508 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



mental character, will naturally be produced by mere 

 differences of intensity in the sensations generally. 

 This truth is so well exemplified, and in so short a 

 compass, in a very able essay on Dr. Priestley, men- 

 tioned in a former chapter, that I think it right to 

 quote the passage: 



"The sensations which form the elements of all 

 knowledge are received either simultaneously or suc- 

 cessively; when several are received simultaneously, 

 as the smell, the taste, the colour, the form, &c., of a 

 fruit, their association together constitutes our idea of 

 an object; when received successively, their associa- 

 tion makes up the idea of an event. Anything, then, 

 which favours the associations of synchronous ideas, 

 will tend to produce a knowledge of objects, a per- 

 ception of qualities; while anything which favours 

 association in the successive order, will tend to pro- 

 duce a knowledge of events, of the order of occur- 

 rences, and of the connexion of cause and effect : in 

 other words, in the one case a perceptive mind, with 

 a discriminative feeling of the pleasurable and painful 

 properties of things, a sense of the grand and the 

 beautiful, will be the result: in the other, a mind 

 attentive to the movements and phenomena, a ratioci- 

 native and philosophic intellect. Now it is an ac- 

 knowledged principle, that all sensations experienced 

 during the presence of any vivid impression, become 

 strongly associated with it, and with each other; and 

 does it not follow, that the synchronous feelings of a 

 sensitive constitution, (i.e. the one which has vivid 

 impressions), will be more intimately blended than in 

 a differently formed mind? If this suggestion has 

 any foundation in truth, it leads to an inference not 

 unimportant; that where nature has endowed an in- 

 dividual with great original susceptibility, he will 



