty be found only in the conditions in the spirit itself, and thus leaving an alternative open and the event avoidable, the most emphatic expression of inability is still only of a moral kind. The subject in hand will ordinarily deter- mine, very readily, to which kind the particular case belongs, and yet in some cases there is much more liar bility of confounding the two from the want of a complete analysis of the mental facts. 360 THE COMPETEJJCY Oh MIND TO ITS END. The inability of constitutional and of spiritual suscep' tihility may he often mistaken. — Both the animal and rational susceptibilities we have found to be given, and their action determined, in constitutional nature. They are themselves conditioned in a previous fact, and can 6nd no alternative. In such conditions the susceptibility must have such emotions, and the conditions are already given beyond any control of the mind itself. No matter whether the case be one of physical or hypothetical neces- sity, they are both alike unavoidable and the event stands beyond all accountableness in natural inabiUty. But the spiritual susceptibility is conditioned wholly in the spiritual disposition. The disposition being given, the feeling is as much determined in necessity as in a constitu- tional susceptibility, and is, in that point, held in natural inability. But the disposition itself, as a determining con- dition of the emotion, is not unavoidable.. The person is held responsible for the whole disposing of the spiritual activity, and may thus be properly held responsible for all the feelings which are determined in it. It is natural inability no farther than being necessitated in the dispo- sition, and no matter how intense the certaintv that the disposition will not be changed, the fact that it may be, since there is an open alternative, throws the whole action of the spiritual susceptibility, which depends upon it, within the sphere of only a moral inability. The import- ance of this distinction is very great. Some feeliiigs are necessitated, and the man should not stand accountable for them ; others are necessitated only in a condition which is itself avoidable, and are thus as properly a NATURAL AND MORAL INABILITY. 361 matter of responsibility as the disposition that conditions them. When the man knows the line between natural and moral inability here, he will know also just where he is accountable for his affections. Inability from constitutional temperament^ and that from a spiritual disposition. — The constitutional tem- peramQnt is determined in the physical organization, and gives its peculiar characteristics to the man permanently through life. Voluntary control may modify and restrain the promptings of the temperament, but no force of will can make the man of one temperament to be like the man of a different temperament. Peter's sanguine, and Paul's choleric temperament gave their peculiarities to each Apostle, and made them to be very different men through life. The whole action of temperament, except only in its watchful restraint, is in necessity and subjects to a natural inability. The moral disposition, as already seen, is avoidable, and all the determination which is thus given to feeling and action is in contingency, and all the certainty con- nected with its events stands only in a moral inability. A miserly or an ambitious disposition may be in connec- tion with a constitutional temperament very agreeable, or very disagreeable, but the whole demerit of his moral character is in his disposition, and his amiable or disar greeable temperament has no more connection with re* sponsible character than the mildness of the lamb, or the ferocity of the tiger. A good man may have a constitu- tional temperament far less mild and amiable than some very vicious men, and yet this should never be deemed 31 362 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS lEND. to detract from his real goodness, nor does the naturallj' amiable disposition of a bad man at all palliate tho depravity of his moral disposition. The want of due discrimination in these respects leads often to very unjust estimates of human character, and on one side underval- ues the virtue, and on the other, underrates the vice^ of the radical disposition. There is a natural inability in the conditioning of temperament ; the determining of moral disposition has only a moral inability. Inabiliti/ in changing character^ and that of chang- ing the outward conduct. — The true character is as the radical disposition, and can be changed, only in a change of the disposition. The outward conduct may vary at will, but the inward character be all the while unchanged. A moral inability only prevents the change of character or of conduct, but that any change of conduct should change the character is a natural inability. The conduct springs from the disposition, and must bo estimated accordingly, and no merely executive acts can reach back and transform the disposition. The disposition must first be right, in order that the conduct may be morally approved, and not that the conduct, being con- strained, will bring the disposition to be right. A man may rob me by violence, or make a show of kindness to cheat me the more securely, and with the same disposition in each case. The devil is as truly malevolent in " transforming himself into an angel of light," as in " going about like a roaring lion ;" for in both cases there is the disposition " seeking whom he may devour." Yea, the man may constrain the conduct, and l^AftRAL AND MORAL INABILITY. 36^ control the whole outward Hfe, from regard to reputation, from self-righteous zeal, or from the mistaken conception that he can so reform his character, and nothing but moral difficulties will be found in his way ; but no such constrained action can at all modify character, for in the necessity of the case, the outward act can be no deter- miner of the inward disposition. In the same way, desultory impulses may carry the outward conduct contrary to the governing disposition, and yet in such outer acting there is truly no change of character. A pirate may be touched with sudden sym- pathy for some interesting sufferer, and give in charity the very money which he has murdered others to get, and yet keep the disposition that will murder others for money to morrow. And so, on the other hand, a good man may, perhaps, sometimes give from mere sympathy or from habit, or from policy, and in the act there may be no merit, because in it there was really no prompting of the righteous disposition. Yea, even a good man may, like Peter, deny his Lord through sudden fear, while his disposition is radically unchanged. There is great sin in the act, for the disposition should have been so strong as to overcome any colliding passion, but if the seed of the good disposition remains within, and the faith truly does not fail, he cannot sin as a rebel and an enemy, but only as an infirm and unstable disciple. The first look, that wakes the real disposition and draws out the true char racter, will bring bitter tears and godly sorrow. A bad man can do nothing truly good, for the evil disposition characterises all that springs from it, and whatever cornea B64 THE COMPETENCY OF MINI TO ITS END* from impulses of humanity are without any moral root. A good man may do much that is wrong, but it will be his infirmity. He will condemn and loathe himself for it, and mourn over the weakness of his character, but he will still be conscious that his prevailing disposition h^ not changed. The \ncked man should not say, 'I am dehv^ered to do these abominations ;' ' I cannot do good, and therefore am content to do evil.' Rather should he say, * I can do nothing good with such a depraved dispo- sition ; here is a natural inability ; I will therefore dispose my spii'it anew, and attain to a righteous disposition, for to this there is nothing but a moral hindrance, and thus nothino; to weaken the fact of constant oblis-ation.' Nor should or will the good man say, ' I cannot change my character mthout changing my disposition, therefore I will be careless of all desultory impulses ;' but rather, ' such impulses prevail through too yielding and infirm a disposition, and they stain and pollute the character with grievous ofiences, I will therefore set my spirit more firmly on the right, and deepen the current of my pre- vailing disposition towards godliness.' Sometimes there may he mistaken the case of an abso^ lute necessity^ in an intrinsic absurdity^ for a moral inability. — Thus the Apostle Paul declares, that " the carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be." — Rom. viii, 7. This may be often so misunderstood, as if the subjec- tion to the law of God was an inability to the spirit itself; and might be interpreted as a natural inability in some form of necessity ; or, by others, as a moral inability that NATURAL AND MORAL INABILITY. 