22 FINAL CAUSES. 



centered in myself; but that there exist other in- 

 tellects similar to my own? Undoubtedly no other 

 than the observation that certain effects are pro- 

 duced, which the experience I have had of the 

 operations of my own mind leads me, by an irre- 

 sistible analogy, to ascribe to a similar agency, 

 emanating from other beings ; beings, however, of 

 whose actual intellectual presence I cannot be con- 

 scious, whose nature I cannot fathom, whose essence 

 I cannot understand. I can judge of the opera- 

 tions of other minds only in as far as those opera- 

 tions accord with what has passed in my own. I 

 cannot divine processes of thought to which mine 

 have borne no resemblance ; I cannot appreciate 

 motives of which I have never felt the influence, 

 nor comprehend the force of passions never yet 

 awakened in my breast : neither can I picture to 

 myself feelings to which no sympathetic chord 

 within me has ever vibrated. 



Our own intelligence, our own views, and our 

 own affections, then, furnish the only elements by 

 which it is possible for us to estimate the analogous 

 powers and attributes of other minds. The diffi- 

 culty of applying this scale of measurement will, 

 of course, increase in proportion to the difference 

 between the objects compared; and although we 

 may conceive that there are powers and intelli- 

 gences infinitely surpassing our own, the concep- 

 tions we can form of such superior essences must 

 necessarily be indefinite and obscure, and must 

 partake of the same kind of imperfection as our 

 notions of the distances of the heavenly bodies, 

 however familiar we may be with the units of the 

 scale by which those distances are capable of being 



