OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 5 



falls back on itself in utter hopelessness of arriving 

 at an end. 



(3.) When from external objects he turns his view 

 upon himself, on his own vital and intellectual facul- 

 ties, he finds that he possesses a power of ex- 

 amining and analysing his own nature to a certain 

 extent, but no farther. In his corporeal frame he is 

 sensible of a power to communicate a certain mode- 

 rate amount of motion to himself and other objects j 

 that this power depends on his will, and that its ex- 

 ertion can be suspended or increased at pleasure 

 within certain limits ; but how his will acts on his 

 limbs he has no consciousness : and whence he de- 

 rives the power he thus exercises, there is nothing to 

 assure him, however he may long to know. His 

 senses, too, inform him of a multitude of particulars 

 respecting the external world, and he perceives an 

 apparatus by which impressions from without may be 

 transmitted, as a sort of signals to the interior of his 

 person, and ultimately to his brain, wherein he is 

 obscurely sensible that the thinking, feeling, reason- 

 ing being he calls himself, more especially resides ; 

 but by what means he becomes conscious of these 

 impressions, and what is the nature of the immediate 

 communication between that inward sentient being, 

 and that machinery, his outward man, he has not 

 the slightest conception. 



(4?.) Again, when he contemplates still more 

 attentively the thoughts, acts, and passions of this 

 his sentient intelligent self, he finds, indeed, that 

 he can remember, and by the aid of memory can 

 compare and discriminate, can judge and resolve, 

 and, above all, that he is irresistibly impelled, from 

 B 3 