36o is avoidable. But the truth is, that neither is meant, inasmuch as the avoidabilitj of a carnal mind is not the pomt in view, but the great fact that a carnal disposition cannot be a lojal disposition. It is essential enmity, and whatever form it may take, while it is a carnal mind there can be no true subjection to God's law. If ii obeys at all, it will be from fear or hope ; from a selfish regard ; and thus at the best mere legality and not loy- alty. It is the intrinsic absurdity and thus the absolute inabihty, that camahty, which is enmity, should itself obey God from love. So, again, the same Apostle says, " the natural m.an receiveth not tlie things of the spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." — 1 Cor. ii, 14. The same mistake may be made here, as above ; as if it were affirmed that there was an inability in the man to change from a natural to a spiritual state, and w^hich some might affirm was a natural, others a moral inability. But the point is not whether a natural man can become a spiritual man, but the affirmation that a natural man, as such, can iioi have spiritual discernment ; the intrinsic absurdity that he, who has had only carnal experiences, should know anything of the truly christian experience. Natu- ral discernment cannot be spiritual discernment; an intrinsic absurdity, just as when it is said "ye cannct serve God and mammon." You cannot be, nor do, two opposite things at the same time. The whole matter of human inability thus resolves itself into the two kinds of hindrance ; one, in any kind 31* 3Gt> THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. of necessity, is a natural inability, -without alternative, unavoidable, and whoUj irresponsible ; the other, always in contingency and avoidable, and thus wholly responsi- ble, no matter how certain the events may be from the conditions within the spirit itself, and therefore a moral inabihty. The natural inability can interpose no hind- rance to the man's attaining the end of liis being ; for the end of worthiness is solely for the spirit itself to assume ; and to this, nature can oppose no barriers that become such, except through the assent of the spirit itself. The moral inability ; -which is a hindrance in the very spirit itself, and echpsing aU its dignity ; makmg it to become unworthy ; this only can keep the soul of man from reaching its goal, and attaining the cousumma tion of that for which it has had its being. CHAPTER IV, THE HUMAN MIND AS AN AGENT. The single facts of mind have been attained, and appre- hended in their connections and reciprocal relations, and have also been analyzed into their simple elements. We have, moreover, fomid them in their organic combination according to the revelation of consciousness in our owti experience, and have thus the human mind as a whole, and may contemplate it as an entire being, in reference to tlie ends that are designed to be consummated in it. Farther, we have considered the whole subject of caus- ality and efficiency ; the grounds of certainty in refer- ence to all events ; and the distinctions of natural and moral inability in reference to human action. We are thus prepared to take the human mind entire as an agent, and know the whole sphere in which it is competent to put forth its activity. That we may attain this the more completely, we wiU first look separately at the sphere of man's animal nature, and determine the peculiarities of its agency ; then, to the sphere of man's rational being, and the higher agency there exerted ; and lastly, to the whole in combi- nation, as reciprocally modified one by the other. We may thus have both a distinct and comprehensive know- ledge of human agency, and of the entire sphere which it was designed the human mind should fill. 368 the competency of mind to its end. Section 1. Man, in a certain sphere, acts as THE animal. — We never find man excluded wholly from his rational being, and thus acting solely as a brute. In his most sensual activity, there is that Avhich evinces the posession of higher faculties, and this higher prerogative always modifies the mere life of the animal. But the whole animal activity is still so distinct in its nature and end from the spiritual being of man, that it is competent to us to abstract the modifying influence of the rational, and regard man as solely animal agent. We may find him, in most particulars, above other ani- mals in the perfection and strength of his faculties, and in all combined, that he is the most complete of the entire animal creation ; but no augmentation of degTe^ will at all take liim out of the sphere of mere bruie existence. He is still the felloAV to the creatures of the stall and the stye. In the intellectual capacity, as animal, there is the full provision given for attaining all the phenomena that belong to the sensible world. All the qualities which are perceived through anj^ organ of sense, and aU the mental phenomena, as the exercises of the mind itself, which may in any way come within consciousness, are ^iioUy within the reach of the human mind. Some animals may have a quicker and keener sense than man, and some peculiar instincts are given to some of evftn tlie lower animals, but in general it may be said, that aU the activity which belongs to animal perception is in its most complete degree the possession of man. And far more perfectly than any other animal can man exercise THE MIND AS AN AGENT. 369 the connecting operations of the understanding. Tho experience of the man, in bringing the changing phena mena of the sense within the concluded judgments of the understanding, must be far more orderly and extensive than any brute experience can reach. The deductions from past experience are far more conclusive and com- prehensive than in the case of other animals. Brutea can, and do, draw general conclusions from objects of sense, and thus learn what is useful and prudent, but the generalizations of man, though of the same kind here as the brute, are much broader and clearer, and hence he may be a wiser and safer economist than any other animal. This capacity for perceiving, and judging according to what has thus been perceived in the sense, is the whole extent of the animal endowment as knowing, and in all this knowledge man is pre-eminent. He can thoroughly commune with the brute in all its ways of knowing, and is, thus, truly animal. In common with the brute, man has the whole sphere of the animal susceptibility, and knows how to commingle feelings with the animal in all its appetites and their gratification. The social and dissocial propensities, the sympathies in joy and suffering, the natural affections which hold the parents to their offspring, all come out the same in kind on the field of human and animal expe- rience. The feeling that appropriates possessions, and gives to animals an interest in things and places, and induces to the formation of habits, is more completely developed in man, though still of the same kind as in the brute. The sentient nature of man and animal is thua 370 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. the same, and man is no more kindred to the animal in a certain sphere of knowing, than he is in a common sphere >f feeling. All this capacitates man for an impulsive activity. [lis sentient capacity opens in appetites and their wants, and the impulse of all appetite is to go out in action after the object of gi-atification. The sole end of appetite is datiety in the enjoyment, and then the whole activity rests, until nature again stimulates the appetite to repeat the same acti^'ity for the same end. The end of animal life is happiness, and the whole activity is a blind impulse, going out unavoidably in its conditions after its end. There may be deductions from past experience', which modify future action ; and the animal, having learned to be prudent, may act quite differently in the same outward conditions. But this prudential consideration is a new condition, and itself just as impulsive as the appetite, and restraining and eontroUmg it by the same law of highest happiness, and thus the animal goes after the prudent by the same law of necessity as before. The strongest prompting is already determined in the consti tutional nature, and the objects awakening the impulse are conditioned in their order by the ongoing of surround- ing nature, and thus, to the animal, there is no alterna- tive to the order of its activity. Each event is, in its condition, unavoidable. Man is, therefore, an agent, in his animal being, act- ing as the brute does solely for enjoyment ; and though from his broader experience and wider generalizations, competent to take hold on higher prudential considcia- THE MIND AS AN AGENT. 