other. They are as truly unlike as our conceptions of unity and time, or of space and power. And if this is true of our ideas of right and wrong, it is not less so of right and wrong themselves. In other words, right can never become wrong, nor wrong right; they are placed forever apart, each occupying its own sphere; and thus we have a foundation laid for the important doctrine of the immutability of moral distinctions." The distinction between right and wrong," says Cousin (Psychology, chap. 5)," may be incorrectly applied, may vary in regard to particular objects, and may become clearer and more correct in time, without ceasing to be with all men the same thing at the bottom. It is a universal conception of Reason, and hence it is found in all languages, those products and faithful images of the mind. Not only is this distinction universal, but it is a necessary conception. In vain does the reason, after having once received, attempt to deny it, or call in question its truth. It cannot. One cannot at will regard the same action as just and unjust. These two ideas baffle every attempt to commute them, the one for the other. Their objects may change, but never their nature."

◊ 193. Origin of the ideas of moral merit and demerit.

Closely connected with the ideas of right and wrong are the ideas of moral MERIT and DEMERIT. In the order of nature (what is sometimes called the logical order), the ideas of right and wrong come first. Without possessing the antecedent notions of right and wrong, it would be impossible for us to frame the ideas of moral merit and demerit. For what merit can we possibly attach to him in whom we discover no rectitude; or what demerit in him in whom we discover no want of it! Merit always implies virtue as its antecedent and necessary condition, while demerit as certainly implies the want of it or vice. Although the ideas of merit and demerit, in consequence of being simple, are undefinable, there can be no doubt of their existence, and of their being entirely clear to our mental perception; and that they furnish a well-founded and satisfactory basis for

many of our judgments in respect to the moral character and conduct of mankind.

194. Of other elements of knowledge developed in suggestion.

In giving an account of the ideas from this source, we have preferred, as designative of their origin, the term SUGGESTION, proposed and employed by Reid and Stewart, to the word REASON, proposed by Kant, and adopted by Cousin and some other writers, as, on the whole, more conformable to the prevalent usage of the English language. In common parlance and by the established usage of the language, the word REASON is expressive of the deductive rather than of the suggestive faculty; and if we annul or perplex the present use of that word by a novel application of it, we must introduce a new word to express the process of deduction. Whether we are correct in this or not, we shall probably find no disagreement or opposition in asserting, not only the existence, but the great importance of the intellectual capability which we have been considering. The thing, and the nature of the thing, is undoubtedly of more consequence than the mere name.

In leaving this interesting topic, we would not be understood to intimate that the notions of existence, mind, personal identity, unity, succession, motion, duration, power, and the others which have been mentioned, are all which Suggestion furnishes. It might not be easy to make a complete enumeration; but, in giving an account of the genesis of human knowledge, may we not ascribe the ideas of truth, freedom, design or intelligence, necessity, fitness or congruity, reality, order, plurality, totality, immensity, possibility, infinity, happiness, reward, punishment, and perhaps many others, to this source? In particular, may we not assign here (such is the doctrine, and one of the excellences of the system of Kant) the abstract conceptions of Beauty and Deformity? It is true that we feel the Beautiful and its opposite by the inward Sensibilities, as we shall have occasion to notice and explain when we come to that interesting view of the mind. But is it not true also that we conceive or have an idea of it by the intellect? We may not be able to tell what the BEAUTIFUL is, but does not the intelVOL. I.-Y

lect, by a spontaneous and effective intimation, assure us of the fact of its existence? And if there is a Beautiful, is there not also a Deformed, and, of course, a fixed and immutable distinction between them? Could we have a distinct idea of the Beautiful without an idea of the Deformed, any more than we could have an idea of Right without an idea of Wrong? Our opinions as to what is in fact beautiful may vary in a given case; but that does not prove the absence of the reality, nor alter the essentialities of its nature. It is a common remark that religion is practically no religion to those who have no faith in it; so the Beautiful is practically annihilated to those who have not the power of perceiving it; but, independent of the circumstance of its being perceived or not, it is the Beautiful still; like the sweet song of the bird in the desert, the same in itself, though there is no one to hear it and rejoice in it. So that we cannot but assent to those who assert that the foundations of Aesthetics (that is, the science of the Beautiful as applied to nature and the arts) are firm; not depending upon variable circumstances, but substantiated by the permanency of nature. And hence it has happened, that what was beautiful and pleasing to mankind four thousand years ago, is beautiful and pleasing still, simply because Beauty in nature, like Rectitude in morals, is, in the element and substance of its constitution, indestructible and invariable. The idea of the Beautiful, as thus explained, is made known by Suggestion.

