284 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



main channels through which impressions are made upon our 

 consciousness. But ideas are not received through these 

 alone. The mind, by its innate powers, profiting by what it 

 already knows, evolves new thoughts, new ideas. Nor is this 

 all. Our minds are the receptacles of impressions stamped 

 directly upon them by the Spirit of the Great Supreme, 

 independently of the senses, and also of their own cognitions. 



One has said that " mental philosophy has for its object to 

 ascertain the facts and laws of mental operation." The mind 

 is not in parts, it is one. "For this," says Leibnitz, "there 

 is no necessity that there should be different parts in the soul, 

 as it is not necessary that there should be different parts in 

 the point on which various angles rest." Aristotle is repre- 

 sented as remarking, "But it is necessary that that which 

 judges should be one and the same, and that should even 

 apprehend by the same the objects which are judged." And 

 Addison is thus quoted by Stewart: "Although we divide 

 the whole soul into several powers and faculties, there is no 

 such division in the soul itself, since it is the ivhole soul that 

 remembers, understands, wills, or imagines. Our manner of 

 considering the memory, understanding, will, imagination, 

 and the like faculties, is for the better enabling us to express 

 ourselves on such abstracted subjects of speculation, not that 

 there is any such division in the soul itself." Again he says, 

 "What we call the faculties of the soul are only the different 

 ways or modes in which the soul can exert itself." 



The late Joseph Haven, D. D., formerly a professor in 

 Amherst College, defines a faculty of the mind to be "simply 

 the mind's power of acting, of doing something, of putting 

 forth some energy and performing some operation." He 

 claims that "the mind has as many distinct faculties as it has 

 distinct powers of action, distinct functions, distinct modes 

 and spheres of activity. As its capabilities of action and 

 operation differ, so its faculties differ." He holds, as before 

 expressed, that the mind is not complex, nor divided, but one 

 in all its acts, which varied acts indicate its varied powers, 

 called faculties. And Sir William Hamilton says : '' K faculty 

 is nothing more than a general term for the causality the mind 

 has of originating a certain class of energies ; a capacity, 

 only a general term for the susceptibility the mind has of 



