The meanest wretch is impressed with a
sense of his own comparative merit. He is one of those on whom the
tower of Siloam fell not--he is such a one as Jesus Christ found
not in all Samaria, who, in his own soul, throws the first stone at
the woman taken in adultery. The popular religion of the country
takes its designation from that illustrious person whose beautiful
sentiment I have quoted. Any one who has stript from the doctrines
of this person the veil of familiarity, will perceive how adverse
their spirit is to feelings of this nature.
SPECULATIONS ON METAPHYSICS
I--THE MIND
It is an axiom in mental philosophy, that we can think of nothing
which we have not perceived. When I say that we can think of nothing,
I mean, we can imagine nothing, we can reason of nothing, we can
remember nothing, we can foresee nothing. The most astonishing
combinations of poetry, the subtlest deductions of logic and
mathematics, are no other than combinations which the intellect
makes of sensations according to its own laws. A catalogue of all
the thoughts of the mind, and of all their possible modifications,
is a cyclopedic history of the universe.
But, it will be objected, the inhabitants of the various planets of
this and other solar systems; and the existence of a Power bearing
the same relation to all that we perceive and are, as what we
call a cause does to what we call effect, were never subjects of
sensation, and yet the laws of mind almost universally suggest,
according to the various disposition of each, a conjecture,
a persuasion, or a conviction of their existence.
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