of the most agreeable; but here the most agreeable precedes the judgment; it lies in the sensation itself, the first and highest information the mind can possess: no reasoning can make it otherwise than what it was before the reasoning began. It is the sole disturbing force that produces its immediate effect, without that apparatus of springs and wheels borrowed from the inventions of man.

But if according to these reasoners, the mind compare the sensations and form a judgment which the will obeys, in what then does the choice consist? Not in the sensations themselves which they admit to be necessary; nor in the judgment, for we cannot avoid perceiving the difference between bitter and sweet; nor in volition, for that is the slave of judgment, nor yet in action, for that obeys volition-it is then a chain of four links, sensation, judgment, volition, action, wherein all choice, by their own showing, is absolutely excluded.

Animals that feed on plants, are guided altogether by sensation, and writers never ascribe to them the more complex operation of judgment and volition. But men, say they, are rational beings, privileged to act from the convictions of reason, and yet these convictions arise from the constitution of their minds and do as necessarily exclude all choice as the sensations themselves. What is true of the relations of numbers, which, they admit, we cannot avoid perceiving, is equally true of opinion or belief, which is but a lower degree of conviction, yet none the less necessary on that account. Testimony acts upon the jury, and not the jury upon the testimony if it be as ten on one side and nine on the other, yet the difference is as unavoidably perceived, as objects are by the light of the moon, though not so distinctly as by the rays of the sun.

The Protestants are offended at the Romanists, who say they eat and drink the flesh and blood of Christ, while the Romanists deny salvation to all who do not eat and drink the same flesh and blood as themselves. The Presbyterian laughs at the bishop who holds his commission from St. Peter, while the bishop affirms there is not a legal marriage on earth, out of the pale of his church. The Baptists deny the communion to all who have not been plunged under water, while the Quakers take no communion at all. Then comes the Unitarian, who deplores the weakness of those who believe that one is equal to three, and three no more

than one. Can either of these sects change sides and pass at will, over to the creed of the other? And yet, every man will say, "I have a right to my own opinion; I will believe what I please," and even ministers of the gospel declare, as often as there are Sabbaths in the year, that their hearers can believe, if they choose, what they are told to believe. Had the heretics, burnt by Philip of Spain, possessed such power, they might have saved their lives by change of opinion at will, and returned to their former creed when the danger was past.

A learned mathematician once demonstrated that a steamer could never cross the Atlantic; yet he lived to cross the Atlantic himself in a steamer: can he return to his former opinion now? Can the chemist who detected a metal in alkali, still believe alkali to be a simple substance? A very absurd question, except to those who think that the mind can make opinions for itself.

When a musician strikes the keys of a piano, the keys act upon the cords, the cords upon the air, the air upon the ear; our judgment of the tune is as unavoidable as the perception of the sounds that compose it. The geologist argues the antiquity of the globe, from the accumulation of shells, and stratification of rocks: he infers the age of a man from his white hairs aud furrowed cheeks: his opinions are but so many impressions caused by the objects themselves. traveller, warned by the aspect of the clouds, takes his cloak, and the mariner trims his ship: both act from impressions as unavoidably felt, as the thunder that breaks upon their ears. A physician finds his patient shivering with chills, yet hot of a fever, restless, thirsty, with an acute pain in the side, tongue white, pulse frequent, hard and contracted-it is the pleurisy. His judgment of the disease is as plainly an aggregate of the symptoms, as an hundred is an aggregate of units. When judges say, "It appears to the court, that the title to the land is in the plaintiff," the law and the testimony act upon them, and not they, upon the law and the testimony. We hear debates in the senate and go away convinced; the speaker acts upon us and not we, upon the speaker. The mind is impressed with what enters there, as wax takes the image of a seal. There is no more mystery in mind than in matter. As a chemist follows out an experiment to its results, so can we trace the progress of the mind to conviction. He who has been by

turns, Deist, Christian, Baptist, Methodist, and lastly Catholic, can point out the books and arguments that wrought each successive change, as distinctly as he can relate the occurrence of a marriage feast, or the installation of a President-that he became Deist by the reasoning of Hume, Christian by Paley's Evidences, Baptist by the arguments of Hall, and lastly, Catholic by the powerful persuasions of Bossuet. If the mind could create opinions for itself, no principle in religion or philosophy could endure for a day. The astronomer might, at pleasure, believe in the system of Ptolemy, Newton, or of any body else that the sun revolved about the earth, or the earth about the sun; or that the earth, as the people of Celebes say, stands upon the back of a tortoise, the tortoise upon light and the light upon darkness. Truth, justice, law; all distinctions of right and wrong, friend and foe, debtor and creditor, husband and wife, parent and child, and even the certainty of numbers themselves, would be borne away by the overwhelming power of the will. Fortunately for mankind, they are not permitted to bring such calamities upon themselves; nothing is left to chance; not a sensation, opinion, creed, imagination-every thought, every emotion that impels and governs the soul, comes of laws appointed by him who gave us this mysterious being we hold. "The preparations of the heart in man and the answer of the tongue, are from the Lordman's goings are of the Lord, how can a man then understand his own way."-PROV. xvi., 1, 20-24.

