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With beasts of prey, or for his acorn meal,
Fought the fierce tusky boar;-a shivering wretch
Aghast, and comfortless, when the bleak North,
With winter charged, let the mix'd tempest fly,
Hail, rain, and snow, and bitter-breathing frost ;—
Then to the shelter of the hut he fled,
And the wild season, sordid, pined away.
For home he had not.-Home is the resort
Of love, of joy, of peace and plenty, where,
Supporting and supported, polish'd friends
And dear relations mingle into bliss.
But this the rugged savage never felt,
Ev'n desolate in crowds;-and thus his days
Roll, heavy, dark, and unenjoy'd along.
A waste of time!-till Industry approach'd,
And roused him from his miserable sloth;
His faculties unfolded! pointed out,
Where lavish Nature the directing hand
Of art demanded; shew'd him how to raise
His feeble force by the mechanic powers,
To dig the mineral from the vaulted earth;
On what to turn the piercing rage of fire,
On what the torrent and the gather'd blast;
Gave the tall ancient forest to his axe;
Taught him to chip the wood, and hew the stone,
Till by degrees the finish'd fabric rose;

Tore from his limbs the blood-polluted fur,

And wrapt him in the woolly vestment warm ;-
Nor stopp'd at barren bare necessity,

But still advancing bolder, led him on

To pomp, to pleasure, elegance and grace;
And, breathing bigh ambition through his soul,
Set science, wisdom, glory, in his view,
And bade him be the lord of all below."*

Such is the value of that susceptibility of our mind, by which we feel the relations of objects to each other as successive, when considered in reference to what is commonly termed science. It has made us what we are,-and when we think of what we now are, and of what the race of mankind once was, to speculate on the future condition of man, in those distant ages, which still await him on this scene of earth,when new relations shall have been evolved in objects the most familiar to us, and new arts consequently developed, which, with our present knowledge, no genius can anticipate, is almost as if we were speculating on the possible functions and enjoyments of some higher being.

"How near he presses on the angel's wing!

Which is the seraph? which the child of clay?"

• Thomson's Seasons-Autumn, v. 45-49, 57-85, and 90-95.

235

LECTURE LI.

ON THE FEELINGS BELONGING TO THE ORDER OF SUCCESSION, CONCLUDED.-REDUCTION OF CERTAIN SUPPOSED FACULTIES TO RELATIVE SUGGESTION-I. JUDGMENT—II. REASON-IŲ. ABSTRACTION.

GENTLEMEN, in my last Lecture, I began the remarks which I had to offer on the relations of succession,-that order of relations which remained to be examined after our examination of relations of coexistence.

Objects, or events, or feelings, when we consider them in the relation which they bear to each other as successive, may be regarded as casually prior or posterior, when they occur as parts of different trains, or as invariably antecedent and consequent, when they occur as parts of a single train in the order of causes and effects.

On the relation of objects, as casually successive, I felt it unnecessary to dwell at any length. It has already, indeed, been in some measure discussed, when I treated of the laws of those simple suggestions, or associate trains of images, which rise according to this relation of proximity in time. As there is nothing permanent in the relation, it scarcely can be counted an object of science. Its only advantage,-but this is a very great advantage,-is, that which it affords as an assistance to our memory, which is thus enabled to preserve much knowledge that might otherwise be lost; since we are able, by the accidental bearings of other events in time, to form a sort of chronology of many of those little events of life, that are great in relation to our wishes and affections, and. that probably would have been forgotten, but for those fixed points, in the track of our life, which recall to us what lay between. By the aid of these, we are able to journey again over hours, and days, and months of happiness, in years the most remote, connecting together, in one delightful series, events which would have been of little moment if remembered singly, but which, when combined, are almost representative of the

group of pleasures and friendships that existed once, but may perhaps exist to us no more; as in the similar order of contiguity in place, it would be productive but of slight gratification, if we were to think only of some separate tree, or rock, or stream, or meadow of the landscape of our infancy. It is when the whole scene rises before us in combination,--when the tree, under which we hollowed out our seat, waves over the rock, from which we have leapt with a sort of fearful delight to the opposite overhanging cliff, and the rivulet foams in the narrow channel between, spreading out, afterwards, its waters in the sunny expanse in which we bathed, and separating the field of our sports from the churchyard, at which we have cast, in the twilight, many a trembling glance; when all which nature blended before us, in the perceptions of our earliest years, thus coexists in our conception, it is then that we truly recognize the scene, not as an object of memory only, but as if present to our very eyes and heart. Such is the effect of the representation of objects in the order in which they coexisted in place; and it is not wonderful, that the feeling of the relation of their order in time, should have a similar influence on our emotions, by giving unity of connexion; and thus as it were, additional and more interesting reality to all which we remember. The priority and subsequence of the events remembered, according to this slight accidental relation, may have arisen, indeed, from circumstances the most unimportant in themselves; but it is enough to our feelings, that they arose thus successively, constituting a part of the very history of our life, and forming some of the many ties which connect us with those of whom the very remembrance is happiness. What was truly casual in its origin, almost ceases to appear to us casual, by the permanent connexions which it afterwards presents to our memory. Other successions of events may be imagined, which would have been more interesting to others, and in which it would have been easier to trace some principle of original connexion. But, though more regular, and more interesting to others, they would not have been the events of our youth; as a scene might perhaps readily be imagined, far more lovely to other eyes than the landscape of our early home, but in which our eyes, even in admiring its loveliness, would look in vain for a charm, which, if it be not beauty itself, is at least something still more tenderly delightful. The relation even of casual succession, then, by the connexion and grouping of events to which it gives rise, and the consequent aid and interest which it yields to our remembrance, affords no slight accession of enjoyment and permanent utility. The relations of invariable antecedents and consequents, how

