FACULTIES OF THE MINB„ 



449 



resting and important features of matter and of mind. It may be remem- 

 bered, that I proposed to unfold to you the general principles, laws, and 

 phaenomena, as far as we are capable of tracing them, of the world with- 

 out us, and the world within us ; to follow the footsteps of nature, or 

 rather of the God of nature, in the gradual evolution of that nice, and 

 dehcate, and ever-rising scale of wonders that surround us on every side, 

 from the simplest elements to the most perfect and harmonious systems 

 of visible or demonstrable existences ; from shapeless matter to form, from 

 form to feeling, from feehng 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 1 have endeavoured to accomplish ; feebly, and im- 

 perfectly, 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 wonderfully 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 6f the mind, and the di- 

 versified faculties with which it is endowed, but we have only extended 

 our investigation beyond such notice to the principles of perception, 

 thought, and reason, or the discursive power ; and to those communi- 

 cations, 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 reflexion. 



Now, besides an ability to perceive^ tJiink^ or reason^ we find the mind 

 possest of an almost infinite variety of other attributes or faculties, im- 

 planted 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 thpse faculties, as called 

 into action, producing a correspondent 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, operate in their turn with a reflex influence, and rekindle in the 

 mind the feelings that have given birth to them. And hence the origin 

 3nr! soul-subduing power of tender or impassioned poetry, or of manly 



