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resembles in its effect, though not in its character, those earlier struggles of a people maintaining warfare with men or with nature for the protection of their existence. The result is that spirit of manly strength which must always be produced in the contests of men with men.

But besides the peculiar character of this internal activity in the heart of society throughout the country, there are other circumstances generally affecting the spirit of our minds, which appear calculated to produce a like effect, and which require some separate notice. The agitations of the late eventful years have occupied the minds of all men with interests, which, though of the utmost importance and magnitude, were, nevertheless, in one respect temporary. For every new event which arose, or was in preparation, seemed as if the fate of a nation, or we would almost say, of mankind, were involved in its issue: and, therefore, no excess of passionate expectation which could be fixed on it, could appear misplaced. But hence it has happened that through this whole period the mind of the nation has been continually held in suspense on events which, whatever might be their magnitude, were yet to pass away: and we have been accustomed to live in a succession of vivid emotions which were all but the birth of the times, and could only have the duration of the events with which they had arisen. Now, even the strong and pervading sympathy with the fortunes of nature and humanity, however ennobling to the minds which it filled, and although accompanied with lessons of the highest instruction, has nevertheless, in this respect, been injurious to our highest faculties of thought, that they have withdrawn our imagination from those great objects which, to the selfcollected mind wrapped in meditation, have at all times appeared of paramount importance. That great sympathy, and those momentous expectations on which all men have been intent, have made it appear, as if the more thoughtful mind turning itself to those remoter objects and their shadowy speculation, were deserting the great hazards of mankind, to busy itself in the dreams of a fantastic and indolent philosophy. We have found, in the occurrences and scenes of a shifting world, their full scope for all our capacity of hope and desire; and

hence it may be difficult to our minds, when they would turn themselves again towards higher and more lasting contemplations, to recover that zeal, and those devout convictions of their value which have belonged to them of old, and have been easy and habitual to men who lived in calmer times of the world. Even minds of superior power have thus absolutely surrendered themselves to their interest in passing events, and have forgotten altogether those thoughts of which the interest arises in the silent mind-to which their strong reflecting character would otherwise have called them, and which their genius, full of wisdom, might in other times have illustrated.

They

Nor can it be doubted that these events have, in another way, tended to disqualify our minds for the highest speculations, inasmuch as they have given great intensity to those feelings which are at all times spread through the bosom of society, variously dividing the members of a state. have given to all momentary questions and feelings of this sort an intensity and magnitude derived from those great interests which were at hazard in the contentions of the world, and have thus kept men's minds in a state of keen and agitated debate, a temper the most hostile of any to contemplative philosophy.

There are, however, other consequences of such passions and pursuits which unavoidably force themselves upon our observation. The objects which are thus sought after, though to a certain extent good, honourable, and even necessary, are all of a temporary and personal nature. As temporary, they cannot be the fit objects of the most earnest and persevering endeavours of minds framed like ours; as personal, it must be expected that long continued and passionate desire directed upon them, will, as it is always found to do, impair the more disinterested affections. We have no difficulty in admitting these views in single examples. We may feel some hesitation in applying them to the case of a nation. Yet the injury to a nation may be more complete and certain. For, to an individual, the effect of his own pursuits upon his character may be mitigated by his intercourse with other men. But in the case of a nation, all men concurring to justify one another's passions, and to confirm those false deceptions of the under

standing which passion always suggests, it is to be apprehended that any effect naturally injurious will take place with stronger and more decisive effect.

It seems impossible, then, with these views, to look without apprehension to the future effect upon the character of the country from so much of our whole exertion and desire being devoted to these objects. And if it is difficult for us, situated as we are, to recall ourselves in any great degree from their pursuit, it appears desirable at least, that the intervals of leisure in which our minds are called back to themselves, should be employed on objects of an opposite character. Literature is one source of such employment. The higher works which we include under that name, bring objects of a different nature before the mind, and awaken feelings and thoughts which had slept in the midst of our more eager occupations. The objects with which we are thus led to converse, are even of the greatest magnitude and the highest kind; and we have no faculties of such dignity, and no affections so exalted, but they may here find room to act. But all these pursuits are in danger to become at last little else than a relaxation to the mind overstrained with more serious employment. They call up a momentary play of sensibility and fancy, they amuse the tired faculty of thought with new speculation. They renovate for fresh labour. But they scarcely do more. They leave the man, as he was, a being whose anxious and earnest thoughts are fixed on interests which each successive day brings before him, and which even his own speculation carries on but a little way into futurity. They leave him to think that all his capacities of affection and desire have found their sufficient objects, and that there are no disregarded faculties in his soul, pleading in vain to be admitted, as they are of higher birth, to their right of a higher destination.

