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fluid. Repulfion is hereby fubflituted in the place of attradion, 

 but repulfion and attradion, as to the manner of operating, are 

 equally unknown. I would not, however, be thought to under- 

 value fuch a difcovery. Though it could not give us any con- 

 ception of the nature of the adive caufe, it would unfold to us 

 a new and comprehenfive analogy of effeds, by tracing to one 

 common caufe efFcds which appear to be of the moft oppofite 

 natures. 



We are equally in the dark with refped to moral and intel- 

 ledual agency. That operation of the mind which is called 

 confcioufnefs will not give us in this refped any affiftance to- 

 wards the difcovery of the nature of our own minds, or of the 

 operation of moral caufes. The operation of confcioufnefs may 

 be diftinguiflied into two parts. The one is merely a perception 

 that the mind is adually thinking, and this is, as Locke obferves, 

 eflential to thinking. This is evidently a mere perception that 

 certain ideas or combinations of ideas are prefent to the mind, 

 and confequently does not give us any intimation of the powers 

 by which they had been introduced. In the other part the mind 

 is more adive, it being a deliberate furvey which the mind 

 makes of its own operations, but it is only a recolledion of the 

 train of ideas previoufly perceived for the purpofe of obferving 

 their order and conjeduring their connedion. In neither appli- 

 cation does the word confcioufnefs imply any obfervation of the 

 mode of operating. It is in the one the prefent perception of 

 each effed when it happens, in the other the recolledion of a 

 feries of efteds in the order in which they had happened. How- 

 ever, 



