ed to the part which they are intended to sustain, to the purpose which they are intended to subserve. Our observation of the phænomena and history of each disposes us to arrange them under genera and species, accordingly as individuals discover common properties, and a constant tendency to a common end. Whatever properties in each are not secondary, and cannot be derived from a higher property, we consider as primary, essential; as constituting the generic or specific difference; and unable to carry our inquiry any further, we consider these essential properties as the originating source of the common character, as entering into the very nature and constitution of every individual of the genus or species.

Man alone remains unnoticed in this survey, and the question forcibly obtrudes itself, Is it conceivable that he alone shall be excepted in this general provision and plan? Has he alone not an inherent constitution, of mind as well as body, adapted to and preparative of his specific character? Are

not

not the elements of this character, whatever it shall be, interwoven and coexistent with his very being? Is a general plan of creation so extensive, so invariably pursued in every other being; than which, simple as it is, none more worthy of designing wisdom and goodness, can be conceived; and from which all that strikes us, as harmonious, beautiful, and grand in nature as a whole, appears to be derived; is this simplicity of plan abandoned in man alone; who, however dignified in the scale of being he may be esteemed to be, is but a production of the same all-creating artist, issues from the same designing mind, and is one distinct species of the great animal genus?

The answer to this question is decisive, so far as respects the bodily character of man. The faculties of sight, of hearing, smelling, feeling, and whatever faculty the human body may discover, are undoubtedly coeval with the birth, or rather with the existence of the individual man, though it requires exposure to the objects adapted to them, be

fore

fore they can be brought into act, and though they may increase in strength and power as the body increases, and in facility of exercise by use and habit. No human being acquires one new sense, one bodily faculty, which is strange and foreign to his kind, however in degree or application to different objects he may differ from his tellow. In all the furniture of the body, there fore, there is a sameness of character in man, and this furniture is inherent in the very constitution of the human frame; it is, as in every species of created beings, that elementary provision, which assigns to man his bodily character, and limits its extent.

Whatever the thing in him, called mind, be, it is sui generis; but whatever it be, it has properties, which constitute its specific difference, and these properties, having no assimilation to the properties of matter, cannot be derived from any property, which is included, in the view that we have contemplated, in matter. They are, therefore, derived from the same source, to which we re

fer

fer every property of every order of beings, or they are an existence without a cause. Man therefore is, and must be, in his mind, fashioned and fitted to all its future character by a nature, a constitution, which is coeval with his existence. This nature, this innate constitution, as in the planets of the solar system, as in every distinct order of earths, fossils, minerals, vegetables, animals, is the provisionary furniture, derived from the one cause of all, fitting it to be what it is, or shall be, when unfolded and expanded in act, in its progressive conversation with the rich scenery exposed to its view and

action.

Intellect is one grand character of mind, it appears in the faculty of comparison; in distinguishing genera and species by a community of property, and thus arranging the infinite varieties of nature; in reasoning from effect to cause, and from cause to effect; in the discovery of abstract truths from the relation of equality, proportion, or similitude; in logical deductions; in acquiring

VOL. II.

the

the knowledge of means by experience, and thus, whatever end be in view, selecting those means which are most proper to the attainment of the end, and furnishing a constant field of wise, salutary, or beneficent activity to man. This is, perhaps, a complete summary of the whole province of reason, in which, the discovery and the application of means to an end constitute its most important office, every other attribute of intellect being only preparatory thereto. Intellect, however, suggests no end; she is but the servant, the minister to those other qualities of the mind, which interest it in the beautiful, the sublime, the useful, and the moral. But whatever judgment be formed of intellect; the capacity, the elements, the principle, from which all its functions emanate, must be born with the man, must be a part of his primary constitution. That he has this capacity, this principle, is a fact not to be disputed; that in this provisionary furniture he is of all the beings within his ken either absolutely singular, or comparatively

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