Now we cannot but believe that a more serious cast given to the intellectual pursuits of a people, might add greatly to the importance of that portion of their lives, in which the mind, from its accustomed labours, is recovered to itself. If their literature be not a literature of pleasure merely, but by a high spirit of Philosophy infused, can address itself in another

language, and with other claims to their minds,-turning their thoughts in upon themselves, and proposing the faculties which it calls into activity as objects of a distinct regard, entitled on their own account to be considered excellent, and not merely instrumental to the relaxation of amusement of unoccupied hours; then it would appear that a new and important effect would follow. For the mind cannot in any degree be turned to the distinct consideration of its Own powers, without an immediate perception of their dignity, and without being led on in some degree to specu late on the ends for which they are designed in the constitution of our nature. But no sooner does it begin to reason or conjecture upon the ends which they are framed to insure, than it is necessarily drawn on to consider them in their full connexion with that life to which we are born, and which is the first great scene of their activity. Now this is the very subject on which it seems most important, that the human mind should exercise its speculation. For the moment it begins to compare the extensive reach and high character of its inherent powers with the facilities which human life offers for their exertion, it is met by the conviction that the ordinary employments to which it is required, are inadequate alike to their capacity and dignity; and it is driven on to enquire what nobler occupation it may find, on which its largest faculties shall not be lost, or its proudest misapplied. Now the whole of a literature which the spirit of a high Philosophy pervades, will lead the minds of men in innumerable ways into these views and trains of speculation. But most of all those high works of Philosophy-which speak of the mind alone, and by the most open and direct appeal—call upon it to turn its thoughts upon itself to understand and to acknowledge its own high descent and indefeasible prerogative.

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Of the laws of intellect one most essential to its nature is, "to know the evidence of its own belief." Hence there is naturally a favourable inclina tion of intellect towards all truth, of which the evidence is obvious to demonstration, and a natural disinclination to that truth of which the evidence is elusive and obscure. Now the human mind is called upon to pursue enquiry in two very distinct spheres of speculation:-in a world external to itself where the evidence of belief lies in sense:- and in a world within itself where the evidence of belief consists in variable and indefinite feelings and affections, many of which are to most minds, and some perhaps to all, unfamiliar and obscure. It is apparent, then, to which of these two spheres of investigation, a mind determined chiefly by its intellectual faculties, will incline. The observations now made may perhaps serve to explain the tendency of enquiry which philosophy in these later times has discovered. To those sciences of which the evidence lies in sense, the human intellect has turned itself in all its strength, and has built up an edifice of knowledge of which the former ages of the world entertained no imagination. But it must almost appear that it has given itself up to them with relinquishing, to a certain extent, its other and more important sphere. The knowledge which lies within, it seems too much to have regarded with disfavour. Turning from the broad day in which the facts of external science lie exposed, to this dark and shadowy world, it has feared to set its steps on unsubstantial ground; and has often kept itself aloof from it altogether. So that while in the sciences of material nature, it has been advancing in acquisition with giant strides, and lifting up its power beyond all precedent, in the other it has sometimes been losing knowledge that was possessed perhaps by the earliest ages of mankind.

But the evidence of belief from this interior world is not necessarily uncertain and obscure. It is our Mind that makes it more or less so. The manifold affections incident to our mind become clear and defined to those who feel them strongly, and are accustomed attentively to consider them. To those only are they obscure and inevident who imperfectly feel and negligently consider them.

Hence, against that unwillingness of cultivated intellect to admit belief drawn from such internal evidence' there seems no defence so ready to have recourse to as that philosophy which founds its whole science on the basis of such evidence, and which, while it is jealous to admit all reason. ing derived from imperfect knowledge of its own great and authentic principles, is as strenuous in urging human nature to indulge the cultivation of that whole inward world of affections and feelings, be they more distinct and palpable, or more undefined and obscure.

Thus, then, it may appear that even in those profound wonderful sciences which investigate the laws of nature through her mighty material universe, there may lurk danger to the human spirit, not as it pursues them for its individual delight, but when the mind of a whole generation is given over to them with too exclusive desire. They are the high and just, the useful and the ennobling study of man, the observer, and, in his own domain, the master of nature. But they are not his only knowledge-and they must not usurp the full measure of his capacities. There is another knowledge that must divide with them the empire of his mind, and must hold at least its equal sway.

