directed at every convenient interval, care being taken to make less or greater progress every day. 'My method of study," says President Edwards, "has been very much by writing, applying myself in this way to improve every important hint; pursuing the clue to my utmost when anything in reading, meditation, or conversation has been suggested to my mind that seemed to promise light on any weighty point, thus penning what appeared to me my best thoughts." 279. A treatise on any subject is the more perspicuous as it can be understood by a greater number of persons, necessarily including the more ignorant. It should contain all that is necessary, and nothing more. Hence we may see some of the causes of the indistinctness in writing: an author does not understand his subject, or how rightly to select or arrange the words he employs, or the different portions of his work. It is a good exercise rapidly to commit the thoughts to paper, and then consider how what has been written can be improved; what faults there are of grammar, language, or arrangement; what deficiencies, redundancies, undue digressions, unsound reasoning, absence of, or infelicitous illustration, &c. 280. Mental habits are not confined in their results to the mere facts we acquire. By them the capacity becomes enlarged, and more free from prejudice. To a cultivated mind, many truths are known which ignorant persons would not credit. They are entirely at variance with their experience. Suppose it had been said in this country five hundred years since that a copy of the Bible could be produced in a minute, few would have thought it possible. Some analogy or relation must connect every new idea with a former one, before it can be implanted. The acquisition of knowledge is necessarily progressive (15). The facility with which valuable mental connections can be formed, will therefore obviously depend on the number and variety of ideas already in the memory. The extent of knowledge is, however, not to be esteemed with reference to a number of truths with which a man is acquainted, but the mode in which he has associated them, and the relation they bear to each other and to all that may be known. 281. Every one is sensible that there is beauty, sublimity, grandeur, &c., in things and beings around us. And there is a less or greater appreciation of these by each individual. The eye, the human skeleton, the solar system, are all wonderful; but how differently are the eye and the skeleton estimated by a skilful H anatomist, and the solar system by a profound mathematician, to the impressions they make on an ignorant ploughboy. Everything, therefore, pleases or displeases, is ugly, beautiful, sublime, grand, or otherwise, to each person, according to the ideas he connects with it (244). 282. Those who have not been accustomed to converse on anything but the little affairs of life acquire contracted habits of thinking, and make their own ideas the measure of all that exists or is possible. When their associates are few, and without education, they are apt to consider many of the peculiarities of their countrymen as founded on human nature. When men pursue those inquiries for which their idiocrasy adapts them, and yet retain principally minute details only, they must be considered as little beyond imitators. With superior minds it is quite the reverse, the individuality of their characters is displayed in everything of importance that emanates from them. 283. We can scarcely be too solicitous to improve the judgment. The philosophic mind traces relations, deduces important conclusions, and makes discoveries of which an ordinary mind is incapable. The impression produced on the external senses of the generality of persons is the same. The degree of pleasure resulting varies as the extent and importance of their mental associations differ. On these, therefore, depend our enjoyments. The external world is to every one what he makes of it. When a man has succeeded "in cultivating his imagination, things the most familiar and unnoticed disclose charms before invisible. The same objects and events which were lately beheld with indifference occupy now all the powers and capacities of the soul, the contrast between the present and the past serving only to enhance and to endear so unlooked-for an acquisition." Those whose minds are so disciplined are introduced to a new earth and a new heaven. They are enabled duly to appreciate the works of the painter, the sculptor, the architect, the poet, &c. They then can look through nature up to "God himself. Hold converse; grow familiar, day by day, 284. To the eyes of both the unlearned and the learned, the same characters, on opening a book, will appear. "But the learned man in those characters will see heaven, earth, sun, and stars; read profound theorems of philosophy or geometry; .... while to the other nothing appears but black streaks on white paper..... The mind of the one is furnished with certain previous.... instruction that the other wants. . . . . Let us now substitute the book of nature. . . . . To the sense of both man and brute there appears . . . . nothing but figures and colours. But the mind which hath a participation of Divine wisdom... will have.... variety of knowledge, logical, mathematical, and moral, displayed, and clearly read the Divine .... goodness in every page." .... 