248 MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS. 



scientiousness and benevolence, by which we can in a faint 

 and humble measure imitate, in our conduct, that which he 

 exemplifies in the whole of his wondrous doings. Beyond 

 this, mental science does not carry us in support of religion : 

 the rest depends on evidence of a different kind. But it is 

 surely much that we thus discover in nature a provision for 

 things so important. The existence of faculties having a 

 regard to such things is a good evidence that such things 

 exist. The face of God is reflected in the organization of 

 man, as a little pool reflects the glorious sun. 



The affective or sentimental faculties are all of them liable 

 to operate whenever appropriate objects or stimuli are pre- 

 sented, and this they do as irresistibly and unerringly as the 

 tree sucks up moisture which it requires, with only this excep- 

 tion, that one faculty often interferes with the action of 

 another, and operates instead, by force of superior inherent 

 strength or temporary activity. For example, alimentiveness 

 may be in powerful operation with regard to its appropriate 

 object, producing a keen appetite, and yet it may not act, in 

 consequence of the more powerful operation of cautiousness, 

 warning against evil consequences likely to ensue from the 

 desired indulgence. This liability to flit from under the con- 

 trol of one feeling to the control of another, constitutes what 

 is recognised as free will in man, being nothing more than a 

 vicissitude in the supremacy of the faculties over each other. 



It is a common mistake to suppose that the individuals of 

 our own species are all of them formed with similar faculties 

 similar in power and tendency and that education and the 

 influence of circumstances produce all the differences which 

 we observe. There is not, in the old systems of mental 

 philosophy, any doctrine more opposite to the truth than this. 

 It is refuted at once by the great differences of intellectual 

 tendency and moral disposition to be observed amongst a 

 group of young children who have been all brought up in 

 circumstances perfectly identical even in twins, who have 

 never been but in one place, under the charge of one nurse, 

 attended to alike in all respects. The mental characters of 

 individuals are inherently various, as the forms of their per- 



