associated sound, and the varied and rapid movements of his fingers along the keys, are the immediate offspring of the ideas as they rise to the mind. The twenty six letters may be repeated in five seconds; it is a mockery to say that motive, last determination, volition, intervene between every articulate sound, or every movement of the fingers of the musician, often too quick to be distinguished by the eye.

Whether our reasoning be slow or rapid, the distance between judgment and action is always the same. He who remembers where he left his purse after a week's reflection, starts away as if the truth had that instant flashed upon his mind. A mechanic took a watch to pieces several times before he discovered the cog of a wheel slightly bent from its perpendicular: the remedy was instantly applied, as from a sudden thought, though days had been consumed in the discovery. Archimides, sought long and anxiously for the means of detecting the alloy in King Hiero's crown, and when the thought broke upon his mind, he did not wait for motive, last determination, volition, but leaped from his bath, and ran naked through the streets.

The court of which this writer was a member, held a cause under advisement more than a week, and when their opinion seemed fixed, an unexpected thought overthrew all their reasoning, and the same drop of ink intended to quiet the defendant in possession, now adjudged the land to the plaintiff. As in chemistry, a single grain of acid, will entirely change the nature of a fluid, so an idea, not before in the series, will give a new direction to the whole current of thought. To reason, is to perceive the relations of ideas as they present themselves to the mind: the series goes forward, varying its rapid and evanescent combinations, until at length, a single perception, like the last impression of a seal, obliterates the rest, takes possession of the understanding, the combinations cease, and the mind acquiesces in the discovery of truth. The most protracted deliberation, must at last, end in a thought, as the termination of the longest line is but a point; and by whatever name it may be called, judgment, last determination, opinion, belief, imagination, it is itself the spring of action, not by an intermediate faculty, but by its own, discreet, inherent energy. But this simple process is not mysterious enough for metaphysicians, who have sought out as many faculties in the mind, as there are wheels in a machine, and one of the most distinguished

among them has divided it into as many compartments, as there are circles in his native Germany.

The contingentists have no need of an understanding since their will is a self-moving power, a cause per se, that knows how to take care of itself. The necessarians on the other hand, have no need of the will, for, as it cannot help itself, it is in the way, and might be struck out of their system, and their system remain the same. Action would then follow judgment in a straight line, which is always the shortest distance between two points; whereas, it is a most clumsy contrivance for one faculty of the mind, to act through another faculty of the mind; for the judgment to call upon the will to execute its decrees-to slay an enemy, or walk a mile. Nature never employs two causes for one effect; on the contrary, she produces many and varied effects from a single cause. The tongue serves for speech. taste, ingestion and deglutition, and the hand for purposes almost without end. The movements of the planets, fall of bodies, motion of fluids, fluxes of the tides, come of gravitation alone. Heat warms the blood, cooks our food, melts brass, expands the air, raises clouds, reanimates plants, clothes them with leaves and the earth with verdure. Sir Isaac Newton has said, "More causes of natural things are not to be admitted than are sufficient to explain the phenomena, for nature is simple and does nothing in vain."

M. Cousin affirms, "That at the moment we take a resolution to do an action, we take it with a consciousness of being able to take a contrary resolution." This saying, ready in every bodies mouth, has too often proved fatal to the approaches of truth; and yet a more palpable contradiction does not exist for if a resolution be an act of the intellect, this, Mr. Cousin has truly shewn, could not be otherwise than what it is; or if it be an act of the will, which he affirms to be independent of the intellect, then there is no reason why M. Cousin, should not resolve first, and deliberate afterwards. But as we can not impute such an absurdity to that philosopher, we must make him say, that at the moment we judge it safer to go by land, at that moment we are to judge it safer to go by water. From this dilemma, there is no escape.

When a man puts a razor to his beard, he is conscious of being able to destroy life, if he were to resolve to do so, and if resolution be the offspring of will, independently of the

judgment, there would be an even chance that every man who shaves himself would cut his throat. Mr. Cousin is conscious, he could swallow aloes instead of grapes, if convinced they were good for his health: but if resolution be merely an act of the will, which he says can not judge, there is no reason why he should not feed on aloes, or any thing else, rather than grapes. A mother is conscious she could, if she chose, throw her child into the sea; but she can not choose, for Mr. Cousin, has shewn choice to be an act of the intellect, beyond the control of the will. When Scævola and Cranmer, thrust their hands into the fire, their resolutions were judgments of the understanding, which they explained at the time. A man has the physical power to do daily, an hundred things he omits-he night steal, destroy his father, set fire to the town, or visit the sick or bestow charities, and if asked why he does them not, he will reply, because he did not choose, and his explanation is just; for choice is a judgment of the mind which comes of a law he could not vary or resist. When therefore any one says, and almost every body does say, he is conscious he could have done the contrary of what he actually did, he simply means, he could have done that contrary, had his judgment been opposite-that he is conscious he could have gone to the South, instead of the North, had he thought a warm climate were better for his health.