37 1 tions than any other animal, yet is this a difference of degree only, and leaving the higher prudential prompting to be equally as impulsive as any other animal feehng. In this sphere of activity there is an entire exclusion of all proper will, and thus of all liberty and responsibiUty. Section II. Man is also a kational agent— Superinduced upon the animal nature, in its capacity of the sense and the understanding judging according to sense, and which also has a susceptibility to all animal feel- ing, there is the high prerogative of a rational and spiritual existence. In the possession of reason, man is competent to apply necessary and universal principles, for expound- ing and comprehending all the perceptions of the sense and the judgments of the understanding. In this sphere he rises above the natural, and is truly supernatural. He not only knows what is given in experience, but attains principles which are prior to, and conditional for, experi- ence, and thus can make experience itself the subject of his philosophy. He can, moreover, apply the principles of taste to nature, and determine hoAv far nature is beau- tiful ; and also the principles of science to nature, and determine how far nature is philosophical ; and can thus make his reason the absolute measure of nature, in art and philosophy. In addition to all this, he can know himself, as spiritual, and determine therein an ultimate lule of right for his action towards others, and his claims on other's activity towards him, and in this comprehend the whole sphere of morals. 372 THE COMPETENCY Of MIND TO ITS END. This capacity for rational knoAvledge is occasion, also, for a rational susceptibility, and man is competent to exercise feeling in the spheres of art, science, and morals. The emotions awakened by the beautiful and the sublime ; the feelings inspired by philosophy ; and the moral obli- gations and emotions which originate in the imperatives of conscience ; all these transcend the highest experience of animal nature, and are possible to man only as he is a rational spiritual agent. In all these departments of knowledge and feeling he is competent, also, to find an absolute nole within himself, and thus to direct his action by his own law, and exclude all other ends from holding dominion over him ; and in this self-direction he pos- sesses truly a will in liberty, and has an alternative to all the impulses of nature. Section III. This agency of the animal and THE rational IS COMBINED, IN MAN, IN PERPETUAL UNITY. — The animal, in man, does not stand in complete isolation, as mere brute ; nor does the rational stand completely separate, as pure spirit; but animal and rational, sense and spirit, so combine in unity that both make one personality. One life is in the whole, and one law of development controls all, so that we say of man, both animal and spiritual, he is yet but one being. In this respect, the human differs, on one side from the brutal, and on the other side from the angelic life. Tliey are so combined in unity as to be neither purely, but each is so modified by the other that the whole is a third thing not identical with either. THE MIXD AS AX AGEXT. 373 It might be an interesting examination, and jet, as it must be mainly speculation, not appropriate here, to determine the origin of this rational superinduction upon the animal. Is reason a propagation as truly as the animal being ? Were all spiritual rudiments in humanity given in the first of the race, and are all souls a ti-ad ac- tion from Adam ? Is it not rather propagation only so far as the animal, and a perpetual divine superinducing, in each case, so far as the spiritual being is concerned ? Must not flesh be born of flesh, and spirit be a spiritual superinduction solely ? Is there not some help in the con- ception each Tray, in considering how the Lord Jesua Christ could be human and divine in one person, which would be truly animal, spmtual, and divine in one ; and how man can be animal and spiritual, in one person ? May not, yea must not, the rational be as truly a super- natural putting on to the animal, as was the di\Tne to the human ? But however such questioning may be solved, this is true, that the man can in no way act solely as the brute, any more than the Divine Mediator could act solely as a man. The two in union go to make the pecu- liar one, and any separation of the two at once annihi- lates thr peculiar third thing. The conception of the two agencies separately, is not then, by any means, a conception of human agency. The personahty of the man is the synthesis of both, and as human agent, he must be animal and spiritual reciprocally modified. Neither his intellect, susceptibility nor will, can be like either those of the brute or of the angel; his knowledge, foeling, and willing must be sui generis, that is, solely 32 374 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. human knowing, feeling and willing. We cannot speak ol animal happiness for man, as if such happiness could be solely the gratification of appetite as in the mere brute. The man cannot make happiness his end, and gratify want, solely as an animal does. He has also a spiritual being, and his very spirit, as a reigning disposition and permanent will, enters into his appetitive cravings, and takes up their gratification as an end of life. The ani mal gratifies from natural impulse ; the man goes after carnal pleasure as a chosen object, and puts the activity of his spiritual will into his voluptuousness. Nor, on the other hand, can we speak of angelic holiness or sin as belonging to man, for man cannot stand towards the ultimate rule of right, and come to its fulfilment or vio- lation as the angel does. His subjection of the animal nature to the demand of his spirit necessarily enters into his virtue ; and the bowing of the spirit in bondage to the animal nature necessarily enters into his sin ; but the angel is not also animal, and cannot therefore have either holiness or sin in the forms of human holiness and sin. The moral character of the human must be pecu- liar, inasmuch as his constitutional being, and his attitude towards the ultimate rule of right, is peculiar — a com- pound of the animal and the spiritual. Man cannot have purely soul-holiness, nor exclusively Boul-sin ; for his spirit can never act but as modified in its agency by " the law in the members." The rever- ence, and humility, and love, of the spirit, will partici- pate in the animal feeling that is accordant with such emotions ; and the pr.de, and envy, and malice of the THE MIND AS AN AGENT. 