NATURE AND VARIETIES OF DISPOSITIONS. 509. Nature of dispositions. 510. Moral character of dispo- 513, Nature of wisdom. 514. Christian wisdom. 513. Doc- trine of Solomon and others. 516. Secular wisdom. 517. Acquisition of wisdom. 518. Wisdom identified with moral goodness. 519. Dignity and excellence of the wise. NATURE AND OFFICE OF PRUDENCE. § 522. Nature of prudence. 523. Prudence in regard to health. 524. Prudence in regard to property. 525. Prudeuce in NATURE AND OFFICE OF GRATITUDE. 545. Gratitude. 546. Conditionality of gratitude. 547. Grati- tude for benefits conferred on others. 448. Displeasure on account of evil doing. 549. Scripture doctrines of grati- 553. Nature of liberality. 554. Liberality to the state. § 558. Nature of courage. 559. Demand for this virtue. 560. NATURE AND OFFICE OF MAGNANIMITY. ¿ 563. Nature of magnanimity. 564. Examples. 563. Example MENTAL PHILOSOPHY. PART FIRST. PHILOSOPHY OF SENSATIONS. CHAPTER I. GENERIC PROPERTIES OF SENSATIONS, EMBRACING THEIR NATURE, ORIGIN AND OFFICE. § 1. SENSATIONS are states of mind which result immediately from peculiar conditions of the body. Weariness, fatigue, heat and cold, and sensations of touch and sight, are of this description. Sensations occur by means of bodily organs, and are distributed into several different classes, as follows: 1. Sensations which are the basis of the appetites; 2. Weariness and fatigue; 3. Heat and cold; 4. Pain; 5. Touch; 6. Sight; 7. Hearing; 8. Taste; 9. Smell. Sensations all agree in being effects produced directly on the mind by peculiar states of the body; and the states of the body on which they depend, are themselves effects of other causes, many of which are external to the body. Sensations are so many modes of action by which material objects affect the mind, and so many mediums of communication between mind and matter. Matter is discerned only through the medium of sensations; and its primary properties considered with respect to minds, are its powers of affecting them with sensations. Considered with respect to their principal use, sensations may be divided into two classes 1. Those which are subservient to the preservation of life and health; and 2. Those which are subservient to the acquisition of a knowledge of external objects. The sensations subservient to the preservation of life and health, are hunger and thirst, weariness and fatigue, and heat and cold. Those which are subservient to the acquisition of a knowledge of external objects, are touch, sight, hearing, taste, and smell. 2. To the question; What are sensations? The answer is, sensations are peculiar states of mind, dependent on peculiar conditions of the body. These states differ from each other in several respects, and can be known only by experience. Some of them are pleasurable, some painful, and some indifferent. Colors are experienced by the eye, sounds by the ear, and resistances by touch. But what are the colors, sounds, and resistances, which are thus experienced ? Are they things out of the mind or in it? Have they any existence where there are no minds to appreciate them? Or are they effects produced on the mind, and which have no existence any farther than they are experienced? The latter is undoubtedly the fact. Color is in the mind, sound is in the mind, touch, and other sensations are in the mind. They are produced there however, by external objects, and are constantly referred to those objects as their causes, in all rational estimates of them. A colored object is an object which produces the sensation of color, a resisting object, one which produces sensations of resistance, and a sounding body is a body which produces sensations of sound. § 3. Words are applied to denote sensations in a perfectly arbitrary manner, and derive their whole significancy from the general agreement of mankind. They express simply the ideas of men in respect to sensations, just as other words express their ideas in respect to the motions, sizes, and forms of bodies. Those sensations, however, which are designed to make us acquainted with external objects, are seldom objects of thought, except to philosophers. The mind experiences the sensation of color, and directs its attention not to the sensation, but to the colored object, and employs its reasoning almost exclusively on that; it experiences the sensation of sound, and thinks usually of the sounding body, associating the sensation intimately with it; or in the case of music and vocal language, it is not the sounding body which is the principal object of thought, but the ideas and sentiments, of which sounds are the constituted symbols. § 4. Sensations are ultimate facts in human experience, and the first objects of knowledge. One sensation may be distinguished from another, and one class of sensations from |