quantity and quality of ideas, which the mind has a capacity both to invent and record in the memory. The quantity of ideas, independent of quality, serves rather to diminish, than to increase sagacity or wisdom, the highest degrees of intellectual power. A plodding philomath, or country schoolmaster, possess in quantity the greatest number of ideas, because they must remember their problems and solutions in mathematics; their dictionaries, grammars, and nomenclatures, in all their modes of words, rules, and theorems of science. But these men of science have never been remarkable for sagacity or wisdom; and Sir Isaac Newton, the greatest Doctor of Science that ever lived, extinguished the envy of his competitors for fame, by publishing sentiments of the most drivelling superstition. Voltaire said of him, that he consoled the envy of mankind for his superior science, by his inferior sagacity marked in his theological writings. The man of wisdom, or intellectual energy, is he who possesses the most important ideas in quality, and not quantity. The moralist who can discern the complicate, the delicate, the fleeting relations of man with self, with the whole sensitive system, and progressively with all nature in the fugitive and changeable relations of the moral science, is as much above a Newton, as the discovery of the laws of human happiness excels those of physical science. That this sentiment may not appear hyperbolical, I must support it with the authority of John Locke, who declares that there exists as much difference between the intellect of one man and another, as between man and beast. This difference must exist in sagacity, and not science, because the savage will learn with ease the principia of Newton, but cannot be taught sagacity in the moral science.

To elevate intellectual energy upon the scale of ideas, I recommend the study of the moral science, or man in all his relations with surrounding existence. This kind of study, or contemplation, generates an intense degree of mental sensibility by the laborious action of doubt, which never operates in the physical sciences. This mental sensibility augments attention-attention generates contemplation, and this master-faculty disposes the mind to multiply its own perceptions (and not merely to remember those of science) to mark the nice discriminatory parts or conditional notions of which the moral science or system is formed, as the true character of wisdom, or sense distinct from science.

I recommend, as a forcible rule of augmenting important ideas on the subject of man, to read the works of those authors called Freethinkers, and to make them the subject of liberal and enlightened conversation.

I would recommend, above all other means, extensive travels beyond the frontiers of civilized life, where the shock of contrary customs, laws, and opinions, destroys all prejudice, without the

efiorts of reason, and exhibits the great volume of Nature's laws for the mind to reflect and fill its mirror with the consummation of ideas or perceptions in the paramount science of man and nature. Having shewn the mode by which the discipline of ideas may be augmented and reinforced, I come now to close this topic with a simple rule for the formation of that character of thought called ideas, which is-to discover their prototypes or originals in the objects of sense. To illustrate this iule, I suppose that I was impanelled upon a jury to try a delinquent for witchcraft or ma gic. The first process of my mind would be to consider whether the words magic or witch were objects of sense: and upon discovery that such words had no original objects or prototypes in sense, I should reject them as incapable of all copy or action of thought called idea. It may be observed here that such trials have been abolished in the United States, but my illustration is supported by their former existence, and the famous Cagliostro was very lately tried at Rome on such absurd charges. Again : I will suppose the word metaphysic in the scholastic sense of power, without matter to support it, offered to my mind for consideration. I should immediately appeal the word to the laws of nature; and discovering that all power must be the modification of some matter which supports it, such a word as metaphysic could represent no object of sense, and therefore be no subject of intelligence.

I shall here relate an anecdote of Charles II., which will throw much instructive light upon my rule of discipline for the formation of ideas. This sagacious prince, scandalized at the folly of mankind in submitting the operations of reason to authority instead of evidence, was determined to expose and detect it in the most flagrant example. He sent to the President of the Royal Academy, and desired him in his name and authority to lay bebefore the Academy this problem for solution, viz. :-Why a fish out of the water weighed more than a fish in the water. The President returned to the Academy, and presented in the name of the King the problem of the fish. The Academicians, not daring to doubt the fact as stated by the authority of the King (veneration of an object excludes all capacity and desire of examination, exemplified in superstitious bigotry), debated in their Assembly upon the nature of the two elements water and air, concerning which they held different opinions, which prevented any general conclusion. Some time after, the King, meeting the President, desired to know whether the Academy had solved the problem: to which the President answered, that the Academy were divided into various parties upon the subject; some in favour of the element air, some of water, and some of motion.

The King burst into a violent fit of laughter, and told the President that the absurd problem was only an essay on human credulity, and an exemplary instance of the prostitution of reason to

authority. The King observed, that if they had proceeded according to the law of reason, they would first have weighed the fish to ascertain the fact, and this would have saved them the vain and laborious research of hypotheses, as the supposed causes of things that had no existence. Though this anecdote obtained the most diffusive notoriety over all Europe, and must have awakened the vigilance of learned men to all propositions of science, yet this great catastrophe of illumination never reached the schools of theology, syllogism, and metaphysics.

This problem, which was intended at first to expose the credulous reason of Academicians, became, at length, a general impeachment of the imbecility of the whole human race for prostituting reason to authority, by the admission of consequences without any examination of their premises. I shall avail myself of this inestimable proverb of Charles II.'s reign, "weigh the fish," to reinforce my rule of discipline of ideas in all the actions of thought to seek for objects of sense or ideas, as the necessary elements or alphabetical signs of intelligence, and to limit their projections or conclusions by conceivability.

I shall now consider the 2d class, or modes of thought called sentiments, as distinguished from the first class called ideas, whose subject I have just now developed.

OF SENTIMENTS.