285. "The more," says Alison," that our ideas are increased or our conceptions extended upon any subject, the greater the number of associations we connect with it, the stronger is the emotion of sublimity or beauty we receive from it. The pleasure, for instance, which the generality of mankind receives from any celebrated painting is trifling when compared to that which a painter feels..... What is to them only an accurate representation of nature, is to him a beautiful exertion of genius. The difficulties which occur to his mind in the design and execution of such a performance, and the testimonies of skill, of taste, and of invention which the accomplishment of it exhibits, excite a variety of emotions in his breast of which the common spectator is altogether unsusceptible. . . . . The beauty of any scene in nature is seldom so striking to others as it is to a landscape painter. The difficulties both of invention and execution,. which from their professions are familiar to them, render the profusion with which nature often scatters the most picturesque beauties little less than miraculous. Every little circumstance of form and perspective, and light and shade, which are unnoticed by a common eye, are important in theirs; and mingling in their minds with the ideas of difficulty and facility in overcoming it, produce altogether an emotion of delight incomparably more animated than any that the generality of mankind usually derive." (Essays on Taste.) 286. How glorious would be the state of that man's mind who had from his youth always been led by the Holy Spirit! What a treasury of Divine knowledge would his memory contain! What an endless source of benefit and delight would it afford himself and his associates! Such a man would truly be almost or altogether an angel. Of his knowledge it might be said, Neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof. With the precious onyx, or the sapphire. The gold and the crystal cannot equal it: And the exchange of it shall not be for jewels of fine gold. For the price of wisdom is above rubies. The topaz of Ethiopia shall not equal it, Neither shall it be valued with pure gold." 287. Hereafter, every flight of fancy will "be a poem, and every train of thought a dissertation; every word a paragraph, every sentence a volume, every book an encyclopædia; every companion a sage, an instructor, an angel; every event a drama, every move a discovery, every day a new biography and history. .... All the diversified knowledge deserving of being retainedever in the possession of every master mind of the human family, shall there be resumed, refined, and regenerated." 288. "In the rich and ever ready stores of a well-cultivated mind we have the only image which we can in any way acquire" of the Divine Being. "It is by our remembrances that we are truly moral beings.. .... How many of our purest affections may we trace, through a long series of reciprocal kindnesses, to the earliest years of our boyhood, to the field of our sports, to the nursery, to the very cradle in which our smile answered only still fonder smiles." Our recollection also of the numberless and unspeakable blessings received from above enables us to exclaim,— "How precious also are Thy thoughts unto me, O God! How great is the sum of them! If I should count them, They are more in number than the sand." (See Appendix, Note T.) 289. As everything that acts on the mind influences the associating power, a few observations appear necessary on some subjects that have not been noticed. And first of Instinct. "The difference," says an eloquent writer, "between mind in the lower animals and in man is a difference in degree. The horse is startled by marvellous objects, as a man is. The dog, and many others, show tenacious memory (59). The dog also proves himself possessed of imagination, by the act of dreaming. Horses, finding themselves in want of a shoe, have of their own accord gone to a farrier's shop where they were shod before." Not the least striking disagreement between the animal world and man is the capacity of improvement in the latter. Animals, as species, never improve; the lapse of ages makes no alteration in their condition; nature imperatively commands,―Thus far, and no farther, shall ye go (115). "The bee has been striving without intermission in the art of making its sweet confection since the days of Aristotle; the ant has been constructing its labyrinths since Solomon recommended its example; but from the time they were described by the philosopher and the sage .... they have not acquired .. a new organ." Scarcely anything is more remarkable than the migration of birds. Flocks navigate the boundless fields of air, pass wide tracts of unknown land and water, and return at the proper time, without wandering from their course. Yet they are without histories of former voyages, charts, or compass; and, apparently, without being guided by the heavenly bodies. They are consequently said to be in some respects wiser than man. The Most High thus reproaches the ancient Hebrews: "Yea, the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times; And the turtle, and the crane, and the swallow, observe the time of their coming; But My people know not the judgment of the Lord." 290. Phrenology.-Some of the conclusions to which its votaries have arrived require further evidence. Antecedently to inquiry, it is reasonable to suppose that the skull, containing the brain, the centre of perception, has in every man a character of its own. 291. Physiognomy.-An observing person cannot pass through the streets without noticing in the countenances the individuality of the passers. 292. Mesmerism.-If what has latterly been affirmed of it is correct, the mind has powers within itself, and a capacity to act on other minds, little apprehended by the generality. We are in possession of nothing relative to mesmerism, or the subjects of the two preceding paragraphs, but what is before the public. Anything which tends to enlighten us with regard to whatever is connected with mind, assuredly deserves the most anxious attention. 293. Dreaming.-The great difference between this and being awake is that in dreaming we are not conscious. In it, extrinsic action, the memory, the imagination, and the will, have all their influence. Sometimes the mental action is more powerful than when awake; but this, for any beneficial purpose, is the ex |