there is a more general activity among the faculties, they are modified, and blended, and softened, so as to change their appearance very much.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE ACTIVITY OF THE INTELLECTUAL FACULTIES THEIR POWER TO EXCITE THE FEELINGS.

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THE intellectual faculties alone produce ideas; propensities and sentiments are blind, and their functions are to act upon the intellect, and also are susceptible of being excited to action, and of receiving gratification, through the agency of the intellect. The intellectual faculties tend to activity, and this activity is greater or less in degree, from mere perception, to conception, memory, imagination, fancy. This action may be spontaneous, or it may be excited by external causes, or by both combined. In these various stages of activity, they become the causes of excitement to such of the affective faculties, as are interested by the objects contemplated by the intellect. Thus the intellect may spontaneously contemplate an absent friend, or it may be excited to such contemplation, by seeing a letter from him, and this will excite into lively activity several feelings, but more especially adhesiveness. The intellect serves only as a channel, through which exciting objects reach the feelings. Hence we may excite any feeling we please,

through the agency of intellect. When the feelings are not excited, we have only to contemplate the exciting object, and the appropriate feeling will follow.

Those, who exercise their intellects upon unexciting subjects much, will be able to contemplate what is presented to the mind with comparative coolness. The ease, with which objects will excite the feelings, and the intensity of the excitement, will depend upon the proportion which the feelings bear to the intellect, the size of both added together, their habitual activity, and also the degree in which they are refreshed, and have a tendency to activity at the time. In the same individual feelings, which are predominant in size and activity, will be most readily excited.

Hence, if we would influence an individual, we must appeal to those organs which are the largest and most active. If a public speaker would address the multitude in whom the propensities predominate, he should touch upon the objects which excite them. He should seize upon their prejudices. He should arouse their personal and party attachments, their local attachments, their love of offspring, their pride, love of praise, and their acquisitiveness. If any of the darling objects of these feelings have been abused, he may describe their abuses, and this will excite combativeness, and destructiveness, in addition. But the occasion should be one, when the feelings have a strong tendency to this kind of excitement.

CHAPTER XIV.

ACTIVITY OF THE FEELINGS, AND THEIR EFFECT UPON THE INTELLECT.

THE affective faculties, also, have tendencies to spontaneous activity; and they are sometimes excited by external objects through the medium of the intellect. They require exercise, and this exercise cannot long be neglected, without an infringement of natural laws. Their influence upon the intellect is principally of three kinds.

1. When spontaneously active, they tend to excite the intellect to the contemplation of objects gratifying to them. As, for instance, when the feeling of benevolence is active, it will excite the intellect to contemplate benevolent projects, or objects in distress. In this view, the intellectual faculties become, in a manner, the instruments of the simultaneous, or successively active feelings.

The second influence, which the feelings sometimes have upon the intellectual faculties, is to excite them into a greater degree of energy and power, than what they possess, when active without being excited by the feelings. Some of the feelings produce this effect to a remarkable degree; and, when under this influence, the intellect is carried to a wonderful degree of clearness and intensity. This, however, is not equally the case with all the propensities. When some of the more gross propensities are active, the intellect is proportionably darkened. The exciting power of combativeness is

familiar to every one.

Few are so powerful in argument at any time, as when excited by combativeness. The exciting effect of the feelings upon the intellect produces a sort of mental illumination. The more feelings there are simultaneously active, the more intense and concentrated is the light.

The third influence of the feelings upon the intellect is, to warp and prejudice its perceptions and judgments. To pursue the figure. Sometimes the light of several of the feelings becomes so intense and unequal, that the object is viewed under deceptive aspects. The several feelings, too, impart their own distinctive character to the intellectual perceptions and judgments. Reverence exerts a grave and magnifying influence. Cautiousness casts forth sombre shades. Hope puts on the high lights. Ideality beautifies, and marvellousness exerts a creative influence, finishing up the distant and obscure. As different feelings exert different degrees of energy, and kinds of influence, at various times and under various circumstances, the mental states are constantly changing. Hence the perpetual succession of thoughts, day-dreams, and reveries.

I HAVE above described briefly the leading influences of the intellect, and also of the affective faculties, in their

action and reaction upon each other, and the force of external circumstances in modifying these influences. This makes a very suitable immediate introduction to an examination of the doctrine of Free Agency and Moral Accountability. We may now see how far these laws of activity and excitability of our faculties, as it regards thought and feeling merely, are consistent with free agency. Whenever we knowingly and deliberately contemplate objects, which uniformly excite certain feelings, we do it voluntarily and in the exercise of free agency; and we are accountable for the feelings thus excited. If we voluntarily call up lascivious thoughts by an effort of mind, we are accountable for the feelings excited. But if such images are thrust before the mind, without any agency on our part, then the thoughts and feelings excited are produced by causes beyond ourselves, and for them we are not in the least accountable. So when strong propensities have been quiet and rested, until they seek exercise, and become spontaneously active, and exert a debasing influence over the intellect, and we change these influences as soon as we can, and do not willingly indulge the thoughts suggested by them, we are not accountable. By fleeing from scenes of temptation, and by gratifying the propensities in harmony with the higher sentiments, or in other words reasonably and morally, we may avoid, to a great extent, sins of thought and feeling.

But one point remains here to be noticed. Free agency concerns actions more than thoughts and feelings. It applies only to what is voluntary action, what the mind consents to, and wills to be done. And we have seen that, in all the modes in which the feelings act upon the intellect, they may be gratified short of actions, —