out of account altogether the fact that the table has moved with the diurnal and annual revolution of the earth. A man in a railroad car will say that he has not changed his place for half a day, when he knows that he has been moving at the rate of thirty or forty miles an hour.

Again; we perceive that, of several cubes, the first occupies a larger portion of space than the second, and the second a larger portion than the third. All of them are red, but the tinge of one is deeper than that of another. Hence arises the relation of degree. This idea is so universally recognized, that, in all languages, it is designated by a special form, entitled degrees of comparison.

But it is not necessary that I pursue this subject further. I think that every one must recognize in his own mind a power of originating such knowledges as these, as soon as the occasion presents itself. They are not ideas of perception or of consciousness, but ideas arising in the mind, by its own energies, as soon as we cognize the appropriate objects which occasion them. Having once obtained them, they immediately sever themselves from the objects which occasion them, and become ideas of simple intellection, which we use as abstract terms in all our reasonings.

REFERENCES.

Space-Locke, Book 2, chap. 13; Cousin, chap. 2; Reid, Essay 2, chap. 19.

Space and body not the same. chap. 2.

- Locke, Book 2, chap. 13; Cousin,

Infinity from space-Locke, Book 2, chap. 13; Cousin, chap. 3; Reid, Essay 2, chap. 19.

Substance and solidity - Locke, Book 2, thap. 4; Cousin, cnap 3.

Number

Locke, Book 2, chap. 16, 17; Cousin, chap. 3.

Relation Locke, Book 2, chap. 25.

Identity and Diversity - Locke, Book 2, chap 27.

Place Locke, Book 2, chap. 13.

SECTION IV.- SUGGESTED IDEAS OCCASIONED BY THE CONSIDERATION OF OBJECTS IN THE CONDITION OF

CHANGE.

EVERY one must be aware that motion, change, progress, and decay, are written upon everything within us, and upon everything without us. It is natural to suppose that a variety of suggestions, or intuitive cognitions, would be occasioned by the development of this universal law.

Our thoughts are in a condition of perpetual change. Thought succeeds thought; one conception follows another without a moment's cessation, at least, during our waking hours, from the commencement to the close of our present existence. The idea of incessant change is essential to our notion of life. Abolish it, and the result is universal death.

Destitute of memory, we should be unconscious of these changes, and cognizant only of the thought or emotion of the present moment. Endowed with memory, however, we become aware of the fact that the thought of which we are now conscious is not the thought of which we were conscious a few moments since; and that the thoughts of yesterday, or of boyhood, are very different from the thoughts of to-day.

The same knowledge is also derived from the acts of perception in connection with memory. We perceive a cloud overspreading the heavens. When last we looked upward all was clear; now all is lurid. pated, and all is sunshine. light is gradually stealing over the heavens.

Again, the cloud is dissiWe arise in the morning, and Soon, the gun

arises, and all nature is aroused to life. In a few hours it is mid-day, and animal and vegetable droop with the excessive heat. Soon, the sun declines; it sinks beneath the

horizon; we are fanned by the breezes of the evening, and behold the blue expanse above us dotted with innumerable stars. Had we no memory, we should be cognizant of the existence of but one phenomenon,- that which presented itself to us at a particular moment. Our existence in consciousness would be limited to the smallest conceivable portion of duration. Constituted as we are, we become aware that one event succeeds another; and we hold the fact of this succession distinctly within our knowledge.

From both consciousness and perception, then, united with memory, we acquire a knowledge of succession; that is, that some other event or events preceded that of which we are now cognizant. But another idea is immediately occasioned in a human mind by the idea of succession, different from it, and from any which we have thus far considered. It is the idea of duration. I cannot define it. I cannot explain it. Yet it belongs to the very elements of human thought. We can neither think nor act without taking it for granted. It is a condition of existence; for, were there no duration, nothing could exist. It is neither an idea of perception nor of consciousness. We cannot cognize it by our senses, nor is it an operation of the mind. The intellect seizes upon it as soon as we recognize the fact of succession. No one can give any further account of its origin. No one can enumerate its qualities, for it has no qualities. Yet, every one has the idea, and no one can conceive of its non-existence.

We perceive, in this case, the difference between the chronological and the logical order of these two ideas. Chronologically, the idea of succession takes the precedence; for, unless we had first cognized the fact of succession, we should never have obtained the idea of duration. But when both have been acquired, we immediately perceive that duration is the necessary condition to succession; for, without

duration, succession would be impossible. Logically, therefore, duration takes the precedence.

The first measure of duration seems naturally to be the succession of our own thoughts. A portion of duration seems long or short, in retrospect, according to the number of events to which we have attended, and the tone of mind or the degree of earnestness with which we have observed them. But it is obvious that these elements vary greatly with the same individual at different times, and with different individuals at the same time. We, therefore, seek for some definite portion of duration, as the unit by which we may measure with accuracy any other limited portion. Such natural unit is found in the revolution of the heavenly bodies; and hence we come to measure duration by days, and months, and years, or by some definite portion of these units. Duration measured in this manner we call time. If I do not mistake, we mean, by time, that portion of duration which commences with the creation of our race, and which will terminate when "the earth and the things therein shall be dissolved."

But let us take a year, and add to it by unity. We soon arrive at a century. Taking this as our unit, we add again, until we arrive at the era of the creation. We go backward still, until we even find ourselves in imagination at the commencement of the sidereal system. Duration is still unexhausted; it is yet an unfathomable abyss. We conceive of ages upon ages, each as interminable as the past duration of the material universe, and cast them into the mighty void; they sink in darkness, and the chasm is still unfathomable. We go forward again, and add century to century, without finding any limit. We pass on until the present system is dissolved, and duration is still immeasurable. We add together the past and the future term of the existence of the universe, and multiply it by millions of millions, and

we have approached no nearer than at first to the limits of duration. We are conscious that it sustains no relations either to measure or limit. It is beyond all computation by the addition of the finite. It is thus, from the contemplation of duration, that the idea of the infinite arises in a human intellect from the necessity of its nature.

This idea of the infinite, to which the mind so necessarily tends, and which it derives from so many conceptions,, is one of the most remarkable of any of which we are cognizant. It belongs to the human intelligence, for it arises within us unbidden on various occasions, and we cannot escape it. Yet it is cognized by none of the powers either of perception or of consciousness. It is occasioned by them; yet it differs from them as widely as the human mind can conceive. The knowledge derived from these sources is by necessity limited and finite. This idea has no relations whatever to anything finite. It has no qualities, yet we all have a necessary knowledge of what it means. Is there not in this idea some dim foreshadowing of the relation which we, as finite beings, sustain to the Infinite One, and of those conceptions which will burst upon us in that unchanging state to which we are all so rapidly tending? Of cause and effect, and of power.

I proceed to the consideration of this important subject. I have no expectation of adding anything new to a discussion, which, from the earliest history of philosophy, has engaged the earnest thought of the ablest men. I shall not enter upon the consideration of many of those questions which emerge out of it. Were I to attempt to present them ever so briefly, I should transcend the limits to which a work of this kind must be restricted. I shall content myself with stating the views which, after some reflection, have presented themselves to my own mind.

Let us, then, commence with the observation of a single