supreme

were deprived of their highest, their appropriate objects. His veneration and wonder might still lead him to contemplate the perfections of God through the medium of his works, but they no longer enjoyed the perfect gratification resulting from his immediate presence. He no longer acted under a constant sense of that presence, and consequently God was now "not in all his thoughts." But more than this, he no longer looked up to God with unmingled, undisturbed feelings of veneration, love, and hope. Fear mingled in his thoughts of Him whom he had offended, and what we fear, we soon learn to hate, or at least endeavour to banish from our minds. Hence, to do His will-to obtain His approbation-was no longer his wish his earnest and constant endeavour. In the same way, his feelings towards his fellow-creatures were likewise disturbed and perverted. These were no longer feelings of perfect love. It is natural to suppose, that as both the man and the woman had participated in the guilt of the Fall, they would soon be led to mutual recrimination. This would naturally lead to angry and unpleasant thoughts of each other, and occasionally to mutual offences. In every view, therefore, both of duty to God and duty to man, the human faculties, by the change which had taken place, were turned away from their proper objects, and their proper modes of exercise. From the moment of his first departure from God, man had no longer the same clear knowledge of His will, nor the same constraining motives to obey it. His faculties, deprived of those objects, for the contemplation and enjoyment of which they were primarily intended, attached themselves to those which were improper, and acting with irregular and misdirected energy, necessarily

Something of this kind appears in the excuse offered by Adam for his disobedience, Gen. iii. 12.

any thing else, to increase our own happiness. According to this view, a thoroughly enlightened self-esteem, leading to the desire of our own greatest good, and a thoroughly enlightened benevolence, leading to a desire for the highest welfare of our fellow-men, should direct us precisely to the same course of conduct,—that course which we have reason to believe, and which indeed we know, to be most conformable to the will of God. If the foregoing view be correct, the whole powers of the mind, the selfish, the social and benevolent, and the religious, if all were sufficiently enlightened and properly directed, would be entirely in harmony with each other, and produce one harmonious result. This, could it be attained, would be the perfection of human nature: this, and nothing short of this, would be perfect morality.

The view here taken of the human faculties, which represents them rising one above another by an almost imperceptible gradation, and all in harmony with each other, affords a more pleasing, and, at the same time, I am satisfied, a truer picture of our nature in its most perfect state, than that which would divide them into two classes, separated by a wide and strongly marked interval. Thus, and thus only, does the constitution of man appear in a light worthy of its original perfection, and worthy of its high ultimate destiny-not like a piece of new cloth put into an old garment, where the parts are not fitly joined, but like the "robe which was without a seam, woven from the top throughout." It is all of a piece, every part corresponding to another, with nothing superfluous, and nothing awanting. Man is not like a satyr, the face and upper extremities only human, but the lower parts those of a brute. He is all human, bearing in every part the impress of the same divine original.

Do we then say that all the faculties are equal? We

off their proper poise and balance. But this is not all. The faculties are not only ill balanced, they are all individually imperfect. None of them act spontaneously as they ought, nor perform their functions at once with ease and satisfaction. Some are dormant and

sluggish, some are over-active. Some require to be stimulated, some to be restrained. The phrenological doctrine of their alternate activity, of their becoming active seriatim, and requiring alternate periods of exertion and rest, is of itself a proof of degeneracy, and a necessary cause of irregular manifestation. In order to perfection, they ought to be constantly in a state ready for use; never exerted when not required, and never wanting in power when the occasion for action occurs. Is this the case with the human faculties now, in any individual, or is there any probability that it ever will be so?

The necessity which is universally acknowledged, of the cultivation of the mental powers by means of education and moral training, and the utter sterility of mind which appears when this education is neglected, is a proof of degeneracy. The same appears in the necessity of applying, to a great part of our race, the active restraints of law; the impossibility of preventing crimes by all the modes of inculcating moral and religious duty, or even, when these fail, by all the terrors of punishment; the necessity of a constantly renewed appeal to the higher sentiments, through the institutions of religion, by exhortation, by preaching, by an application of all the moral motives that can operate upon the feelings of men. And, perhaps, even the strongest proof of all is the astounding fact, that even the revelation of a Saviour, and a free offer of pardon to sinners, has yet only partially succeeded in reclaiming the race, and that a large, by far the larger portion still obstinately reject and loathe

pleasures of which we do not see the evil consequences. But if intellect once clearly points out that our greatest and permanent good is only to be attained by a life of temperance and sobriety, truth and honesty, a regard for the welfare of others, and a humble reliance on the goodness of God,—self-esteem will, when so enlightened, become a powerful aid to virtue, and furnish the strongest motive to strict moral conduct.

Philoprogenitiveness is one of the lower propensities, and is possessed by many animals. Its objects are limited. It does not certainly aim at the happiness of all mankind, though, in its effects, it has immense influence on the welfare of the whole race. It only leads men to the love of their own offspring, and of young and tender beings in general. It attaches us to them by the strongest ties, and impels us to attend to their wants, and minister, as far as in our power, to their happiness. When unenlightened, it may lead to absurd indulgence and improper treatment of children, just as unenlightened benevolence may lead men to acts which are hurtful instead of being beneficial to society, or, as Mr Combe himself states, "to injurious indulgence of the appetites and fancies of others." But allow here the same advantage as is insisted on in the case of the higher sentiments. Let the feeling be properly enlightened by the intellect with a view of what conduces to the permanent good of its object, and it will undoubtedly lead us to seek that permanent good, and to refuse hurtful indulgences, and thus its tendency will be as strictly moral as that of the weaker, but more diffusive, desire to benefit the whole race.

Benevolence is a feeling said to be common to man and the inferior animals. Being in them unenlightened by intellect, it is confined to a passive meekness of disposition. In man it is more active; but it is the light

afforded by intellect which renders it so different a feeling in him, and gives it so much a larger scope and field of action. Other sentiments, common to man and the animals, which in them are confined and selfish in their objects, are in man extended in a similar manner. For instance, cautiousness. This is a most important, and, when enlightened by intellect, is undoubtedly a moral power, restraining us from action until we are assured that we can act with safety. Observe how it leads the physician to probe every system of disease, to examine every slight indication, to put every question which may elicit the truth, to doubt, to weigh probabilities, to leave nothing unexamined which may enable him to effect a cure, or to avoid the risks that may attend a rash and precipitate decision. In like manner, when the judge is engaged in trying a difficult or doubtful point, on his caution, as much as on his sense of justice, depends the probable soundness of his judgment, and the safety of the rights submitted to his determination. So it is with the general, on whose care and caution depend the safety, the welfare, the lives of his whole army - it may be the rights, the independence, the liberties of his country. To all who are in any way placed in situations of trust, cautiousness is not useful merely, it is indispensable.

There are not merely some, but many nay, a very large proportion of mankind-who, in certain circum-stances, are not to be restrained from crime by any other means than the fear of punishment. This is the case in general with the ignorant and uneducated part of mankind, and, indeed, almost with the whole of our race before the intellect has sufficiently expanded, or has been sufficiently enlightened by education. When the fear of punishment operates so as to prevent offences, who shall deny it to be moral feeling? It may be, and