6 
most powerful instincts of our nature, the love of 
wonder. A peculiar sensation of delight is connected 
with this emotion, the germ of that compound, that 
aggregate of rapturous associations, which we dis- 
tinguish by the term sublime. This emotion, or 
ageregate of emotions, affords a continually increas- 
ing impulse to every intellectual exertion, continu- 
ally augmented in energy in proportion to the 
growth of knowledge, to the consciousness of intel- 
lectual strength and expansion: constantly elevated 
in preportion to the magnitude of the contemplated 
objects, and fervent and enthusiastic in proportion 
to our apprehension of benefit to other sympathetic 
beings throughout all generations. 
Analogies thus traced in objects most remote and 
most dissimilar have an especial tendency to produce 
an effect which Dugald Stuart observes is common 
to all our philosophical pursuits, namely, that “ of 
impressing the mind with a sense of that mysterious 
agency or efficiency into which the general laws of 
nature must ever be resolved,”—*“ and to revive 
those emotions of wonder and of curiosity which the 
appearances of nature are so admirably fitted to ex- 
cite.” But these emotions, he observes, are attended 
with a natural, inevitable conviction, that the effects 
which we notice in all our physiological inquiries can- 
not belong to inert matter, but proceed from powers 
of more exalted nature: chap. i. §. 3. “ and form a 
part of our moral nature.” They are a portion of 
that Mind, in which those who attend to the opera- 
tions or diversities of consciousness may perceive, 