376 soTil, will be tinctured with a selfishness that has ita sympathies in the wants of the flesh. Even in the spirit- world, the exercises of the human soul must still retaic tlie modifications of its sensual experience, and the scrip- ture doctrine of a resurrection determines some kind of coporeal existence forever. Human worship will diflfer from angelic, and human blasphemy from the demoniac, for something of the animal must ever blend itself with the activities of the spiritual. We do not need to examine the peculiar activity of purely spiritual being, because humanity is not, and is not to be, purely spiritual. Both with angels and espe- cially with God, will in liberty must differ from human will. All spirit, finite or absolute, will know itself, and know the claim upon itself that all its activity be in the end of its own worthiness ; but the colliding influences which hinder such direction to the activity will widely difier in man, angels, and God. An angel, from his finiteness, is open to appeals from ambition, and may greatly debase himself by seeking unduly to exalt him- self, and thus " lifted up of pride, he falls into the con- demnation of the devil." " God cannot be tempted of evil," for he is above all sources of influence that would urge to any activity in disparagement of his own glory. No inducement that he should disregard his own dignity, and thus "•' deny himself," can reach to him. His wiU is serene and tranquil, and never knows any colliding and disturbing motives. But quite otherwise is it with the will of man. His animal nature, even when brought into subjection, must be constantly guarded ; for at a^iy hour 5/6 THE COMPETENCY OF IVnND TO ITS SND. passions maj rise, that unrestrained will lead to niin. His spirit maj have the temptations of ambition ; because he, like an angel, is finite ; but in addition to spiritual pride, he is open through all the senses to worldly pomp and " the pride of life." Spiritual ambition will have also its carnal desires, and demoniac malice will be accompOr nied bj brutal lust. Not pure spiritual agency, finite oi infinite, but human spiritual agency, is what we seek to know. What is the kind of activity which man may exert, and what is the field on which it may be mani- fested ? This is essential in the enquiry for his capa- bility to reach the end of his being. Nature is working in him, and upon him, and were he only nature, he must obey her currents, and float as the stream should carry him. He is not only nature ; he is supernatural. In his spiritual being he has a law of worthiness, and he may hold on to this imperative which awakes in his own spirit, and resist and beat back all the appetites which awake in his animal nature. He is not held in necessity to the bondage of the flesh ; the alter- native is open, whether he take it or not, to crush and keep the flesh at the foot-stool, and make it to serve and not to rule the spirit. Spiritual causality is above all natural efficiency. If it may not be able to hold muscular resistance against the powers of nature, it can still wholly exclude nature from its own sphere, and keep its own end, and hold itself steadfast to it, in spite of all the happiness or suffering which nature can give. Man is, therefore, an agent who has the capacity A will in liberty, and is thus endowed with free causality THE MIND AS AN AGENT. 377 To the question, Whj does man choose bet^^een dut;y and appetite ? the proper answer is, that he has both ends in his own being, the law of happiness as end of the animal and the law of Avorthiness as end of the spiritual being, and he must make his election. He must take one, and he cannot take both, and he is thus shut up to the necessity of choosing between them. And to the qiestioi., Why does he choose thus? Why take happi ness as end against his spiritual worthiness ? or, why change from one to the other ? the proper answer is, that with full avoidabilitj, the conditions within and with- out give a ground of certainty which it will be. Taking the whole being, animal and spiritual ; the clearness of the perception and the excitability of the feeling, and the outer motives that come before him ; there may, in these, be a ground of certainty which he w^ill choose, and what permanent disposition he will form, though at the time there was an alternative, and thus a choice and avoida- bility in reference to the end chosen. When the dispo- sition has already been made, that adds itself as a con- ditional ground of certainty for perpetuated choice of the same end, other things without and within remaining the same. With this given strength of disposition, and aU else belonging to the being ; a full knowledge of all the outer motives, and direct spiritual influences that may act upcn him, may give a ground of certainty in refer- ence to his change of permanent disposition. The COU' ilitions are not natural causes, nor at all excluding the capacity of his own free causality, but they give the cer- tainty which end the free spiritual cause will take in the 32* 378 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. full alternatives of worth and want, duty and happiness. The spirit is supernatural cause, and its conditions are not themselves causes making the spirit's agency a causa causata^ but in such conditions, the spirit truly originates a choice, and goes out to one when that was avoidalle and a full alternative was open. We here regard only the capacities of the mind as agent, and leave entirely to revealed theology the whole ground of determining the certainty of perpetuated depravity ; the fact of original sin ; and the interposi- tion of Divine Grace to radically change the disposition and sanctify all the spiritual affections. These revealed doctrines Avill be in full accordance Avith the conscious facts of the human mind, but they will take these facts as already given, and assume the psychology without at all attempting to teach it. It may be legitimate to care- fully deduce from the theological dogma, what is the assumed psychological fact; but quite surely, no scriptural doctrine will contradict the fact of avoidability in all responsible agency. There are, still, some direct objec- tions made to the fact of such agency in Uberty and which require a full and fair consideration. This we now undertake. » Section IV. State and answer fairly the pro MINENT objections TO LIBERTY. 1. Obj. Like causes always produce like effects. — llie force of this objection is, that by an invariable law of causality, its action is uniform in like circumstances, and acting in the same conditions must ever produce the THE MIND AS AN AGENT. 379 same effects. This law must hold in the mental world, as well as the physical, and we are not thus to suppose that any mental acts can be different under the samo conditions. If there is nothing above nature, this objection is sound, for past all contradiction, physical causes operate alike in the like conditions. But if nature is subject to the control of a supernatural, then must there somewhere be a causality that is not itself caused by a higher efficiency, and which truly originates events from itself. If this supernatural cause has an ultimate rule of right in its own being, it is not only more than physical efficiency, but more also than pure spontaneity, since it conditions itself in its own ethical demands, and originates its effects intelligently and morally, and thus contingently and not necessarily. Such causality is not thing, but person, and as absolved from all causality above him, and all impera- tive except what is found within him, he is the absolute, spiritual Jehovah. Just so far as man's spirituality reaches, he too is per- son, and possesses the capacity of origination in liberty. His moral acts are not the product of a natural causality necessitating them with no alternative, but are his own originations, on occasion of both the impulse of appetite and the obligations of duty ; and which of these he takes is at his own responsibility, for the open way to the other made the taking of this avoidable. We need not, thus, deny a certainty of like results in like conditions, but the certainty of natural and spiritual causalities are wholly different. Nature has no capa 380 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. bilitj of origination from itself, and all its causes aio themselves caused by an efficiency back of their own acting, and have thus no alternative ; but spiritual caua* ahty is out of, and abov^e, all nature's causes, and may begin action in itself and thus truly originate, and net that its acts shall be caused and thus necessarily deter- mined by nature. How certain soever it may be, ir reference to any action, what it shall be from its occar sions ; those occasions do not cause it to be, and thus d( not exclude avoidability. 