tangible objects, that we seldom think of the sensations; and in our ordinary trains of thought, we seldom think of our thoughts, or have any distinct consciousness of them. They are present to our minds. If our attention is called to them, we think of them; otherwise they are suffered in multitudes of cases to pass without the least notice.

The idea that thoughts must be objects of actual consciousness, because they are in the mind, is without foundation in reason, and is contrary to facts in human experience. The representation of consciousness, therefore, as a necessary effect of sensations and ideas, is erroneous. Actual consciousness is not necessary in all the cases in which it is possible, any more than actual perceptions or any other class of actual judgments are always necessary, when they are possible. Consciousness is, to some extent, voluntary and not necessary. Some degree of the exercise of this power is universal, but the highest and most perfect exercises of it are restricted to few.

§ 73. We are conscious of mental exercises, not of the mind itself. Consciousness gives us no more knowledge of the mind, than sensations do of matter; and a knowledge of ourselves is not the immediate effect of consciousness, but of judgment. What is called by some self-consciousness, is self-judgment. We are conscious of pain, pleasure, and other sensations, also of ideas, affections, and acts of will. This consciousness is an intuitive knowledge of those mental exercises, and of nothing more. Having sensations, ideas, affections, and other mental exercises, we naturally begin to compare them with one another, and to reason from them. The effects of this reasoning are ideas both of ourselves, and of external objects. Ideas of ourselves are not given in acts of consciousness, as some suppose, but are inferred from them. In this respect they are analogous to ideas of external objects, which are inferred from sensations, but are not given in them. From sensations we commence our reasonsngs respecting material objects; from consciousness of sensations. and of other mental exercises, we commence our reasonings respecting spiritual objects. The whole theory of the natural world is built on sensations; and the whole theory of the spiritual world, on consciousness.

$74. The mind's natural capacity for the exercise of consciousness, is similar to that for the exercise of judgment in the perception of material objects, but it is not usually de

veloped to the same extent. The whole experience of childhood and youth, and nearly all the pursuits of life, require the constant and vigorous exercise of judgment in determining from sensations the nature of material objects. Hence, powers of external perception are universally developed to a very high degree. Material things are continual objects of attention, and the power of observing and studying them with effect, obtains a proportionable development. But with the power of consciousness, the case is far different. Just in proportion as the attention is directed to objects without, and to mental phenomena considered only as symbols of such objects, it is withdrawn from objects within, and from mental exercises considered in any other relations, than those which they sustain to the external world. Hence, in the case of the great mass of men, the Faculty of consciousness is far less fully developed, than that of external perception. § 75. This imperfect development of the Faculty of consciousness in the case of most men is one of the principal impediments to the progress of Mental and Moral Science. Men whose other intellectual powers are fully developed, are so little practiced in observing their own thoughts and feelings, as to be utterly incapable of analyzing them correctly and determining their elements. The power of consciousness is the common property of all, but in the case of most, it slumbers in perpetual quietude and infancy. This is an error of injurious consequence, and leads to a defect of character which it belongs to wise and good men to remedy. The general system of education ought to be modified so as to meet the emergency which is thus created, and bring forward future generations to possess a completeness and perfection of intellectual character not heretofore generally attained. This is entirely practicable. All that is requisite for its accomplishment is to have the sciences of mind and morals systematically studied and taught, and to have pupils early and faithfully drilled in the art of thinking of their own thoughts and feelings. The same kind of discipline is requisite for this purpose which is requisite to develop capacities of mathematical or general reasoning, and will produce corresponding results.

CHAPTER V.

PERCEPTIONS OF MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL OBJECTS.

The Faculty of perceiving material objects is common to men and animals, and is a department of the general Faculty of ideas. Perceptions of external objects are ideas of those objects dependent on sensations and relating to them as the causes of sensations. We experience sensations of touch, and form ideas of resisting objects as causes of these sensations; we experience sensations of color, and form ideas of colored objects as the causes of these sensations. So of all our perceptions. Our ideas of mind have a similar origin, except that they depend on ideas of consciousness instead of depending on sensations.

We think and feel, and form ideas of our minds as beings which are the subjects of thinking and feeling. Here the question arises, what is the ground of the idea that a sensation has an objective cause; or that a thought or feeling is the state of some being, and has a subjective cause? All that sense gives us is sensations; all that consciousness gives us, is ideas of sensations, of ideas, or of other mental exercises. How then do we gain ideas of external objects or of internal subjects as concurring in the production of sensations? How do we pass from a sensation to a sensible object? Or from an idea to a thinking and sentient being !