Before we conclude, we wish to add a few words upon a subject, which, though distinct from those of which we have now spoken, is not unconnected with them. We speak of a sort of practical scepticism which is spread among many as to all opinions which rest for their evidence upon the highest feelings of our minds, and of explicit scepticism among others. We conceive that mind to be in a state of practical disbelief in these respects, which, by attachment to speculative or active pursuits of a different character, is kept in a habitual forgetfulness of the thoughts, and a habitual disuse of the feelings, if we may so express ourselves, which belong to such subjects. It is a state of mind not adverse to the belief, perhaps, from which it is thus habitually estranged, but certainly divided from it. But there is among many a scepticism explicit and deliberate, which we cannot help conceiving is to be ascribed to the influence, unforeseen to themselves, of a course of life, and perhaps of speculation unfavourable to the just use of some of

their highest powers, rather than to a
conviction following from investiga-
tions carried through with the full
use of those powers. To all scepti-
cism there can be but one answer,
Truth. But that knowledge which is
placed within the reach of our facul-
ties, is not a boon granted to the mere
desire of possessing it. It is a prize
offered to steadfast and unwearied ex-
ertion of our best faculties.
If we

ask what those faculties are to which
the attainment of the highest know-
ledge is given, it is evident that none
can be passed over-that the full ef-
fort of our mind in all its powers is
required of us for that acquisition.
Our reasoning intellect is but a part
of that constitution of our minds by
which we are enabled to make dis-

covery of moral truth—the powers of our moral nature are pre-eminently those by which all such discovery is made possible to us. That course of life, then, and those trains and methods of speculation which raise up our moral faculties into strength, and do indeed open up within ourselves that part of created nature which in these cases must be the subject of enquiry, can alone afford us reasonable expectation of attaining the knowledge in question, and exploring our way to just conclusions on those momentous topics, which, whatever conclusions it may rest in, will, more or less, visit every human mind with sorrow or with hope, with thoughts of fear or of consolation.

REMARKS ON A PASSAGE IN COLERIDGE'S "AIDS TO REFLECTION."

"If Prudence, though practically inseparable from Morality, is not to be confounded with the Moral Principle; still less may Sensibility, i. e. a constitutional quickness of Sympathy with Pain and Pleasure, and a keen sense of the gratifications that accompany social intercourse, mutual endearments, and reciprocal preferences, be mistaken, or deemed a Substitute for either. They are not even sure pledges of a GOOD HEART, though among the most common meanings of that many-meaning and too commonly misap- Drop on the cheek of one, he lifts from earth,

and disturb their selfish enjoyments! Provided the dunghill is not before their parlour window, they are well contented to know that it exists, and perhaps as the hot-bed on which their own luxuries are reared. Sensibility is not necessarily Benevolence. Nay, by rendering us tremblingly alive to trifling misfortunes, it frequently prevents it, and induces an effeminate Selfishness instead,

plied expression.

"So far from being either Morality, or one with the Moral Principle, they ought not even to be placed in the same rank with Prudence. For Prudence is at least an offspring of the Understanding; but Sensibility (the Sensibility, I mean, here spoken of) is for the greater part a quality of the nerves, and a result of individual bodily temperament.

"Prudence is an active Principle, and implies a sacrifice of Self, though only to the same Self projected, as it were, to a distance. But the very term Sensibility, marks its passive nature and in its mere self, apart from Choice and Reflection, it proves little more than the coincidence or contagion of pleasurable or painful Sensations in different persons.

"Alas! how many are there in this over-stimulated age, in which the occur rence of excessive and unhealthy sensitiveness is so frequent, as even to have reversed the current meaning of the word, nervous,-how many are there whose sensibility prompt them to remove those evils alone, which by hideous spectacle or clamorous outcry are present to their senses

pampering the coward heart With feelings all too delicate for use. Sweet are the Tears, that from a Howard's eye

And He, who works me good with unmoved face
Does it but half. He chills me while he aids,
My Benefactor, not my Brother Man.
But even this, this cold benevolence,
Seems Worth, seems Manhood, when there rise
before me

The sluggard Pity's vision weaving Tribe,
Who sigh for Wretchedness yet shun the wretch-
ed,

Nursing in some delicious Solitude
Their slothful Loves and dainty Sympathies.'
Sibylline Leaves, p. 180.
"Lastly, where Virtue is, Sensibility is
the ornament and becoming Attire of Vir-
tue.
On certain occasions it may almost
be said to become Virtue. But Sensibility
and all the amiable Qualities may likewise
become, and too often have become, the
pandars of Vice and the instruments of
Seduction.