Choice is that judgment that teaches us to act or abstain, to take or to refuse. My preference for going by land instead of water, is nothing but a judgment upon the two modes of travelling, as unavoidable as the ideas of danger that arise on one side, and of safety on the other. Cousin correctly observes, "that to prefer, is to judge definitively, to conclude""for it is not the will of man to judge that such or such a motive is preferable; we are not masters of our preferences we judge in this respect according to our intellectual nature, which has its necessary laws, without having the consciousness of being able to judge otherwise than we do"-"for it is evident, the different motives for or against, apply to and govern the intellect, which is not free to judge indifferently this or the opposite."

But according to these writers, a good judgment of the intellect cannot, of itself, stir a single muscle in the man:

tastes.

He cannot help himself to an egg at table, without motive, last determination, volition-motive, last determination, volition, give me a spoon; motive, last determination, volition, salt-motive, last determination, volition, pepper-motive, last determination, volition, vinegar-motive, last determi nation, volition, oil-motive, last determination, volition, stirs in the condiments-motive, last determination, volition, He is then asked whether he chooses tea or coffeemotive, last determination, volition, tea, if you please, ma dam. Do you take cream? motive, last determination, voli tion, yes, madam. Do you like it strong? motive, last determination, volition, very strong-motive, last determination, volition, extends his hand to receive the cupmotive last determination, volition, helps himself to breadmotive, last determination, volition, butter-motive, last determination, volition, raises the cup to his mouth, which opens by the same process-by the same process he masticates; and lastly, by motive, last determination, volition, swallows, when the mental operation ceases and all parties agree, the influence of the will is at an end.

Nevertheless they speak of certain actions that arise with. out the intervention of the will, as where the eyes are involuntarily closed when a blow is aimed at the face, yet absurdly say, the arm is voluntarily raised to ward it off. If the perception of danger act directly upon the eye, why not upon the arm also? It can as well move the arm itself, as move the will to move the arm. Nothing is gained by the fancied apparatus of motive, last determination, volition, unless the mind gather strength from its other faculties, as a river from tributary streams. Ideas do, of themselves, explain many actions, wherein it is not pretended the will can intervene. Even in our most quiet moods, they rise to the surface, and betray the workings of the inner man. We are by turns, gay, sad, soothed, inflamed, by the mere power of thought, our features brighten at good news, are overcast at bad. We blush with shame, grow pale from fear. The muscles of the face give way in laughter; eyes, mouth, nose, chin, cheeks, all partake of the perturbation, but instantly react at the sight of distress. The cares of parents for their children, the anxieties of politicians, the forebodings of evils that never happen; the complicated, harrassing scenes of civilized life; mortification, hope disappointed, pride humiliated, prey upon the health, and waste our

frames. The first convulsive movement in a camp-meeting, becomes the parent of the second; the idea exists, and the effect follows. W shudder at the sight of a man crushed under a wheel; are struck dumb, and sometimes motionless at sudden danger. A mother was thrown into agonies at the sight of her child struggling in the sea; the child was saved, but the mother died. A blacksmith at his anvil, was told he had drawn thirty thousand pounds in a lottery; the hammer fell from his hand, and he became a maniac for life. The starving inhabitants of Jamestown, wept aloud with joy, and ran about like madmen at the sight of a ship laden with provisions. Every emotion that arouses the soul and stirs to action, can be distinctly traced to its appropriate ideas, as a stream to its fountains. Joy is merely the effect of thought, wherein the will can take no part. A candidate hears of his election to office; the news gives him pleasure; this is joy. We are uneasy at the forebodings of evil to come; this is fear, and every one knows how bitterly he has suffered from the mere apprehension of misfortunes that never happened. A merchant falls into despair at the supposed loss of his ship, which afterwards arrives in safety. An officer under the Duke of Alva, was told to prepare for death the next morning: during the night, his hair became perfectly white. It turned out to be mere pleasantry in retaliation for a similar jest he had played off upon a brother officer. Grief is the pain felt at the idea of a good of which we have been deprived. The bereft mother weeps at the thought of her child; when the idea is not present, she ceases to weep. Hence sorrow is removed by change of place; not that the change can work a cure of itself; it lets in other thoughts that take possession of the mind: to forget sorrow and to have none are truly said to be the same thing. Her tears, say metaphysicians, are involuntary, but if she raise her handkerchief to wipe them away, this is motive, judgment, volition: a thought can distract her mind, shake her frame, produce convulsions and death, but cannot stir a finger on her hand.

A man starts suddenly away at the idea of his purse he had forgotten: the thought explains the action-this is the entire process, both mental and bodily. When we repeat the letters of the alphabet, each sound comes of a distinct idea that acts directly upon the organs of speech. When a musician reads the notes before him, each character has its