There is yet another class of metaphysicians, who insist, that they can choose between two motives, the less instead of the greater; and yet it is not very clear that more than one motive can exist at a time. Between two pieces of gold of equal value, a man will tell you he does not care which he takes. But if one piece be worth ten, and the other nine, then a motive arises to which there is no opposition: there are not two motives, nine on one side, and ten on the other; there is but one, the excess of the value of one piece over the other. If no motive stir a man, he will sit still; and when thirst drives him in search of water, he has but one motive, not two, the one to go in search of water, and the other to sit still; for a motive being that which moves, a man can hardly be said to be moved to sit still. If the motive be ten to go by land, and two by water, the less is merged in the greater, as the light of the stars in the beams of the sun, and as we then perceive but one luminary, so we feel but one motive, the difference between ten and two. While we de

liberate upon the two modes of travelling, various judgments may arise, each excluding the other in turn, until all doubts terminate in conviction, which is now the sole motive to action, and exists only because all others cease to exist.

When in the opinion of the jury, the accused is innocent, they have but one motive for their verdict, not two, the one to acquit, and the other to condemn. They may have had various opinions of his innocence or guilt in the progress of the trial; their final judgment is brought out of the whole, and as there cannot be two verdicts, the greater and the less, so there cannot be two motives, the greater and the less: and if they convict whom they believe to be innocent, then it is plain that neither his innocence or guilt was the motive of conduct, but some other, as personal dislike or policy of State.

We act or forbear, according to our perception of the greatest apparent good. Every one knows that his thoughts exert a greater or less influence according to the strength of his perceptions-that his actions are slow and hesitating when his perceptions are feeble, but energetic and decisive under intense conviction. We perceive and act; the perception itself is the disturbing force: this is all that can be made of the question of Liberty and Necessity, and to this, philosophy must come at last. We can ask no more than to act as we think best; it is the only rule of conduct vouchsafed to No one was ever conscious of the existence of such a faculty, as writers define the will to be-a power that chooses and can not choose; that reasons and can not reason; that acts, barely because it is able to act; that resides in the mind, is part of the mind, yet is as independent of the mind. as if it resided in the moon.

man.

There is no end to the absurdities that are daily uttered about this incomprehensible will. Every man is ready to tell you that he "can think of what he pleases;" sun, moon, fire, water, commerce, government, friends, foes, not doubting that thoughts come at the command of what he calls his will. This error, now abandoned by all writers on the mind, still prevails in the pulpit and senate, and in common life is universal. I once heard a living author say, that his will, which he said was canse per se, could call up any idea he ever had before, as of Loudon, Paris, Boston, though absent from the mind; that is, his will could act upon what was not in the mind, or more plainly, he could think with

out the presence of thought. But I trust it has been fully shown in the first chapter of the treatise on the Mind,* that no thought was entered there, that was not introduced by its predecessor, or aroused by some object from without. Ideas come to us, we do not go to them; the mind cannot act upon what is not present, as the hand cannot grasp a substance, unless there be a substance to grasp. A man thinks before he wills, and cannot will before he thinks. He cannot will to preach or pray, walk or ride, before the thought of preaching or praying, walking or riding enters his mind. If the mind could, by its own direct effort, call up all the ideas it once possessed, then books of history, science, law, divinity, records of courts or state, merchants' books and accounts, once read, would become useless: to forget, would be impossible, since all we ever knew, would be instantly at command, and spread as a picture before the

eyes.

The phenomena of thought are mere matters of fact, as easily traced as the fall of bodies or motion of fluids. We perceive external objects from necessity, and the relations they bear to one another-meadows, hills, trees, cattle, men, cottages, sky, clouds, all take their position in the mind, as they are painted in the chamber of the eye. We walk in the midst of them, avoiding the precipice on the right, the serpent on the left, the vehicle in our path: our safety depends upon a knowledge of their relative situation, as we may be convinced by closing our eyes or attempting to walk in the dark. Our knowledge too, of numbers lies in their relations to one another: we perceive that twenty is more than ten, as we perceive that an oak is greater than a shrub, or a man taller than a child. So, too, we perceive it to be safer to go by land than by water, that the accused is innocent or guilty; that the title to the land is in the plaintiff; that Cæsar invaded Gaul, fifty years before Christ-all human knowledge, as is shown in its proper place; reason, judgment, choice, motive, opinion, creed, belief, resolution, imagination, nay, that ghost of a will itself, that has so long stalked upon the winds to frighten metaphysicians out of their wits, are but the perception of the relations of ideas; perception, action, this is the entire man both mental and

The writer is the author of a work on the Mind, which will shortly issue from the press.