"So must it needs be with all qualities that have their rise only in parts and fragments of our nature. A man of warm opinions may sacrifice half his estate to rescue a friend from Prison: for he is generally sympathetic, and the more sober part of his nature happened to be uppermost. The same man shall afterwards exhibit the same disregard of money in an attempt to seduce that friend's Wife or Daughter.

All the evil achieved by Hobbes and his whole School of Materialists will appear inconsiderable if it be compared with the mischief effected and occasioned by the sentimental Philosophy of STERNE, and his numerous Imitators. The vilest appetites and the most remorseless inconstancy towards their objects, acquired the titles of the Heart, the irresistible Feelings, the too tender Sensibility: and if the Frosts of Prudence, the icy chains of Human Law thawed and vanished at the genial warmth of Human Nature, who could help it? It was an amiable weak

ness!

"About this time, too, the profanation of the word, Love, rose to its height. The French Naturalists, Buffon and others,

borrowed it from the sentimental Novelists; the Swedish and English Philosophers took the contagion; and the Muse

of Science condescended to seek admission into the Saloons of Fashion and Frivolity, rouged like an Harlot, and with the Harlot's wanton leer. I know not how the Annals of Guilt could be better forced into the service of Virtue, than by such a comment on the present paragraph, as would be afforded by a selection from the sentimental Correspondence produced in Courts of Justice within the last thirty years, fairly translated into the true meaning of the words, and the actual Object and Purpose of the infamous Writers. Do you in good earnest aim at Dignity of Character? By all the treasures of a peaceful mind, by all the charms of an open countenance, I conjure you, youth turn away from those who live in the Twilight between Vice and Virtue. Are not Reason, Discrimination, Law, and deliberate Choice, the distinguishing Characters of Humanity? Can aught then worthy of a human Being proceed from a Habit of Soul, which would exclude all these and (to borrow a metaphor from Paganism) prefer the den of Trophonius to the Temple and Oracles of the God of Light? Can any thing manly, I say, proceed from those, who for Law and Light would substitute shapeless feelings, sentiments, impulses, which as far as they differ from the vital workings in the brute animals owe the difference to their former connexion with the proper Virtues of Humanity; as Dendrites derive the outlines, that constitute their value above

other clay-stones, from the casual neighbourhood and pressure of the Plants, the names of which they assume? Remember, that Love itself in its highest earthly Bearing, as the ground of the marriage union, becomes Love by an inward FIAT of the Will, by a completing and sealing Act of Moral Election, and lays claim to permanence only under the form of DUTY."

This, on the whole, is a good passage, spirited and eloquent, although not free from the vices incident to Mr Coleridge's style, especially the vice of exaggeration. For, in the first place, he has taken care so to degrade the character of Sensibility, that it is scarcely possible to imagine any writer, above the very lowest rank, considering it a substitute either for Prudence or the Moral Principle. In the second place, even this kind of sensibility, though not a sure pledge of a good heart, is generally so; and, supposing it to be not altogether instinctive and unreasoning, which scarcely any permanent impulse is, but under some rational control and safeguard, if it were no other than the experience of life frequently thwarting and rendering its undue indulgence disastrous or ridicu lous—then such sensibility is amiable, and symptomatic (we do not fear to say so) of a good heart. It may be right to speak, even with some austerity, of "a constitutional quickness of sympathy, and a keen sense of the gratifications that accompany social intercourse, mutual endearments, and reciprocal preferences," when these are represented as all in all in the moral character; but it is not right to speak of them with any disparagement in themselves, since without them, except indeed in the loftiest and most sublime spirits of men, there is no such thing as virtue. In the third place, though it be true that Prudence is an "offspring of the understanding," it is also no less true, that Prudence is often just as constitutional as sensibility, a quality too of the nerves, and a result of individual bodily temperament. The cautious are often cold-blooded; and the prudent not unfrequently persons whose nerves are like nails, and who, undisturbed by the agitations of those feelings which they ought to possess, make the head do the work of the heart. Were a fair estimate to be made of the comparative worth of the best kind of prudence and the best kind of sensibility, or of the comparative worthlessness or danger of the worst-and no other estimate is of any avail in moral disquisition—the result would not be that at which Mr Coleridge has arrived in his imperfect philosophy. Fourthly,we very much doubt the likelihood of the man of warm passions, who sacrificed half his estate to rescue a friend from prison, afterwards exhibiting the

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