SPECIAL ENDOWMENTS OF MAN. 551 



trained individual possesses ( 525) of fixing his attention 

 upon any particular object of consciousness, to the exclusion 

 of all others, becomes the source of the highest and most 

 enduring intellectual advancement, and of all moral improve- 

 ment. It is in virtue of this power, that he is not only 

 enabled to profit largely by the acquired knowledge of others, 

 but that he comes to possess a moral responsibility for the 

 use he makes of his faculties, which cannot be predicated 

 of beings whose succession of ideas is entirely determined 

 by impressions made from without. 



722. There is another attribute, moreover, by which Man 

 seems to be distinguished from all other animals ; namely, 

 that disposition to believe in the existence of an unseen but 

 powerful Being, which seems never to be wanting (under 

 some form or other) in any race or nation, although (like 

 other natural tendencies) it may be defective in individuals. 

 It requires a higher mental cultivation than is commonly to 

 be met with among savage races, to conceive of this Power as 

 having a spiritual existence ; but it appears, from the reports 

 of Missionaries who have laboured to spread Christianity 

 amongst the Heathen, that an aptitude or readiness to receive 

 this idea is rarely wanting ; so that the faculty is obviously 

 present, though it has not been called into operation. Closely 

 connected with this tendency to believe in a Great unseen 

 Power, is the desire to share in His spiritual existence, which 

 seems to have been implanted by the Creator in the mind of 

 Man, and the existence of which is one of the chief natural 

 arguments for the immortality of the soul, since it could 

 scarcely be supposed that such a desire would have been 

 implanted, if it were not in some way to be gratified. Such 

 views tend to show us the true nobility of Man's rational 

 and moral nature, and the mode in which he may most 

 effectually fulfil the ends for which his Creator designed him. 

 "We learn from them the evil of yielding to those merely 

 animal tendencies, those "fleshly lusts which war against 

 the soul," that are characteristic of beings far below him 

 in the scale of existence, and tend to degrade him to their 

 level ; and the dignity of those pursuits, which, by exercising 

 his intellect, and by expanding and strengthening the higher 

 part of his moral nature, tend to raise him towards the per- 

 fection of the Divine Being. 



