ON THE PASSIONS. 



459 



iio one case, ought also to deny that he can know any thing of thenn in 

 the other ; for the necessary and consecutive chain of causation, upon 

 which alone such philosophers found the attribute of prescience, is equally 

 broken in both instances. But such philosophers have to deny still more 

 than this, or they must abandon their principle altogether. They have 

 equally to deny that the Deity can see or know any thing of such anoma- 

 lies, even when present ; for if he can only know events as successive and 

 necessary links of preceding events, the tie being broken, on their appear- 

 ance, and the anomalous events detached, he can have no more knowledge 

 of them when gone by or present than when future. It may, perhaps, be 

 thought, that when present and operating they pass before him. Pass 

 before him ! O puerile and miserable conception of the Divinity ! All na- 

 ture is equally before him, in every point of space, and every moment of 

 eternity, and he who denies God to be every where, must deny him to be 

 any where ; unless he sees and knows every thing, he must see and know 

 nothing. Miracles and moral contingencies, then, are as much provided 

 for, and must be so, as the most common train of natural events. It is 

 true, we know nothing of the arrangement by which they subsist, but they 

 are and must be provided for nevertheless. It is here and here only we 

 ought to rest — in an equal acknowledgment of human ignorance and divin^Ji 

 perfection ; — for it is, assuredly, not quite consistent either with the 

 modesty of genuine philosophy, or the reverence of religious faith, to 

 controvert a truth because we cannot account for it ; or to pluck away 

 attribute after attribute from the diadem of the Deity, out of mere compli- 

 rnent to the demand of a fanciful and empty hypothesis. I retreat from 

 this subject, however, with pleasure. It is too perplexed and mysterious 

 for popular discussion, and I am fearful of darkening it by illustration. I 

 should not have touched upon it, but that I have been forced, by the regu- 

 lar progress of our own inquiries ; and now turn, with a free and unfet- 

 tered foot, to the study of the passions ; their general nature and influ - 

 ence upon the human actions and language, which we shall enter upon 

 in our next lecture. 



LECTURE IX. 



ON THE OlllGliN, CO]NI«JEXION, AND CIIAEACTER OF THE PASSiOIsS. 



We have entered upon an inquiry, concerning the nature and operation 

 of the various faculties that constitute tlie general furniture of the mind. 

 These we have divided into three classes ; the faculties of the understand- 

 ing, the faculties of volition, and the passions or faculties of emotion. The 

 commencement of the present series of lectures was devoted to an illus- 

 tration of the first; the secoud we discussed in our preceding study ; and 

 we now advance to a brief analysis of the third. 



In saihng over the sea of life, the passions are the gales that swell the 

 canvass of the mental bark : they obstruct, or accelerate its course; 

 and render the voyage favourable or full of danger, in prop r ion as they 

 blow steadily from a proper poir^, or are adverse or tempestuous. Like 

 the wind itself, they are an engine of hi^h importance and mighty power. 

 Without them we cannot proceed ; but with them we may be shipwrecked 



