SPECIAL ENDOWMENTS OF MAN. 
55 1 
trained individual possesses (§ 525) of fixing his attention 
upon any particular object of consciousness, to the exclusion 
of all others, becomes the source of the highest and most 
enduring intellectual advancement, and of all moral improve¬ 
ment. It is in virtue of this power, that he is not only 
enabled to profit largely by.the acquired knowledge of others, 
but that he comes to possess a moral responsibility for the 
use he makes of his faculties, which cannot he predicated 
of beings whose succession of ideas is entirely determined 
by impressions made from without. 
722. There is another attribute, moreover, by which Man 
seems to be distinguished from all other animals; namely, 
that disposition to believe in the existence of an unseen but 
powerful Being, which seems never to be wanting (under 
some form or other) in any race or nation, although (like 
other natural tendencies) it may be defective in individuals. 
It requires a higher mental cultivation than is commonly to 
be met with among savage races, to conceive of this Power as 
having a spiritual existence; but it appears, from the reports 
of Missionaries w r ho have laboured to spread Christianity 
amongst the Heathen, that an aptitude or readiness to receive 
this idea is rarely wanting ; so that the faculty is obviously 
present, though it has not been called into operation.—Closely 
connected with this tendency to believe in a Great unseen 
Power, is the desire to share in His spiritual existence, which 
seems to have been implanted by the Creator in the mind of 
Man, and the existence of which is one of the chief natural 
arguments for the immortality of the soul, since it could 
scarcely be supposed that such a desire would have been 
implanted, if it were not in some way to be gratified. Such 
views tend to show us the true nobility of Man’s rational 
and moral nature, and the mode in which he may most 
effectually fulfil the ends for which his Creator designed him. 
We learn from them the evil of yielding to those merely 
animal tendencies,—those “ fleshly lusts which war against 
the soul,”—that are characteristic of beings far below him 
in the scale of existence, and tend to degrade him to their 
level; and the dignity of those pursuits, which, by exercising 
his intellect, and by expanding and strengthening the higher 
part of his moral nature, tend to raise him towards the per¬ 
fection of the Divine Being. 
