818 OF THE FUNCTIONS OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 



in regard to those impulses which directly determine the conduct, gradually 

 extends itself to the habitual succession of the thoughts ; and in proportion as 

 this is brought under the direction of the Will, does the individual become capable 

 of forming his own character, and therefore truly responsible for his actions. It 

 must not be forgotten, however, that the power of self-control may be turned to a 

 bad as well as to a good account ; and that the value of its results will entirely 

 depend upon the direction in which it is employed. The thoughts may be so de- 

 terminate ly drawn away from the higher class of motives, the suggestions of con- 

 science so habitually disregarded, and the whole attention so completely fixed 

 upon the gratification of selfish or malevolent propensities, that the Human 

 nature acquires far more of the Satanic than of the Divine character ; the high- 

 est development of this type (if the term may be permitted) being displayed 

 by those who use their power of self-control for the purposes of hypocrisy and 

 dissimulation, and cover the most malignant designs under the veil of friendship. 

 Such men (whose portraiture is presented by our great Dramatist in the cha- 

 racter of lago) show us to what evil account the highest intellect and the most 

 powerful will may be turned, when directed by the baser class of motives ; and 

 we cannot but feel that they are far more degraded in the moral scale, than 

 those who, having never learned to control their animal propensities, and being 

 unconscious of the very existence of a higher nature within themselves, simply 

 obey the promptings of their automatic impulses, and are rather to be consid- 

 ered as ill-conditioned automata, than as vicious men. Of this latter class, 

 some, from original constitution and early influences of the most degrading kind, 

 seem altogether destitute of anything but a brutal nature ; such ought to be 

 treated as irresponsible beings, and, as such, restrained by external coercion 

 from doing injury to society. But this class is small in proportion to that of 

 individuals who act viciously, simply because they have never been led to know 

 that any other course is open to them, or to feel any motives that might give 

 them a different impulse. With these, the object should rather be to awaken 

 the higher parts of the moral nature, " to find out the holy spot in every child's 

 heart," and to develop habits of self-control in the manner just described, than 

 to subjugate by external restraint ; and the success which has attended this 

 method, in the hands of those who have judiciously applied it, is sufficient evi- 

 dence of its superiority ; many of the most apparently debased natures having 

 been thus elevated to a grade which it seemed at first impossible they could 

 ever attain. From the Satanic, or positively and wilfully evil type of Human 

 nature, in which the highest powers are turned to the worst account, we are 

 thus conducted through the brutal or negatively evil type, towards that higher 

 aspect of Humanity, which is presented by those who habitually keep before 

 them the Divine ideal, and who steadily endeavor to bring their whole nature 

 into conformity with it. This is not to be effected by dwelling exclusively on 

 any one set of the motives already referred to, as those which the truly religious 

 man keeps before his mind. Even the idea of Duty, operating alone, tends to 

 reduce the individual to the subservience of a slave, rather than to induce in 

 him that true mastery over himself which consists in such a regulation of his 

 emotions and propensities that his course of duty becomes the spontaneous ex- 

 pression of his own higher nature ; but it is a most powerful aid in the acquire- 

 ment of that regulation, by the fixation of the thoughts and affections on 

 " things on high," which is the best means of detaching them from all that is 

 earthly and debasing. It is by the assimilation, rather than by the subjugation 

 of the Human Will to the Divine, that Man is really lifted towards God ; and 

 in proportion as this assimilation has been effected, does it manifest itself in the 

 life and conduct ; so that even the lowliest actions become holy ministrations 

 in a temple consecrated by the felt presence of the Divinity. Such was the 



