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art, be too absurd not to meet with instant scorn 
and ridicule. ‘To affirm that the spring or weight 
of a clock, for example, derived its power from the 
wheelwork, and might have adapted itself to the 
wheels, and the wheels to itself, would be notori- 
ously the babble of idiocy. The machinery of or- 
ganized beings is subjected to mind; and it is only 
in its relation to mind that it is capable of receiving 
benefit or injury. These terms belong to the voca- 
bulary or nomenclature of consciousness, and are 
strictly applicable only to beings known or firmly 
believed to be capable of pleasurable or painful feel- 
ings or emotions. A field is improved by the addi- 
tion of manure, but the farmer or landlord is bene- 
jited. A watch is disordered by a fall, but the 
owner is injured by the loss of its use. A crystal 
may be damaged by a hammer, a shell by a fall; 
but an animal is 7zjured by a wound producing dis- 
ease or inflicting pain. 
Thus evil and good belong to sentient and intel- 
ligent beings: they are correlative. Sensation or 
thought, utterly destitute of some degree of gratifi- 
cation or displeasure, would scarcely excite or fix 
attention: life would be a state of torpor: mind 
exists to be excited, and to excite; its excitement, 
active or passive, is either good or evil. This is 
the condition, more or less, of every sentient being: 
without the one, the other could not be an object 
of apprehension or conception ; each would be with- 
out distinction and without name. 
Many have toiled to discover and explain the 
