256 MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS. 



being in debt in a bad year, to an amount which it would be 

 able to discharge in good ones. The only question necessary 

 to be asked previous to the formation of such a club would be, 

 may it not be feared that the motive to resist dishonesty 

 would be lessened by the existence of the club, or that ready- 

 made rogues, by belonging to it, might find the means of 

 obtaining situations which they would otherwise have been 

 kept out of by the impossibility of obtaining security among 

 those who knew them 1 Suppose this be sufficiently answered 

 by saying, that none but those who could bring satisfactory 

 testimony to their previous good character should be allowed 

 to join the club ; that persons who may now hope that a 

 deficiency on their parts will be made up and hushed up by 

 the relative or friend who is security, will know very well that 

 the club will have no motive to decline a prosecution, or to 

 keep the secret, and so on. It then only remains to ask, 

 whether the sum demanded for the guarantee is sufficient I" 1 

 The philosophical principle on which the scheme proceeds, 

 seems to be simply this, that amongst a given (large) number 

 of persons of good character, there will be, within a year or 

 other considerable space of time, a determinate number of 

 instances in which moral principle and the terror of the con- 

 sequences of guilt will be overcome by temptations of a deter- 

 minate kind and amount, and thus occasion a certain periodical 

 amount of loss which the association must make up. 



This statistical regularity in moral affairs fully establishes 

 their being under the presidency of law. Man is seen to be 

 an enigma only as an individual : in the mass he is a mathe- 

 matical problem. It is hardly necessary to say, much less to 

 argue, that mental action, being proved to be under law, 

 passes at once into the category of natural things. Its old 

 metaphysical character vanishes. This view agrees with what 

 all observation teaches, that mental phenomena flow directly 

 from the brain. They are seen to be dependent on naturally 

 constituted and naturally conditioned organs, and thus obedient, 

 like all other organic phenomena, to law. And how wondrous 

 must the constitution of this apparatus be, which gives us 

 consciousness of thought and of affection, which makes us 

 familiar with the numberless things of earth, and enables us to 

 rise in conception and communion to the councils of God him- 

 self ! It is matter which forms the medium or instrument 



1 Dublin Eeview, Aug. 1840. 