2. Obj. Then all means are powerless. — If the spirit can begin action in resistance to nature, then no matter what motives are presented, nor what means are used, the spirit can counteract them and the will go against them, and thus nullify all their efficiency. True, all means are powerless, since they are not effi- cient causes operating on the spirit, and themselves caus- ing the acts which come from it; else would the spirit be subjected to nature, and all its acts would be unavoid- able, because grounded in necessity. But not powerless in this sense, that they give occasion for spiritual action, and throw a moral influence upon the spirit in the direc- tion to a given action. Whether of the appetite towards happiness, or of the imperative towards worthiness, they are inducements in one direction, and hindrances in the other direction ; and may be a ground of certainty which direction will be taken ; but inasmuch as they are net physical causes, themselves causing the spirit to act, they constitute no natural inability to an alternative, and at the highest are truly avoidable. They have no power te ME MmD AS AN AGEJfl:. 381 make the spirit to be nature ; they have influence which may give the certainty what a supernatural spirit will do. 3. Obj. It denies that every event must have its cause. — Here are acts of the spirit which are not con- nected in any efficiency with their antecedents ; these antecedents may be of any kind, and they do not make their consequents to be after their kind ; the antecedents io not cause the consequents, and thus the consequents are without cause. Yes, the spiritual act is without cause in this, that it is not an effect from any of nature's causes. i!^o antece- dent in nature is its immediate antecedent, but it origin- ates in a source wholly supernatural. It is wholly a new tiling put into nature which does not come out of nature. Nature gets so much new, which was not in it before. All her consequents are only changes of what perma- nently has been, but the spiritual act is no change of what was in nature already. Still the spiritual act is not without cause. It does not come up out of a void. Its proximate antecedent, and thus its immediate cause, is the spirit itself. Nothing out of the spirit, and espe- cially nothing back of the spirit in the realm of nature, has caused it ; the spirit itself has originated it, and henceforth that event, whatever it may be doing in nature, belongs to the spirit, and can nowhere find for itself another author. 4. Obj. This cuts off all spiritual action from the p':ssihility of foreknoivledge. — The act is contingent and may be avoided ; it has no necessarj?- connection to any thing that now is in nature ; it may therefore be avoided, t382 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. and nothing that now is can determine that it will not be avoided ; it is thus impossible to be foreknown. True, it is not now given in anything yet within nature, and cannot thus be foreknown by looking through any Buccessive changes in nature ; but this does not deny that the Absolute Spirit may have the certainty of it. Must God foreknow, only as he can look through the necessary sequences in nature ! Yea, it does not deny but affirms, that any sjiirit, which might know all the inner and outer occasions in which the agent shall be, might find a ground of certainty in these very facts. These occasions will not cause the spiritual event, but may give a ground of cer- tainty that what is in itself wholly avoidable yet will not be avoided. This is always the only ground of moral certainty, and yet with our limited means of knowing the occasions, we often trust the highest interests on our convections of certainty what free agents will do ; a per- fect knowledge of all the circumstances might give per- fect certainty which alternative would be taken. 5. Obj. SucJi free origination is inconceivable. — It supposes a causality which can go out one way or another, and that there is nothing back of it causing it to go in either, and that thus it must go the way it does for no cause or reason whatever. This is the absurdity of choosing without choice, and is inconceivable. It is admitted, and affirmed, that it i? 'nconceivable b;y the logical understanding. A liberty in physical causar tion is an absurdity. On one side, we cannot conce.'ve that the causality can have an alternative, for that would involve that a conditioned cause might rise above ita THE MIJTD AS AN vGENT. 383 conditions, and would be the absurdity of action from nothing. On the other hand, a will, already determined in its cause and going out with no alternative, is the absurdity of unavoidable choice. Physical causality can have no alternative ; action in liberty can be only with an alternative ; and thus an understanding, which can only connect by conditions, cannot conceive of a hberty in causation. A logical understandino; can conceive of no beginning, and of course can conceive of no originator. But we are obliged by our reason to demand a first, and thus to attain a conception of an author who has no cause before him conditioning either his being or acting, but in whom action originates. This is the very conception of spiritual being ; an entirely supernatural existence ; a being not bound in nature, but competent to originate uncaused by nature ; and till the reason gets this concep- tion, entirely distinct from all the efficiences in nature, it knows neither a God nor a soul, and must confine all things within the linked succession of a series, to which it can give neither an origin nor a consummation. Liberty is a necessary attribute of spiritual being, and is fully conceived in an existence that can hold on to a law of duty within itself, against any end of action from without itself. It lifts the conception at once out of nature to that which can work against nature, and is both self- action and self-law. Such we must conceive to have been the creative act of God. It must have originated in himself, and gone out self-directed ; for any conception of previous oonai- tioning, that made the creative act to be, and to be suoh bM THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS mt). as it was, would demand a necessitated series of condi tions running up in the bosom of the Creator without an original. The same conception of agency, as an endow- ment by God, originating acts within the finite sphere of man's efficiency, is both possible and actual. 6. Obj. All analogy is opposed to it. — All the causes it nature are conditioned in some higher causality, and go out into effect without an alternative, and thus from analogy we should conclude that it is so with mind, and that all its acts have their previous determining causes. To this it might readily be answered, that analogy is of no force against a matter of fact. Where a fact can not be brought within experience and thus to the test of consciousness, a fair argument from analogy is legiti- mate, but conscious experience cannot allow itself to be contradicted by any analogical argument. But were analogy admissible, we should derive fi-om it the strongest support in favor of action in hberty. No physical caus- ahty is held at all responsible. It lies confessedly outside of the entire sphere of ethical activity, and can be sub- jected to no imperative constraints ; it may, therefore, at all times be conditioned in its antecedents, and be doomed to work on without an alternative. But spiritual agency is responsible agency, and on this account is excluded from conditions of all physical causation and all analogical deductions therefrom, and demands just ijhis agency of free origination and alternative election. T. Obj. All surprise for the most rash and unreason aile conduct is ivholly witlwut foundation. — All spiritual action is contingent, and thus wholly avoidable, and may THE MIND AS AN AGENT. 