26 THE LAWS OF ORGANIC 



and unprejudiced judgment. The eye of taste 

 delights to look upon an edifice complete and 

 beautiful in proportion, possessing a variety of 

 qualities adapted for embellishment or utility, 

 and the mind is similarly constituted : the crea- 

 tions of others, or its own, seldom please unless 

 the plans or principles unfolded are extensive 

 and harmonious in all their parts, a circumstance 

 which seldom occurs, even in appearance, except 

 in those cases in which theory or hypothesis is 

 employed to fill up the interstices or vacuities 

 left by sound reasoning or experimental philo- 

 sophy. 



CCCLXXV1. In the following attempt to in- 

 vestigate the connection between mind and body, 

 I have not been guided by any opinion respect- 

 ing the nature of the former ; it is sufficient for 

 my purpose to ascertain that ideas and sensations 

 are properties of the one, as motion and sensi- 

 bility are the endowments of the other. 



CCCLXXVII. The views which I bring for- 

 ward are less the production of the closet than 

 the result of close and patient observation on 

 man in the busy theatre of the world, where he 

 is continually agitated by the vicissitudes of for- 

 tune or the ever-changing incidents of life. I 

 have attended more particularly to the extremes 

 of mental emotion than to the slighter and more 

 continued influence of less evident feelings, as I 

 propose to reason only from effects ; but what- 