§ 77. The solution of this problem has occupied the attention and tried the skill of almost every class of Mental Philosophers, and was the great work undertaken by Kant. The Scotch Philosophers, with Reed at their head, met the question without resolving it, and endeavored to silence skepticism by an irresistible appeal to common sense. They did not attempt to show how we passed from sensations to the material world, or from consciousness to the spiritual world; but they proved that we made such passages somehow, and that these worlds were not figments of the imagination, or matters of uncertain conjecture, but valid realities. This, however, was making very little progress in mental science, and failed to satisfy the human mind. No one doubted that there was an external world; no one doubted that there were sentient and thinking beings, and that them

selves and their fellow-men were such beings. These things were objects of knowledge, and were recognized by all men as such, but the question was, how we knew them, and on what authority we receive them as true? Kant answered the question correctly and fully by demonstrating that we apprehend them by an exercise of Reason; that we do not find the external world in sensations, nor the spiritual world in consciousness; that we find in these objects simply phenomena, and nothing more, and consequently, that ideas of material and spiritual objects, are not obtained by analysis from sensations or consciousness; but that from sensations we infer sensible objects; and from consciousness, subjects of consciousness, by a simple exercise of reason. This exercise of Reason is conditioned on sensations and consciousness. Sensations are the condition of our perceptions of the material world, and consciousness is the condition of our perception of ourselves as the subjects of mental exercises. We experience sensations, and infer sensible objects; we experience consciousness, and infer a conscious subject. These inferences are our primitive ideas of things as objective and subjective causes of our sensations and consciousness. The effects are given us as objects of consciousness, and from them we infer the causes as objects of judgment. The faculty by which we do this is the faculty of Judgment or Reason, comprehending a large department of the generic faculty of ideas.

§ 78. The judgments by which we infer the existence of objective and subjective causes of sensation and consciousness, are not the effect of any abstract ideas, or any general conclusions respecting causes and effects, but are the spontaneous exercises of human and animal minds, forming from sensations and consciousness, ideas of sensible and sentient objects. The conceptions both of the material and spiritual world, are relative to our sensations and consciousness. They are suppositions or hypotheses formed by the mind to account for its sensations and consciousness, imperfect, and in part erroneous at first, but subject to continual correction and improvement, from continued experience and reasoning, till every erroneous element is discarded, and every element is added which is necessary to bring the objects of our ideas into a complete conformity with our sensations and consciousness. The mind's perception of material objects is through the medium of sensations, and its perception of itself

as a sentient being, is through the medium of consciousness The material world is its rational cause of sensations; itself is its rational cause of consciousness, and the distinction between itself and other objects, is made on the same grounds as other analogous dictinctions respecting identity and diversity.

§ 79. The capacity of perceiving material objects begins to be exercised as soon as we become the subjects of sensations, and continues to be exercised almost incessantly, during all the subsequent stages of life. Not only is it exercised continually, but it is almost continually in earnest, careful, attentive exercise. By this means it usually attains a very complete development. The extent, number, and accuracy of our daily perceptions of external objects are truly astonishing. We look out upon a landscape, and how many objects do we see! How many qualities and relations do we perceive! How accurately do we estimate distances, magnitudes, forms, and other qualities of bodies! How numerous too are the perceptions which we obtain by the other senses.

The clearness and perfection of our perceptions are not less wonderful than their number and variety. Some of our perceptions are vague and indeterminate. When we view a man at a great distance, he appears like a speck, we cannot determine whether he is a man or a thing. He draws nearer and appears larger, and more like a man, till at a certain distance, all the visible elements of the man appear, and we decide that he is a man with perfect certainty. The same is true of perception by the other senses. Vague and indeterminate sensations produce vague und indeterminate ideas. But the cases are reckoned by millions daily, in which both our sensations and consequent ideas, are of the most distinct and discriminating character. The extent of power belonging to the faculty of perception, and the diversity of objects which it is capable of apprehending, together with the clearness and accuracy of the judgments which it involves, are objects not to be thought of, except with wonder and admiration. The capacities of the animal mind in this respect, are of vast variety and extent; those of man, however, are more entirely within the field of our knowledge, and are of an order to correspond with his more extensive and varied powers of reasoning, and with his more exalted position in the scale of being.