385 JQSt as well be against reason as with it, and even against interest as for it ; thus there is no ground for expecting one act rather than another, and no occasion for being surprised at any man's action. But, occasions for action are necessary to all free causa- tion, and these occasions give inducements or hindrances to the act, and may supply a ground of certainty Avhat the action will be, though they do not fix it in unavoidable necessity ; certainly then, these moral occasions may furnish strong gi'ounds for expecting the act, and reason- able surprise if not exerted, or if some quite different action be put forth. But this objection may inuch more forcibly be retorted upon the objector himself. With him all is made unavoidable in the previous conditions. As the case is, there is no alternative ; one event alone can be. All surprise at the event must thus be wholly from ignorance. I should feel no more surprised at any human conduct than at the bursting of a steam-boiler. Neither could have been otherwise in the conditions, and the surprise is alike in both, viz. ignorance of the reason why they could not help it. But actually, my surprise for the human conduct is, why the man did not help it. CHAPTER V. TIIE COMPETENCY AND IMPOTENCY OF THE HUMAN MINB TO ATTAIN THE END OF ITS BEING. The end of animal nature is happiness ; the end of spiritr ual being is worthiness ; and as man is both animal and spiritual, he has both of these ends for his attainment. Speculatively, it might be held as true, that the attain- ment of either, completely, is incompatible -with itself except in the attainment of both. It may be presumed that the animal nature will be unhappy in the debasing of the spirit, and that the spirit will feel an indignity in yielding to any uncompensated unhappiness in the ani- mal. So, also, ethically considered, it might be argued that providential allotments should make the most worthy, to be the most happy. But all speculation aside, expe- rience will not be competent to determine, in all cases, whefe the greatest ultimate happiness can be gained ; and every man will find himself in circumstances, where he can maintain his spiritual worthiness only by sacrific- ing animal happiness ; and in all such cases, the conscious conviction is, that the w^orthiness should be maintained whether the sacrifice in happiness be ever compensated hereafter, or not. The ultimate end of man is the integ- rity of his spirit at the hazard of whatev^er loss to his gratification, and he may cheerfully leave the e id of hap- piness tt its own issue, if he has kept himself faithful to COMPETENCY AND IMPOTENCT. 38? the end of worthiness. So to dispose all a man's agency as to be most worthy of his spiritual acceptance, is to have a righteous disposition ; and permanently to main- tain such a disposition, is the end of his being. The great mass of mankind reverse this order entirely, and live for happiness, not for spiritual worthiness ; and thus sacrifice the end of their being. Yet this perver- sion of the highest law of existence, and thus a depraving of the race, is everywhere connected with the conviction of personal demerit in it, and personal responsibihty for it, and thereby a manifest competency to avoid such per- petuated depravity, and that the man put and keep him- self within the claims of his spirit. And yet, with all this competency manifest in the conscious obhgation and responsibility, there is also the consciousness of irresolu- tion to break away from this bondage, and of so suc- cumbing in the spirit to the domination of appetite as proves also an impotency to regain the lost dominion, and to bring the body under. This conscious competency and conscious impotency to the same thing, exist as oj^po- eite facts, at the same time, in the same man. It is the great moral paradox in human nature, and can nevci' be solved by any ignoring or eliminating of either eler..ent, but must somehow be harmonized by admitting the exist- ence of both. What has now been gained is sufficient to put these contradictory facts in a light, whicl shows tliem to stand to each other in true consistency. 388 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. Section I. Man is naturally competent to GAIN the end of HIS BEING. — He IS Capable of deiev' mining his highest law. — The inner witness of what is due to the dignity of his spiritual being sexjures the per- petual working of a conscience, excusing or accusing In the light of his own spirit man knows what exalts and what debases him ; what sustains his true dignity, and what degrades him ; and in this alone he is a law to him- jelf. When no outward authority promulgates a positive commandment, he has the law written on his heart ; and where positive laws are imposed, they must be brought home to his conscience, and in the light of his o^vn spirit he must see that disobedience to them is a reproach and dishonor to him, or their sanctions can have no moral oblio;ation. He needs nothino; more than this rational insight into his own being, and in all conditions the law is legible. His appetites crave ; and where no claim of his spiritual being is infringed, he may virtuously gratify them, and to just the degree that the worthiness of his spirit will permit. Where the clear estimate of highest happiness gives a plain dictate of prudence, and nothing else comers up as a directory ; in the Ught of his own spirit he will at once read his duty in this perception of utiht}^, for his spirit would itself be dishonored, in bringing his animal nature to endure needless suffering or privation. Mere prudence is thus itself made a virtue. When others may be more happy by his self-sacrifice, the spirit will see in itself that its own true dignity is exalted in such self- denial ; and thus, when only kindness to others is con tern- COMPETENCY AND IMPOTEXCT. 389 plated, the benevolence is seen to be a dutj, and becomes a \drtue because it adorns the sjoirit. But when, in any condition, the wants of animal happiness for himself or for others — the dictates of personal happiness or of social kindness — come in conflict with w^hat is due to the rational spirit ; then, the true dignity of the man is secured only in sacrificing both his own and other's happiness to his spiritual worth, and it becomes a vii'tue to be severe against his own flesh, and to close his ear to all the pleadings of pity for others. And when some positive claim is enforced from the authority of the Absolute Spirit, requiring prompt obedience without consulting any other want or claim whatever, the human spirit knows that its own dignity is maintained and exalted by implicit and unquestioning obedience. There is no place where the spirit may not see the bearing of any action upon its own worthiness, and where, thus, the law that binds it may not be adequately appre- hended. It is not necessary to ascend to heaven, nor to descend to the abyss ; for the law is nigh to every man, and speaks out from the conscious imperatives awakening within his own spirit. Man is competent to obey this law. — The human mind has all the capabilities necessary for knowing not only, bat also for doing every duty. There may be strong conflicts of appetite and impulsive passion against the strict demands which the purity and integrity of the spirit imposes, and all the occasions and soliciting conditions of nature may seem to lie temptingly open to the indulgence of animal desire \ but his virtue is found in the manlj 300 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. valor that beats back, and brings under, these unruly appetites, and which puts and keeps them in subjection to the intrinsic excellency that belongs to man's spiritual constitution. And this spiritual activity and energy is alwa3^s present in the very being of the spirit itself, and the requisite control of the most turbulent passion can Dnlj be lost in the neglect to watch and suppress its sud- den impulses. The contest with anj smgle appetite may long last, and the warfare with all animal propensities may hold on through life, but the restraint for the hour is the victory for that hour, and the triumph is as per- petual as the prolonged ascendancy of the good will ; and this may be eflfectual in restraining as long as there is a body to keep under and bring into subjection. The right and authority, the throne and scepter, the executive force and prerogative are all the possession of the spirit, and it must be in treachery to its o^vn sove- reignty, if it lay them by, or give them over into the power of the enemy, and yield to the usurpation of any lust. In the contempt of every gratification, and the defiance of every torture that nature can get or feel, the spirit of the man can, as it should, hold itself steadfast in its own integrity, and go down to death with its high end and purpose unrenounced and inviolate. When wrongly disposed, it is competent to change the dispontion, and take again the end for which exist- ence is given. — We are not concerned here with any gi'ounds of certainty that the depraved disposition >vill or will not be changed, nor with any speculation or reve- lation how the once righteous disposition became perverse COMPETENCY AND IMPOTENCY. 