ever, which are felt by us to be essentially different, from mere proximity, and to be all that is truly involved in our notion, of power or causation, are of much greater importance to that intellectual, and moral, and physical life, which may almost be said to depend on them. Even if they gave us nothing more than our knowledge of the uniform connexions of past events, as objects of mere speculative science, at once constituting and explaining the phenomena that excited our astonishment, and awoke that early curiosity which they have continued to busy ever since, they would furnish, by the view which they open of the powers of nature, and of all the gracious purposes to which those powers have been subservient, one of the sublimest delights of which our spiritual being is capable.

This gratification they would yield to us, even if we were to regard them only in the past, as objects of a science purely speculative. But, when we consider the relations of events, in their aptitudes to precede and follow, as equally diffused, over the time that is to come, as presenting to us, every where, in the past or present sequences observed by us, the source of some future good or future evil,-of good which we can obtain, and of evil which we can avoid, merely by knowing the order in which these past sequences have occurred,—the knowledge of these invariable relations of succession becomes to us inestimable, not as a medium only of intellectual luxury, but as the medium of all the arts of life, and even of the continuance of our very physical existence, which is preserved only by an unceasing adaptation of our actions to the fitnesses or tendencies of external things.

All practical science is the knowledge of these aptitudes of things in their various circumstances of combination, as every art is the employment of them, in conformity with this knowledge, with a view to those future changes which they tend to produce in all the different circumstances in which objects can be placed. To know how to add any enjoyment to life, or how to lessen any of its evils, is nothing more, in any case, than to know the relation which objects bear to each other, as antecedent and consequent, some form of that particular relation which we are considering. In the conclusion of my last Lecture, I treated of it, in regard to the physical sciences, and arts, those intellectual energies, which have given to the savage man, and consequently to all mankind,-since, in every state of society, refined or rude, in the palace, as much as in the hut, or in the cave, man must be born a savage,-another life, a life almost as different from that with which he roams in the woods, as if he had been suddenly transported, from the barren waste of earth, to those Elysian groves of which poetry

speaks, and that godlike company of bards, and heroes, and sages, with which they have peopled the delightful scene.

Of the importance of the feeling of this relation to the physical sciences, which is abundantly evident of itself, it would be vain to attempt to give any fuller illustration. But it must be remembered, that the mind is a subject of this relation, as much as the body,-that there are aptitudes of producing certain feelings, as much as of producing certain material changes, -and that the power which discerns or feels the mere aptitude, in the one case, is not essentially distinct from the power which discerns or feels, the mere aptitude, in the other case. The particular relations that are felt, are, indeed, different, as the relative objects are different, but not that general suscepti bility of the mind, by which it is capable of feeling the relation of fitness or unfitness. To foreknow, in mechanics, what combination of wheels and pullies will be able to elevate a certain weight, is to feel one sort of fitness or relation of antecedence. To foreknow, in chemistry, what more powerful attraction will overcome an affinity that is weaker, and precipitate a substance, which we wish to obtain, from the liquid that holds it in solution, is to feel another sort of fitness. The particular feelings of relation, in these cases, imply acquirements that are very different; but no one, on account of this mere difference of the objects of which the relation of antecedence and consequence is felt, thinks of classing the chemical foresight as indicative of an intellectual power essentially different from that, which, in the applications of mechanic foresight, feels the relation of the weights and pullies in a machine, and foresees, by a knowledge of this relation, the equilibrium or preponderance which is to result. The experience which gives the foresight, is, indeed, different, but the power which reasons from that different experience is the same. The susceptibility of the same feeling of the relation of the productive aptitude, however, has, in certain mental cases, been supposed to be different, merely because its objects are different; and discriminations of mere fitness or unfitness, which are truly referable to the same simple capacity of relative suggestion, that foresees the future by knowing the present, have been formed into a class apart, as if not the discriminations only were different, but the power itself which has formed

them.

When we feel any of the mechanical or chemical relations of succession, and predict, accordingly, events which are to take place, we are commonly said to do this by the power of reasoning. Even in many of the mental phenomena, when we venture, in like manner, to predict the future, from our

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