Of justice on her throne, nor aught that wakes To twine around his heart?—Or who shall hush Than basest life can bring?-Though Love, with prayers Beseech his aid,-though Gratitude and Faith Of danger thwart his path, he will not stay In the remarks which have now been made, on the influence of peculiar directions of the suggesting principle on the moral and intellectual character, we have seen it, in many instances, producing an effect decidedly injurious. But that power, which in some cases combines false and discordant ideas, so as to pervert the judgment and corrupt the heart, is not less ready to form associations of a nobler kind; and it is consolatory to think, that as error is transient, and truth everlasting, a provision is made in this principle of our nature, for that progress in wisdom and virtue which is the splendid destiny of our race. There is an education of man continually going forward in the whole system of things around him; and what is commonly termed education, is nothing more than the art of skillfully guiding this natural progress, so as to form the intellectual and moral combinations in which wisdom and virtue consist. The influence of this, indeed, may be seen to perish with the individual; but when the world is deprived of those who have shed on it a glory as they have journeyed along it in their path to Heaven, it does not lose all with which they have adorned and blessed it. Their wisdom,-as it spreads from age to age, may be continually awakening some genius that would have slumbered but for them, and thus indirectly opening discoveries, that, but for them, never would have been revealed to man; their virtue, by the moral influence which it has gradually propagated from breast to breast, may still continue to relieve misery, and confer happiness, when generations after generations shall, like themselves, have passed away. Then what hand Can snatch this dreamer from the fatal toils.-Orig. Pleasures of Imagination, B. III. v. 23—27—v. 31—41, and Second Form of the Poem, B. II. v. 432-444. 145 LECTURE XLV. ON THE PHENOMENA OF RELATIVE SUGGESTION.-ARRANGEMENT OF THEM UNDER THE THE TWO ORDERS OF COEXISTENCE AND SUCCESSION.-SPECIES OF FEELINGS BELONGING TO THE FIRST ORDER. In treating of our intellectual states of mind in general, as one great division of the class of its internal affections, which arise without the necessary presence of any external cause, from certain previous states or affections of the mind itself, I subdivided this very important tribe of our feelings into two orders-those of simple suggestion, and of relative suggestion -the one comprehending all our conceptions and other feelings of the past-the other all our feelings of relation. I have already discussed, as fully as our narrow limits will admit, the former of these orders-pointing out to you, at the same time, the inaccuracy or imperfection of the analyses which have led philosophers to rank, under distinct intellectual powers, phenomena that appear, on minuter analysis, not to differ in any respect from the common phenomena of simple suggestion. After this full discussion of one order of our intellectual states of mind, I now proceed to the consideration of the order which remains. Of the feelings which arise without any direct external cause, and which I have, therefore, denominated internal states or affections of the mind-there are many then, as we have seen, which arise simply in succession, in the floating imagery of our thought, without involving any notion of the relation of the preceding objects, or feelings, to each other. These, already considered by us, are what I have termed the phenomena of simple suggestion. But there is an extensive order of our feelings which involve this notion of relation, and which consist, indeed, in the mere perception of a relation of some sort. To these feelings of mere relation, as arising directly from the previous states of mind which suggest them, I have given the name of relative suggestions-meaning by this term very nearly what is meant by the term comparison, when the will VOL. II.-T intention which comparison seems necessarily to imply, but which is far from necessary to the suggestions of relations, i excloded, or what is meant at least in the more important oints the term judgment—if not used, as the term judgment often is, in vague popular language, to denote the understanding, or mental functions in general; and if not confined, aily is in books of logic, to the feeling of relation in a same proposition, but extended to all the feelings of relation, the series of propositions which constitute reasoning, since these are, in truth, only a series of feelings of the same class as that which is involved in every simple proposition. Whether the relation be of two, or of many external objects, or of two or many affections of the mind, the feeling of this relation, arising in consequence of certain preceding states of mind, is what I term a relative suggestion; that phrase being the simplest which it is possible to employ, for expressing, without any theory, the mere fact of the rise of certain feelings of relation, after certain other feelings which precede them; and therefore, as involving no particular theory, and simply expressive of an undoubted fact, being, I conceive, the fittest phrase; because the least liable to those erroneous conceptions, from which it is so difficult to escape, even in the technical phraseology of science. That the feelings of relation are states of the mind essentially different from our simple perceptions, or conceptions of the objects that seem to us related, or from the combinations which we form of these, in the complex groupings of our fancy; in short, that they are not what Condillac terms transformed sensations, I proved, in a former Lecture, when I combated the excessive simplification of that ingenious, but not very accurate philosopher. There is an original tendency or susceptibility of the mind, by which, on perceiving together different objects, we are instantly, without the intervention of any other mental process, sensible of their relation in certain