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suffering of ordinary physical disease. We are ill we know not of what ; and yet 

 the sensibility of the system is so unimpaired by our indescribable illness, that 

 acute bodily pain would be deliverance from such suffering. 



A future opportunity may occur for inquiring into the peculiar tone of the 

 sentient system in man which is most accordant with efficient mental operation ; 

 but we may, in the mean time, remark that this is a medium state, and that the 

 bodily sensibility may be either too dull or too acute for the exercise of vigorous 

 thought, or the performance of useful action. If it is too obtuse, the mind does not 

 receive the impression, and, of course, neither thought nor action can follow ; and 

 if, on the other hand, it is too acute, the anguish of the bodily feeling makes so 

 strong an impression, that the mind is incapable of applying its common mode of 

 judgment, by analogy, to the cause of the impression, and its effect external of 

 the body. It is the mental operation which is injured both by too much obtuse- 

 ness and too much acuteness of the sense : and in each case the conduct of the 

 human being approximates that of a mindless animal ; and in the extreme cases 

 the approximation may be so close that no observation can draw the line of dis- 

 tinction between them. 



It is these extreme cases of insensibility and sensibility of the body, to which 

 the names of idiocy and mania are given. In common language, we call both of 

 them mental derangements ; but no word can be worse applied. The mind, in 

 order to be immortal, must be perfectly simple, and incapable of any division of 

 parts, even in imagination ; because, if the existence of separate parts were ima- 

 ginable, the separation of those parts would also be imaginable ; and this separa- 

 tion would be the death of the mind, and man would be brought down to the level 

 of the beasts that perish. But, if composition be inconsistent with our original 

 idea of mind, mental derangement must be equally so ; for it is not possible to 

 derange one single existence, be that existence what it may. To return from this 

 digression, which, however, is far from being an useless one : we can see how 

 wise and how good it is that the sentient part of the human frame is so tempered 

 that it does not habitually break in upon the operations of mind ; and, because 

 we are worse barometers than the animals which we have mentioned, and, indeed, 

 than all mindless animals, we are thinkers and philosophers, and they are not. 



The animal which has the action instantly consequent upon the sensation, 

 without any intermediate mental judgment by comparison with former experience, 

 is, of course, wholly at the mercy of external circumstances, and compelled as 

 necessarily and as instantly to obey every change of these to the full amount of 

 its influence, as a fragment which the lightning shivers from the precipice is ne- 

 cessitated to descend by the force of gravitation. It is this perfect obedience of 

 the system of mindless animals to the circumstances of Nature external of them, 

 which renders the study of them so very valuable for meteorological purposes ; 

 and this study deserves far more attention than it has hitherto received. 



e 2 R. M. 



