repeating more frequently and entering more closely into converse with the objects which awaken them, just as the more intensely we gaze on some fascinating landscape, not only the deeper is our own felt ecstasy, but the more distinct as well as more enduring must be our recollection of it. In a word, if we would create the materials of self-examination, or facilitate its work by casting a greater light over that mental tablet which we want to decipher-it is not by isolating the mind and putting it into a state of inertness, but by bringing it into contact with the objects of its various susceptibilities, for the development and discovery of the affections which really belong to it. Or, to express it otherwise, the mind that is most busied among externals, presents us with the richest variety of internal feelings and internal processes. We must not be misapprehended as if we meant only the externals of the material world, or even of the world of living society. The great objects of the Christian faith are all. external to the mind that is exercised by them; and the man whose attention is most given to these through the day, who thinks most constantly of God, and sends up the most frequent aspirations to that Saviour who died for him-let us only suppose his views to be enlightened, and that he is engaged through the hours of his waking existence, not with the illusions of his own fancy, but with the realities of our actual revelationthen, precisely because most employed in objective contemplation, will it be found of him, that his diurnal retrospect or subjective examination of

himself is both the richest of all and the easiest of all; and if it be the habit of his well ordered life, that, ere he sinks into his nightly repose, he looks back on the history of his own spirit-then, in very proportion to his past converse with the objects of sacredness, will be his present consciousness or present recollection of the feelings of sacredness.

CHAPTER III.

On the Emotions.

1. THERE are many objects of human thought, of which we have a thorough apprehension on the moment of their being named-but which it is impossible to express by any verbal definition. This eminently applies to a very great number of our feelings, which really cannot be defined; but which may be adequately enough described to the understanding of others, by a statement of the circumstances in which they arise. How for example, could we define a sensation familiar enough to all-that of thirst? Nor is it necessary; for we are already anticipated in our attempts by an understanding of it on the part of all, far more perfect than any which mere words can convey. Nor could we, though we would, furnish any well constructed definition of it-however practicable it may be to convey its full meaning to the mind of another, by simply stating what that is which brings on this peculiar and uneasy sensation, and

what that is which relieves it. It is thus, in fact, that we should proceed in our attempts to explain the term to a foreigner. We might point to its seat in our frame. We might make intelligible to him how it is that which is caused by the privation of water, and that which is allayed either by this or by some other beverage. He would very soon catch the meaning that we laboured to impress upon him— after which there would be a most entire community of understanding between us, at least upon this subject. He would no more confound it with hunger or any other of our sensations, than he would confound a square with a circleand the distinctive character of this one sensation would be as fully imprest upon him, as if it could have been enunciated in language as precise as that of geometry.

2. We cannot define what is meant by sound, but by the help of some other equivalent term as noise-nor could we define a noise, but by the help of the term sound. It is thus that when we arrive at the ne plus ultra of definitions, and still unwilling to quit the forms of science, we may think that we are making progress, when, in fact, we are only bandied from one place to another; and, after a thousand reciprocations of this sort, find that we are but playing upon a margin beyond which we can make no progress whatever. It is certainly possible to keep up a ridiculous gravity of explanation, long after it has ceased to be useful. We all know for example what is meant by, corporeally speaking, the sensation of taste

And

yet that need not prevent us from telling in academic phrase, that it is a peculiar sensation imprest on the tongue and palate, on their coming into contact with any material substance. This is not telling what the sensation is-it is only telling what we know already, that, in order to ascertain the taste of any given thing, the mouth is the place to which we must carry it. after we have done this, how soon do the resources of language fail, even in attempting to name, and far more to define the innumerable varieties of sensation which are experienced there. Sweetness, bitterness, sourness, saltness, are but the genera of so many tastes, early comprehending a vast subordinate family; and altogether of as many individuals as there are distinct substances in nature. Now we cannot define sweetness, though we all understand it; and if we are to attempt a conveyance by language at all upon the subject, there is nothing more which we can do than simply state the circumstances in which this and other tastes do arise. We may point to the sugar which impresses the peculiar quality of sweetness upon the organ of taste, or to the vinegar which impresses sourness, or to the alkali which is bitter-and so trust, for a common understanding, to an experience and recollection on the part of others, which we believe to have been similar to our own, because of the faith that we place in the identity of our common nature.

3. Now these remarks apply to other impressions, as well as to the impressions that are made upon the senses.

We may describe them so as to make

others understand what they be which we mean; but we can give no definition of them to any purpose for which definition is at all useful. Our object, at present, is to set forth a few generalities of observation on a class of mental phenomena, which have been called emotions and which occupy a kind of middle department in our nature, between the merely sensitive and the purely intellectual. They differ from each of these, and by certain characteristics which admit of being enumerated. They differ from thirst and hunger and corporeal pain, in that they do not take their rise from the body. They differ from the external affections too, in that they are not generally the immediate and direct consequence of the presence of external objects as the glare of light by which the eyes are affected in presence of a candle, or the noise wherewith the ears are astounded on the report of fire-arms. We should not apply the term emotion to any physical taste of the sweet or the bitter, or to any sense of fragrance however delicious, or to any perception of melody, unless in so far as it was the vehicle of some remembrance or sentiment that was fitted to call forth the emotions. And neither should we apply the term to any intellectual state of the mind. We are quite aware of the difference between the two states of mind, in one of which it is that we remember, and in another of which it is that we love between the state in which we judge of truth, and the state in which we desire that which is agreeable, or hate and fear that which is revolting-between that state of mind in which we are