398 



ON THE GENERAL 



LECTURE Vin. 



ON THE GENERAL FACULTIES OF THE MIND, AND ITS FREEDOM IN WILLING. 



In the commencement of the successive series of lectures which I have 

 had the honour of delivering- before this respectable school of science, I 

 stated, as it may be recollected by many of the audience before me, that the 

 subject I proposed to discuss would be of considerable extent and variety ; — 

 that it would embrace, though with a rapid survey, the whole circle of physics, 

 in the most enlarged sense in which this term has been employed by Aris- 

 totle or Lord Bacon ; and, consequently, would touch slightly, yet, as 1 hoped, 

 with a correct outline, upon all the more interesting- and important features 

 of matter and of mind. It may be remembered, that I proposed to unfold to 

 5'ou the g-eneral principles, laws, and phenomena, as far as we are capable of 

 tracing- them, of the world without us, and the world within us ; to follov\r 

 the footsteps of nature, or rather of the God of nature, in the gradual evolu- 

 tion of that nice, and delicate, and ever-rising scale of wonders that surround 

 us on every side, from the simplest elements to the most perfect and harmo- 

 nious systems of visible or demonstrable existences; from shapeless matter 

 to form, from form to feeling, from feeling to intellect ; from the clod to the 

 crystal, from the crystal to the plant, from the plant to the animal, from brutal 

 life to man. All this I have endeavoured to accomplish ; feebly and imper- 

 fectly, indeed, but I have still endeavoured it with whatever may be the 

 powers that the breath of the Almighty has implanted within me. 



But we have not stopped here ; having reached in man the summit of the 

 visible pyramid of creation, we have tremblingly ventured to take a glance 

 at the interior of his mysterious structure ; we have followed him, with no 

 unhallowed eye, into the temple of the soul ; we have amused ourselves, for, 

 after all, it has been little or nothing more, with conjectures about its essence, 

 and have commenced an analysis of those faculties so fearfully and wonder- 

 fully planned, which place him at an almost infinite distance from the brute 

 creation, and approximate him to the sphere of celestial intelligences : to 

 that order of pure and happy spirits with whom it is his high prerogative, if not 

 forfeited by his own misconduct on earth, that he shall associate hereafter, 

 and press forward in the pursuit of an infinite and self-rewarding knowledge, 

 and in the fruition of an endless and unclouded felicity. 



This last topic, however, we have entered upon, and nothing more : we 

 have noticed, indeed, the general furniture of the mind, and the diversified 

 faculties with which it is endowed ; but we have only extended our investiga- 

 tion beyond such notice to the principles of perception, thought, and reason, 

 or the discursive power; and to those communications, or ideas of objects or 

 subjects, derived externally or from within, upon which the discursive power 

 is ever exercising itself; and which, as they are obtained from the one or the 

 other of these two sources, are denominated ideas of sensation or of reflection. 



Now, besides an ability to perceive, think, or reason, we find the mind pos- 

 sessed of an almost infinite variety of other attributes or faculties, implanted 

 in it for the wisest and most beneficent purposes. We behold it endowed 

 with consciousness, judgment, memory, imagination; with a power of 

 choosing or refusing ; with admiration and desire ; hope and fear, love and 

 hatred ; grief and joy, transport and terror; with anger, jealousy, and despair. 

 And we behold each of these faculties, as called into action, producing a cor- 

 respondent effect upon the organs of the body; giving rise to what the 

 painters call expression, or the language of the features ; and to articulate 

 sounds, or the language of the lips ; lighting up the eye, and animating the 

 countenance ; invigorating the speech, and harmonizing its periods ; or, on 

 the contrary, filling the eye and the countenance with gloom or indignation, 

 and the voice with sighs and bitter rebukes. 



The external signs thus produced, and representative of the inward emotion. 



