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MODES OF ACTIVITY OF THE FACULTIES. 



All the faculties, when active in a due degree, produce actions good — proper 

 — or necessary. Excess of activity and improper direction produce abuses. The 

 smallness of a particular organ is not the cause of its producing abuses. Thus, 

 though the organ of Benevolence be small, this does not produce cruelty. It will 

 be accompanied with indifference to the miseries of others. It may lead to the 

 omission of duties. When one organ is small, abuses may result from another 

 being left without proper direction and restraint. Thus, large Acquisitiveness and 

 Secretiveness, combined with small Conscientiousness, and deficient reflecting 

 faculties, may produce theft. Large Destructiveness, with small Benevolence, 

 may produce cruel and ferocious actions. 



Every faculty w^hen in action, from whatever cause, produces the kind of 

 feeling, or forms the kind of ideas, already explained as resulting from its natural 

 constitution. 



The Propensities and Sentiments cannot be excited to activity by a mere 

 act of the will. We cannot conjure up the emotions of fear, compassion, or 

 veneration, by merely willing to experience them. These faculties, however, 

 may enter into action from internal excitement of the organs; and then the desire 

 or emotion which each produces is experienced, whether we will to experience it 

 or not. We have it in our powder to permit or restrain the manifestation of them 

 in the action; but we have no option, if the organ be excited, to experience or not 

 to experience the feeling itself. There are times when we feel involuntary 

 emotions of fear, or hope, or awe, arising in us, for which we cannot account; and 

 such feelings depend on the internal activity of the organs of these sentiments. 



In the second place, these faculties may be called into action independently 

 of the w^ill, by the presentment of the external objects fitted by nature to excite 

 them. When an object in distress is presented, the faculty of benevolence starts 

 into activity, and produces the feelings which depend upon it. In these cases, the 

 power of acting, or of not acting, is dependent on the will; but the power of 

 feeling, or of not feeling, is not so. 



In the third place, the faculties of which we are now speaking, may be 

 excited to activity, or repressed, indirectly^ by an effort of the will. Thus, the 

 knowing and reflecting faculties have the function of forming ideas. If these 

 faculties be employed to conceive internally the objects fitted by nature to excite 



