372 MENTAL FUNCTIONS OF 



If the old course, recommended by Mr. Dugald Stewart, of 

 investigating the mind by attending to the subjects of our own 

 consciousness, had been persevered in, the science of mind 

 would have remained stationary for ever." Our powers and 

 feelings are distributed in such various degrees, and the external 

 circumstances which have acted upon them are so various, that 

 every man, judging from himself only, would draw up a different 

 account of the human mind ; as different from the attempts of 

 all others, as the representations of the human face and head 

 would be, if every painter were to execute his own likeness only. 

 The account would be as inaccurate as if an individual were to 

 determine the bodily powers and susceptibilities of the operation 

 of agents by his own. Unquestionably much must be learned by 

 observing the workings of our minds, and much can be learned 



sensible Jibre as a very little organ with its own functions." " The brain contains 

 a prodigious number of organs infinitely small, appropriated to sentiment and 

 thought." 



c Although Mr. Dugald Stewart declares that in his own inquiries he has 

 " aimed at nothing more than to ascertain, in the first place, the laws of our con- 

 stitution, as far as they can be discovered by attention to the subjects of our own 

 consciousness;" (Essays, Preliminary Dissertation, p. 2.) " that the whole of a 

 philosopher's life, if he spends it to any purpose, is one continued series of expe- 

 riments on his own faculties and powers;" (p. 40.) and that " the structure of 

 the mind (whatever collateral aids may be derived from observing the varieties of 

 genius in our fellow creatures) is accessible to those only who can retire into the 

 deepest recesses of their own internal frame ;" yet he adds, " even to those, pre- 

 senting, along with the generic attributes of the race, many of the specific peculi- 

 arities of the individual," (Elements, vol. ii. p. 513.) and has really the following 

 passages in the forty-second and forty-third pages of the Essays. " To counter- 

 balance the advantages which this science of mind lies under, in consequence of 

 its slender stock of experiments, made directly and intentionally on the minds 

 of our fellow creatures, human life exhibits to our observation a boundless variety, 

 both of intellectual and moral phenomena, by a diligent study of which we may 

 ascertain almost every point that we could wish to investigate, if we had expe- 

 riments at our command." Savage society, and all the different modes of 

 civilisation ; the different callings of individuals, whether liberal or mechanical ; 

 the prejudiced clown, the factitious man of fashion ; the varying phases of cha- 

 racter, from infancy to old age ; the prodigies effected by human art, in all the 

 objects around us, laws, government, commerce, religion ; but above all, the 

 records of thought preserved in those volumes which fill our libraries ; what are 

 they but experiments, by which nature illustrates, for our instruction, on her own 

 grand scale, the varied range of many intellectual faculties, and the omnipotence 

 of education in fashioning the mind." 