The word sentiment takes its etymology from the Latin word sentire, to feel, and is precisely definite of its import, which is to have an object of observation, or act of sensation; that is, an an idea as the basis, in all modifications of thought and conceivability in their projective theories. The word idea comprehends all existing facts of knowledge, science, and past experience.

Sentiments comprehend all those modes of thought which form improveable knowledge and eventual experience, and divide themselves into two distinct classes of experimental sentiments. The first the indispensible medium of human knowledge and human action; the latter the medium of conjecture, speculation, and theory, upon the scale of conceivability, generating consolation and influence, but of no avail and no relation to knowledge or conduct.

EXPERIMENTAL SENTIMENTS.

These are all formed npon the analogy of relations or correspondency, comprehending all those actions of thought or modes of intelligence, which tend to the improvement of the arts and sciences, or to the perfectibility of human life in laws, institutions, and moral conduct within the boundary of experience. I shall illustrate the character of experimental sentiments by various examples; the first shall be the contrivance of an improveable piece

of horology or time-keeper. The process of experimental sentiment to conduct the improveable machinery of common watch into that of a time-keeper is as follows. The existing art and past experience of horology furnishes sentiment with all its ideas of art and science; these being positive objects of sensation, they are projected by sentiment into new relations of improving or eventual powers. I have observed, that the essential character of sentiment is to feel that it is to be sensible that it operates upon an idea, or object of sensation, within the boundary of experience.

For example, my design being to construct a watch with new and improved powers of time keeping, I assume in sentiment the known object elasticity, which I project upon the multiplied relation of springs into a new and eventual result.

This eventual result is certainly not a clear and accurate object like an idea; but still the projections of sentiment are so clear and near to their original ideas, that we may be said to act upon them with sensation, though we may not have an accurate perception thereof in its precise quantity or projected result.

The improveable powers of a watch into a timekeeper cannot be accurate objects of sensation till experience reduces them to ideas, or existent facts; but, still, the projection of sentiment, when it multiplies the relations of existing powers, though liable to error, has fair pretensions to real perception in the approximation to facts, and their relations, because it has always some part of an object as a base to its angle of projective sentiment. This character of inaccurate perception, or sensation in the operations of projective or experimental sentiment, may appear clearer in an example of moral action. I will suppose that the existing laws of matrimony was considered by the legislature as bearing with unfair and unequal pressure on the female members of the community. The improveability of such laws I will suppose to become an action of experimental sentiment in the mind of the legislator; it is evident he must project his ideas of existing nuptial relations into such improveable relations of divorce as never before did exist in that country, and must, therefore, modify thought into eventual existence of better or more improved relations,

The nature of eventual existence abrogates entirely the character of idea, but still the function of experimental sentiment conforming its action to moderate and experimental improvement, carries its projections, but very little advanced beyond its original ideas, and preserves the character of sensation or percep tion, though somewhat obscured by the eventuality of objects it is in pursuit of. All the energy of intellectual power is found in the function of experimental sentiments; our ideas, or knowledge of actually existing things and their relations, stand as stationary facts in the repository of the memory, while the mode of thought called experimental sentiment carries all the ideas of knowledge

into their progress of improveable arts and sciences. I will illustrate the character of sentiments as opposed to ideas, by a familiar example of the general conduct of human life. Mankind are more occupied in a provision for future good, than in the economy of enjoyment of actually existing good, and therefore the ideas of good are constantly changed into sentiments of future good, as thus:-The fortune or property I possess, I will suppose to be 10001; this sum is an existing fact, of which I hold an idea or copy. Being desirous to improve or increase this property or idea, I project it into experimental sentiment of 20001., acquirable at a future period. In the process of sentiment, all the relations of profit and loss are brought to the test of eventual experience, and such as terminate in facts, become ideas or copies in the mind of existing things, while those which still remain in the womb of experience, retain the character of sentiment. In the same manner, all the existing facts, or enjoyments of personal happiness, of domestic ease, of civil liberty, if I seek to improve these, they must be effected by the energy of experimental sentiments formed on the analogy of relation or correspondency. If I endeavour to provide for future happiness, I must project the actual relations, or ideas of personal health into sentiments of improveable health, improveable domestic ease, and improveable civil liberty; and pursuing these in the measure of experience, I shall, in the course of time, reduce some to ideas, and continue others in the class of sentiment. These illustrations will suffice to mark the distinguishing character of ideas and sentiments; the one a copy of whatever has existed, or does exactly exist; the other an inaccurate perception of relations projected upon original ideas, through analogy, on the scale of eventual experience. The second class of sentiments I call conjectural sentiments, which, like the sun upon the horizon, lengthen the shadows of their objects beyond the similitude, or scale of experience. For example: the measure of relative sentiments confines its experiments to the boundaries of human life, and human knowledge, to project existing laws into improveable experience in the relations of known objects; and, whatever this cannot reach, remains as an action of fancy, but no object of intelligence.

It will be proper, in this place, to explain the nature of analogy as the medium of intellectual energy, which is of three sorts. The analogy of rotation, the analogy of correspondency, and the. analogy of similitude. The two first are used to guide human action and knowledge, on the scale of experience, to the improvement of arts, sciences, and to guide human conduct to well being or happiness. The analogy of relation I have just exhibited between things in their powers in genus and species: as in timekeepers between their springs, their levers, &c. In society, between existing laws and improveable laws; between existing men and generations; and between improveable men and generations. The