446 



OPERATIONS SUBSIDIARY TO INDUCTION. 



memory, and their truth undoubtingly 

 assented to and relied on, while yet 

 they carry no meaning distinctly home 

 to the mind ; and while the matter 

 of fact or law of nature which they ori- 

 ginally expressed is as much lost sight 

 of, and practically disregarded, as if 

 it never had been heard of at all. In 

 those subjects which are at the same 

 time familiar and complicated,and espe- 

 cially in those which are so in as great 

 a degree as moral and social subjects 

 are, it is a matter of common remark 

 how many important propositions are 

 believed and repeated from habit, 

 while no account could be given, and 

 no sense is practically manifested, of 

 the truths which they convey. Hence 

 it is that the traditional maxima of 

 old experience, though seldom ques- 

 tioned, have often so little effect on 

 the conduct of life, because their 

 meaning is never, by most persons, 

 really felt, until personal experience 

 has brought it home. And thus also 

 it is that so many doctrines of religion, 

 ethics, and even politics, so full of 

 meaning and reality to first converts, 

 have manifested (after the association 

 of that meaning with the verbal for- 

 mulas has ceased to be kept up by the 

 controversies which accompanied their 

 first introduction) a tendency to de- 

 generate rapidly into lifeless dogmas ; 

 which tendency, all the efforts of an 

 education expressly and skilfully di- 

 rected to keeping the meaning alive, 

 are barely sufficient to counteract. 



Considering, then, that the human 

 mind, in different generations, occu- 

 pies itself with different things, and 

 in one age is led by the circumstances 

 which surround it to fix more of its 

 attention upon one of the properties 

 of a thing, in another age upon an- 

 other ; it is natural and inevitable 

 that in every age a certain portion 

 of our recorded and traditional know- 

 ledge, not being continually suggested 

 by the pursuits and inquiries with 

 which mankind are at that time en- 

 grossed, should fall asleep, as it were, 

 and fade from the memory. It would 

 be in danger of being totally lost if 



the propositions or formulas, the re- 

 sults of the previous experience, did 

 not remain, as forms of words it may 

 be, but of words that once really 

 conveyed, and are still supposed to 

 convey, a meaning ; which meaning, 

 though suspended, may be historically 

 traced, and, when suggested, may be 

 recognised by minds of the necessary 

 endowments as being still matter of 

 fact or truth. While the formulas 

 remain, the meaning may at any time 

 revive ; and as on the one hand the 

 formulas progressively lose the mean- 

 ing they were intended to convey, so, 

 on the other, when this forgetfulnes.s 

 has reached its height and begun to 

 produce obvious consequences, minds 

 arise which from the contemplation 

 of the formulas rediscover the truth, 

 when truth it was, which was con- 

 tained in them, and announce it agahi 

 to mankind, not as a discovery, but 

 as the meaning of that which they 

 have been taught, and still profess to 

 believe. 



Thus there is a perpetual oscillation 

 in spiritual truths, and in spiritual 

 doctrines of any significance, even 

 when not truths. Their meaning U 

 almost always in a process either of 

 being lost or of being recovered. 

 Whoever has attended to the history 

 of the more serious convictions of 

 mankind — of the opinions by which 

 the general conduct of their lives is, 

 or as they conceive ought to be, more 

 especially regulated^-is aware that 

 even when recognising verbally the 

 same doctrines, they attach to them 

 at different periods a greater or less 

 quantity, and even a different kind, 

 of meaning. The words in their 

 original acceptation connoted, and 

 the propositions expressed, a compli- 

 cation of outward facts and inward 

 feelings, to different portions of which 

 the general mind is more particularly 

 alive in different generations of man- 

 kind. To common minds, only that 

 portion of the meaning is in each 

 generation suggested, of which that 

 generation possesses the counterpart 

 in its own habitual experience. But 



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