391 and depraved ; but that in the depravity of the spirit, it is still competent to itself to renounce the wrong eixd towards which it has disposed its activity, and return to the true end of its being, and thus re-assert its dominion over those appetites under which it has slavislily been in bondage. Though the man has made the end, for which the brute lives, his end, and even put the immortal ener- gies of his spirit in active chase after happiness, so that he pursues gratification as no animal can ; never satia- ted ; never resting ; yet has he not thereby become the mere animal. Giving in to nature, and subjecting him- self to serve nature as he does, yet has he not at all lost his supernatural being. He is rational spirit still, and well knows, and sometimes keenly feels, the deep degra- dation of his soul in living so beneath the intrinsic excel- lency which still belongs to it. The rational has most absurdly bent in servitude to the animal ; the spirit has most unnaturally fixed its end in nature ; but the reason sees the absurdity, and the spirit feels the indignity, and hence the wretched man cowers in shame and guilt before the upbraidings of his own conscience. He knows the alternative is open : the perpetuation of his shame and guilt is avoidable : that if he persist in his baseness, it will not be nature holding him down under any form of necessity, but that his spirit freely stays, as it voluntarily wont down, in the place of its degradation. Every hour's delay, every fresh act of sensuous gratification, brings down another stroke of the whip of scorpions ; for he is choosing carnal happiness, when he might be, and ought 392 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. to be, aspiring after, and reaping, the immortal dignities and honors of his spiritual birth-right. In many things he knoAvs he is linked into the succes- sions of nature, and that the connections of the antece- dents and consequents are indissoluble ; but not in the taking of the end for whicli he lives, nor in the perpetua- tion of that perverse and guilty disposition which is turned to folly. That is his work, and not nature's, noi God's. Nothing perpetuates it, but the perpetual free action of the spirit. But for him it had not been begun ; only by him can it be perpetuated ; and the responsibility is on him that it cease immediately. No matter how strong the tempting inducements without ; no matter how ready the consenting appetites within ; the spirit must willingly take, or it is not defiled by them ; and it must willingly persist, or its guilt is not perpetuated in them. The worth and the reward are in the spirit's own resist- ance to these forbidden indulgences, and the battle and the victory is in meeting and treading down every lust. No matter how stubborn and severe the contest ; the obstinacy of the foe gives more sublimity to the battle, and more dignity to the triumph ; and the very occasion for so heroic a contest, is also an opportunity for so glori- ous a victory. Within the entire domain of the spiritual, the will reigns sole sovereign, and nothing forces it to serve the flesh ; nor, when it has basely been doing it, does anything, without the spirit itself, bind it in its pri- son-house. It has no natural inability ; it comes within no necessities of nature ; with no hesitation or equivoca- tion, we say that the spirit disposed on happiness should COMPETENCY AND IMPOTENCY. 393 a^'oid, jea, is competent to avoid the perpetuated guilt, and stand again disposed on the end of its own worthiness. Section II. Man is morally impotent to gain THE END OF uis BEING. — Universal observation estab- lishes the sad fact that man is depraved from the first. With all that is tender, trusting, and amiable in child- hood, still the innocence of youth is only comparative. Th3 child is not so stubborn and hardened in vice as is the old transgressor. But when the strict rule of ethical obligation is applied, that the whole spiritual activity should be permanently disposed to the end of worthiness, and not of happiness ; that the animal nature should be utterly subject, and the spiritual in man completely reg- nant ; we do not find either in youth or age that the mass of mankind can sustain such a test. The end of gratifica- tion, in some form, is universal, and it is only in very spe- cial cases that we can affirm " the law in the members'' is rigidly held subordinate to " the law of the mind." So soon as we can ascertain by its working the disposition of the man, it is found that his spirit has already turned to seek happiness, and has become delinquent to the end of its highest worthiness. Nature as truly as Revelation, affirms that " all have gone out of the way." Now we cannot, in psychology, help out our ignorance of the source of such universal depravity, by any state- ments from revelation ; and can only say, the history of the race evinces, so high as we can trace it, that humanity is in a fallen condition, and that it is n«^t, and has never been, supremely disposed to attain the grand end of a 894 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. spiritual life. If there are exceptions, they have always been under such conditions as to prove the general rule of depravity. Inasmuch as this perverseness of disposi- tion appears from the first, and its origination is truly back of all personal recollection in each case, we are left without any explanation of it from experience. If this original disposing act of the spirit was in consciousness, •:he memory has not so retained it that it can at any subsequent time be brought up for careful and intelligent reflection. The ground of this certainty of human delin- quency cannot, thus, be made subject to human investi- gation through any experience. From our conscious conviction of guilt and responsibility that we have now such a disposition, it will be safe to assume as a theory, that at no point is such a disposition unavoidable ; that it is not, and does not continue, from any natural inability and because there is no open alternative to it ; but that it is ever the spirit's own, and solely and righteously at its responsibility. All the impotency, therefore, at the first, and at any subsequent period, that the spirit should not take on and perpetuate such a perverse disposing, is of a moral kind, and from within the spirit itself, and not forced upon it in any necessary connections of nature. The first instant of such disposing was as truly the spirit's own, as at any subsequent moment of its existence, and we can no more say, it could not avoid sinning at the fii-st, or avoid being sinful, than we can at any point of subsequent activity. But, that there is a moral impo- tency in each case, at the first disposing, may well be assumed from the universality of the result ; and we lan COMPETENCY AND IMPOTENCY. 396 only leave it on such proof, since we cannot carry up any conscious recollection to the examination of what waa then our experience. We are, however, much more competent to examine the fact of our impotency to break off from all depravity, and to stand out, in all our daily experience, in the full f>erfection of having attained and kept the great end for which our spiritual being is given to us. This change has not been made, and when the man is summoned to it, and even when he essays to effect it, there is a sense in which he honestly says, 'I am unable to do it.' Let us endeavor to know precisely what this impotency is. The gratification of animal appetite is agreeable, and the immediate impulse of the whole animal being is towards happiness, on every offered occasion. Were man only animal, it might be said on all occasions of pre- sented happiness, that he has no alternative to the going out after the highest degree. He could not help going out after the strongest desire ; and in this we should mean that there was a natural inability. There is no alternative to the end of happiness, and that which causes the taking of happiness at all must, thus unhindered by any alternative, cause the taking of the highest offered degree. If denial in one direction will give greater hap- piness in another, then denial is on that account most desirable, and the impulse must be accordingly. To the animal, prudence will be as impulsive as appetite, and the strongest impulse cannot find its alternative in any lower degree. All is really the same thing ; happiness * and the animal is naturally unable to hold himself back 396 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. from it. There