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could have gone on without its intervention ; it does not create 
the power which evolves or associates the images in my mind 
any more than it creates the power of vision in my eye when’ 
as a rational act, I turn it upon some object in the external 
world. In dealing with abstract thoughts or ideas, the mental 
processes under consideration are essentially the same in the 
mode of their operation. In metaphysical thought, for instance, 
the ideas are difficult of comprehension and the rational 
principle plays a more important part in their production 
because a stronger effort of the will is necessary in order to 
enable the mind to realize them at all; but when once they are 
realized, and the mind has become familiarized with them, they 
are sorted and arranged as automatically as the most super- 
ficial ideas or the simplest impressions of sense. These leading 
intellectual faculties are thus simply natural processes of the 
mind, which, although working automatically, are made use of 
by the rational principle. 
25 Of this rational principle as manifested in the suspensive 
and directive phase above specified, there is in the psychology 
of the lower animals no indication whatever. All the instances 
at least all I have ever heard of — in which the brute is said 
to have exhibited symptoms of intelligence, may be explained 
with very little trouble on the automatic principles so plainlv 
discernible in our own natures. Of course, the phase which I 
have adduced does not embrace all the manifestations of the 
i ational principle; but it is the one which distinguishes most 
clearly the psychological nature of man from that of the brute. 
Nothing in the inorganic world is so inexplicable or incom- 
prehensible to my mind as the simple action of a dog who 
, attacks me under the provocation of a threatening gesture or 
look ; for there is an obvious reason for the action, and yet the 
dog does not act from that reason. But this rational principle, 
undefinable in itself, by whatever term we designate it, — whether 
reason, power, freedom, or self-consciousness, — this principle 
which reigns supreme over the other faculties of our nature, 
diiecting, controlling, and acting through them, not as an 
absolute but as a constitutional sovereign, is certainly the most 
incomprehensible of all. 
The Chairman (Kev. R. Thornton, D.D., Y.P.). — I am sure — or perhaps I 
should use the necessitarian language and say, “ I am irresistibly compelled 
to take it tor granted, that you are irresistibly compelled to thank the author 
for the essay, which he has been unable to avoid writing.” I shall now be 
glad to hear any remarks which any gentleman may feel himself compelled 
to make. 
Rev, Prebendary Row— As I take it, the general principle of Mr. Morshead 