195. Suggestion a source of principles as well as of ideas. One remark more remains to be made. Original Suggestion is not only the source of ideas (and particularly of ideas fundamental and unalterable), but also of principles. The reasoning faculty, which in its nature is essentially comparative and deductive, must have something to rest upon back of itself, and of still higher authority than itself, with which, as a first link in the chain, the process of deduction begins. It is the suggestive intellect which is the basis of the action of the comparing and deductive intellect. Of those elementary or transcendental propositions, which are generally acknowledg

ed to be prerequisites and conditions of the exercise of the deductive faculty, there are four particularly worthy of notice.-(1.) There is no beginning or change of existence without a cause.-(2.) Matter and mind have uniform and permanent laws.-(3.) Every quality supposes a subject, a real existence, of which it is a quality. (4.) Means, conspiring together to produce a certain end, imply intelligence. The first of these propositions is the basis of all those reasonings which are employed to prove the existence of God from the light of nature, besides having other important applications in regard to anything and everything that is past. The second is essential to the continuance of our existence and our activity, inasmuch as it lays the foundation of all foresight into the future, and of the im ortant consequences dependant upon such foresight. The third gives us a knowledge of mind and matter, the mental and material world, in distinction from their mere attributes and operations; assuring us of a substance or actuality of existence, as well as of the manifestations or signs of existence. By means of the fourth we are enabled to conduct the difficult and important process of separating the two great domains of matter and mind, detecting indications of intelligence under material forms, and assigning both to mind and matter their appropriate sphere and responsibilities. These great truths are made known, not by deduction nor by direct experience, but by a spontaneous and original intimation of the Suggestive intellect. As they are not the creations of a process of reasoning, so they are not destructible by such a process. They stand imbedded in the mind's structure, and cannot be overthrown without a subversion of the essential elements of our mental nature. (For further remarks on two of these Elementary propositions, see the Chapter on Primary Truths.)

CHAPTER III.

CONSCIOUSNESS.

196. Consciousness the 2d source of internal knowledge; its nature. THE second source of that knowledge which, in distinction from sensations and external perceptions, is denominated Internal, is CONSCIOUSNESS. By the common usage of the language, the term Consciousness is appropriated to express the way or method in which we obtain the knowledge of those objects which belong to the mind itself, and which do not, and cannot exist independently of some mind. Imagining and reasoning are terms expressive of real objects of thought, but evidently the objects of which cannot be supposed to exist, independently of some mind which imagines and reasons. Hence every instance of consciousness may be regarded as embracing in itself the three following distinct notions at least, viz., (1.) The idea of self or of personal existence, which we possess not by direct consciousness, but by suggestion, expressed in English by the words SELF, MYSELF, and the personal pronoun I; (2.) some quality, state, or operation of the mind, whatever it may be ; and, (3.) a relative perception of possession, appropriation, or belonging to. For instance, a person says, I AM CONSCIOUS OF LOVE, OR OF ANGER, OR OF PENITENCE. Here the idea of SELF or of personal existence is expressed by the pronoun I; there is a different mental state, and expressed by its appropriate term, that of the affection of ANGER, &c. ; the phrase CONSCIOUS OF, expresses the feeling of relation, which instantaneously and necessarily recognises the passion of anger as the attribute or property of the subject of the proposition. And in this case, as in all others where we apply the term under consideration, consciousness does not properly extend to anything which has an existence extraneous to the conscious subject or soul itself.

It may be added further, that Consciousness seems to