is no disposing, as of a permanent state of spiritual activity, or will ; there is only the inclination of constitutional nature. We cannot here say anything about moral impotency ; the conception is wholly irrele- 9'ant. The whole inability is grounded in necessity. But the man is not all animal. He feels the impulse tc happiness, and, in the consciousness of what is due to his spirit, he feels also the obligation to consult first this ethical claim of highest worthiness. Here is an end of wholly another kind, and which vAW not admit of compar- ison with happiness in degrees. No degree of happiness can give moral worthiness ; and no satisfaction of appetite can fulfil an imperative claim. There is in this ethical end, a complete alternative to all happiness, even the higliest and the eternal. It is one thing to be worthy of spiritual approbation, and quite another thing to be enjoy- ing the applications to every appetite ; and no matter how high the appeal to animal nature, while the mere brute cannot resist, the human being can. He has that within his reach which he can sieze as a complete and sufficient countercheck to the strongest desire for happi- ness. A natural inability it cannot be, which keeps the man from renouncing happiness as his end, and taking that of spiritual worthiness. The impotency is wholly found within the spirit itself, and is an exclusion of all hope of change, left to the spirit's own agency. It has given itself to sensual good, and discarded the ethical good, and thus the very agent that should dispose itself to its true dignity, has sold ixmMii in debasement to the lower nature, and voluntarilj^ COMPETENCY AND IMPOTENCT. 397 put on the bonds of appetite. How, now, release itself from the bondage which it loves and chooses ? How choose anew against its own choice ? How hft itself out of the gulf into which its own impulses and activity thrust /itself down ? Its determined activity is in one direction, how shall the same determiner of activity put the agency izi another direction ? Is it said that the spirit may take to itself new influences and motives, and by their means change its direction ? But what other motives can it take, than such as it already has, and has rejected ? And if there were others within its reach, what hope that it will reach and use them, when it does not wish their interven- tion nor the end to which they tend ? How use what is repugnant, to attain an end already discarded ? How set itself to seek what it does not wish to find ? and this, that it may turn itself about in a direction it does not wish to go? How, then, is the carnal disposition, whicli is simply the spiritual activity disposed on animal gratifi- cation, to change itself to the spiritual disposition, which is simply the spiritual activity disposed on the end of its own worthiness ? If the carnal mind be left aloine in its own action, it is most hopeless that it will ever change itself to spiritual-mindedness. But is not then this impotency truly a natural inabili- ty ? Does not the spirit subject itself to the necessity of nature, by subjecting itself to the service of nature ' Having wholly gone out after the sense, has it not thus abolished the alternative of a return to its own worth ? Is not depravity, henceforth, unavoidable to itself ? It *f0uld certainly so be, if by disposing itself on an ultimate 34 398 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END end, and thereby attaining a radical disposition, it became only a physical cause, and could now only go out in efficiency as it was caused to go out by some agency ab extra to itself. As it has disposed itself, so it must perpetuate itself; and nature might as well turn itself back upon its own course, as the spirit convert itself from the error of its way. It would henceforth be nature, and subject bo the necessities of nature ; and whether the disposition were depraved or righteous, in that direction it must so remain. But this would be wholly a false conception, and abolish utterly the true distinction between natural and moral inability, and iden- tify again nature and spirit. By subjecting itself to the bondage of nature, the spirit does not itself become nature. It is itself a free causality, and wholly competent to originate action in itself, vrithout a cause antecedent to itself causing it to act. Whether in a right or a wrong disposition, the spirit is still a supernatural existence ; having its law in its own being, and competent to steady itself by that law against all the impulses of nature. When holy, it is competent to renounce the end which makes it holy, without the necessity of another and prior efficiency to cause it thus to renoimce ; and so, when sinful, it is com- petent to renounce the end which secures it to be sinful, rnthout its being caused thus to renounce. The pecu- liarity of its efficiency is by no means lost, whichever direction it may have given to its activity. That it has a sinful disposition, is still consistent with the concejition that it is spirit thus sinfully disposing its acti\ity, and COMPETENCY AND IMPOTENCY. 399 not that it is nature moving in a current which a higher cause has determined for it. This depraved spirit, going* out after its appetites and not after its duties, has thus the full natural competency to originate in itself an act of renunciation of the carnal end, and an act of adhesion to the end of its own worthi- ness, and may justly be required to " put off the old man, and to put on the new man," for this alternative is so open to it ; but still, all the attachment to the wrong, and al the repugnance to the right, is there in the carnal disposition ; and what hope of its originating the great change from spiritual death to spiritual life ? The man may, yea, he must say, ' I ought to change ; I am under the strongest obligations to my own spirit that I debasa and degrade it no more ; and thus that I can renew my disposition and reform my life.' But he can and must, also, say, in another sense, 'I love and choose my carnal gratifications ; I hate and reluctate all the claims of the spirit that restrain me ; I cannot renounce the happiness I love, and choose the restraints I hate.' In the full possession of his conscious natural competency, he has as . full a consciousness of his deep moral impotency. In the pressure of these alternatives — on one side the passion- ate impulses of appetite, and on the other the stern impe- ratives of his own dignity — the bad man may often say to his conscience, "hast thou come to torment me before my time ;" and the good man may say to his lusts, " 0, wi'etched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death ?" When the wicked man will do evil, the prompting imperatives of his spirit are yet within 400 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. him ; and when the righteous man will do good, the lust- ing to evil is still present. Humanity is in self-conflict ; the spirit is naturally competent to rein the animal in subjection ; and yet it is often morally impotent to put on and pull up the curb. Thus man is both able and unable to attain the end of his being, in holding all his activity wholly to the claimc c»f his spiritual nature. But in this there is neither absurdity nor contradiction. He is able not in the same sense that he is unable. His ability is a freedom from all the coercions and necessities of nature, and his ina- bility is a bonda.ge of the spirit itself — self-imposed and self-perpetuated. His freedom from all the compulsion of nature leaves him wholly responsible, and utterly inex- cusable, in his depravity ; and his whole-souled subjec- tion to his carnal appetites, and the fixed state of will on the end of animal gratification, render it utterly hopeless that the same spiritual will, left to its own way, is ever about to turn from that which it so loves, and fix anew upon that which it so hates. In such a condition, per- petuated depravity must have its perpetuated conscious- ness of degradation and guilt ; and the recovery of the spirit to its original integrity awaits the gracious advent of One, who, by a spiritual regeneration, may seek and Bftve the lost. Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide Treatment Date: Oct. 2004 PreservationTechnologies A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive Cranberry Township. PA 16066 (724)779-2111