respects, as truly as there is an original tendency or susceptibility of the mind, by which, when external objects are present and have produced a certain affection of our sensorial organ, we are instantly affected with the primary elementary feelings of perception; and, I may add, that, as our sensations or perceptions are of various species, so are there various species of relations ;-the number of relations, indeed, even of external things, being almost infinite, while the number of perceptions is, necessarily, limited by that of the objects which have the power of producing some affection of our organs of sensation. The more numerous these relations may be, however, the ore necessary does some arrangement of them become. Let us now proceed, then, to the consideration of some order, according to which their varieties may be arranged. In my Lectures on the objects of physical inquiry, in the early part of the Course, I illustrated very fully the division which I made of these objects, as relating to space or time; or, in other words, as coexisting or successive: our inquiry, in the one case, having regard to the elementary composition of external things; in the other case, to their sequences, as causes and effects; and in mind, in like manner, having regard in the one case, to the analysis of our complex feelings; in the other, to the mere order of succession of our feelings of every kind, considered as mental phenomena. The same great line of distinction appears to me to be the most precise which can be employed in classing our relations. They are the relations either of external objects, or of the feelings of our mind, considered without reference to time, as coexisting; or considered with reference to time, as successive. To take an example of each kind, I feel that the one half of four is to twelve, as twelve to seventy-two; and I feel this, merely by considering the numbers together, without any regard to time. No notion of change or succession is involved in it. The relation was, and is, and will forever be the same, as often as the numbers may be distinctly conceived and compared. I think of summer, I consider the warmth of its sky, and the profusion of flowers that seem crowding to the surface of the earth, as if hastening to meet and enjoy the temporary sunshine. I think of the cold of winter, and of our flowerless fields and frozen rivulets; and the warmth and the cold of the different seasons, I regard as the causes of the different appearances. In this case, as in the former, I feel a relation ; but it is a relation of antecedence and consequence, to which the notion of time, or change, or succession, is so essential, that without it the relation could not be felt. It is not wonderful, indeed, that the classes of relations should be found to correspond with the objects of physical inquiry; since the results of all physical inquiry must consist in the knowledge of these relations. To see many objects,or I may say even-to see all the objects in nature, and all the elements of every object-and to remember these distinctly as individuals, without regard to their mutual relations, either in space or time-would not be to have science. To have what can be called science is to know these objects, as coexisting in space, or as successive in time,-as involving certain proportions, or proximities, or resemblances, or certain aptitudes to precede or follow. Without that susceptibility of the mind, by which it has the feeling of relation, our consciousness would be as truly limited to a single point, as our body would become, were it possible to fetter it to a single atom. The feeling of the present moment would be every thing; and all beside, from the infinitely great to the infinitely little, would be as nothing. We could not know the existence of our Creator; for it is by reasoning from effects to causes, that is to say, by the feeling of the relation of antecedence and cousequence, that we discover his existence, as the great cause or antecedent of all the wonders of the universe. We could not know the existence of the universe itself; for it is, as I have shown, by the consideration of certain successions of our feelings only, that we believe things to be external, and independent of our mind. We could not, even in memory, know the existence of our own mind, as the subject of our various feelings; for this very knowledge implies the relation of these transient feelings to one permanent subject. We might still have had a variety of momentary feelings, indeed, but this would have been all; -and, though we should have differed from them in our capacity of pleasure and pain, we should scarcely have been raised, in intellectual and moral dignity, above the organized beings around us, of a different class, that rise from the earth in spring, to flourish in summer, and wither at the close of autumn--and whose life is a brief chronicle of the still briefer seasons in which they rise, and flourish, and fade. The relations of phenomena may, as I have already said, be reduced to two orders ;-those of coexistence and succession; -the former of which order is to be considered by us in the first place. The relations of this order, are either of objects believed by us to coexist without, or of feelings that are considered by us as if coexisting in one simple state of mind. Of the nature of this latter species of virtual, but not absolute coexistence, I have already spoken too often to require again to caution you against a mistake, into which, I must confess, that the terms, which the poverty of our language obliges us to use, might, of themselves very naturally lead you;-the mistake of supposing, that the most complex states of mind are not truly, in their very essence, as much one and indivisible, as those which we term simple-the complexity and seeming coexistence which they involve, being relative to our feeling only, not to their own absolute nature. I trust I need not repeat to you that, in itself, every notion, however seem. ingly complex, is, and must be, truly simple-being one state or affection, of one simple substance, mind. Our conception |