NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 259 



wide range of freedom in which to ;icl for nil vaiious 

 occasions — necessitates a resentful faculty, by which in- 

 dividuals may protect themselves from the undue and 

 capricious exercise of each other's faculties, and thus 

 preserve their individual rights. So also there is cau- 

 tiousness, to give us a tendency to provide against the 

 evils by which we may be assailed ; and secretiveness, to 

 enable us to conceal whatever, being divulged, would 

 be oftensive to others or injurious to ourselves — a 

 function which obviously has a certain legitimate 

 range of action, however liable to be abused. The con- 

 stitution of the mind generally points to a state of inti- 

 mate relation of individuals towards society, towards 

 the external world, and towards things above this world. 

 No individual being is integral or independent; he 

 is only part of an extensive piece of social mechanism. 

 The inferior mind, full of rude energy and unregulated 

 impulse, does not more require a superior nature to act 

 as its master and its mentor, than does the superior 

 nature require to be surrounded by such rough elements 

 on which to exercise its high endowments as a ruling and 

 tutelary power. This relation of each to each produces 

 a vast portion of the active business of life. It is easy 

 to see that, if we were all alike in our moral tendencies, 

 and all placed on a medium of perfect moderation in this 

 respect, the world would be a scene of everlasting didness 

 and apathy. It requires the variety of individual con- 

 stitution to give moral life to the scene. 



The indefiniteness of the potentiality of the human 

 faculties, and the complexity which thus attends their 

 relations, lead unavoidably to occasional eri-or. If we 

 consider for a moment that there are not less than thirty 

 such faculties, that they are each given in difterent pro- 

 portions to difterent persons, that each is at the same 



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