this case, the philological meaning of consciousness, expresses correctly the distinct mental operation to which it is applied. It should be applied no otherwise, than to denote the exercises of the mind taking cognizance of its own acts. What is conception? Like all other mental acts, it has been the subject of many puzzling speculations, and given rise to many absurd theories. By some it has been considered a faculty of making things absent, objects of thought. By others it has been considered a modification of memory; by some others a modification of imagination; and by another class of philosophers, it is considered as belonging to a supposed faculty of suggestion. We cannot here enumerate all the hypotheses on this subject, much less attempt to describe and expose their fallacy in order. Conception is applied either to one or more mental acts, and never properly to denote a faculty of mind. It is sometimes used to denote a single idea, which the mind forms of an absent object; but it more properly denotes the mental process of combinations and abstractions of thought, in which the mind forms ideas of things not present, or things never seen. We hear or read the description of an animal, plan, or thing which we have not seen; conception denotes the process of thought in combining or abstracting qualities and circumstances to form an idea of the animal, plan, or thing which may, or may not, correspond with the fact; and therefore it differs from perception, and from recollection of the facts. Such is our meaning when we say we conceive of things, events, or relations; for it matters not as to the nature of the exercise, what the objects or relations may be. All the descriptions of past, absent, and future things and events, are materials from which the mind forms its conceptions, or with which they are connected. The technical meaning, (con and capio,) as applied to mental acts, is to take or apprehend with, in, or by the mind itself. But it has an acquired import from the usus loquendi, and so indicates the invention, arrangement, combination, or abstraction of thoughts; it is therefore a process of simple apprehensions. When the whole process is carefully examined and analysed, it will be found to consist exclusively of simple apprehensions connected together, and so related to their appropriate objects, as to form the result. This result is often called the conception, but more properly it denotes the process of mind by which the result is attained. What is perception? In answer to this question we are constrained again to differ from many respectable pneumatologists, who describe perception as a distinct faculty. We consider it a very important operation of the understanding, perhaps, next to consciousness, the most important. Some have considered it the characteristick operation of the faculty; and such it would be, from its prominence and use, but for the fact that it is not a simple operation, or its description does not suggest a simple idea. It includes necessarily, or by its use, a fixed and indissoluble relation to the senses. Its technical import is its true and appropriate meaning; (per capio) always denotes to take through the senses. But abstract its expressed relation to the medium and external objects, and what is there left, except simple apprehension? Apprehending or knowing is its character. It differs not in its nature from the exercises already described, but relates to external objects of thought, apprehended through the senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste, or smell. Thus we perceive light, sound, hardness, sweetness, scent. Terms are often used, which are derived from the senses, to denote the mind's cognizance through their medium; but there is no need of confusion from that source. The mind's apprehension through the senses is what we call perception. This completes the analysis. We enter not into a discussion of the question whether sensation is in the organ, in some intermediate link between it and the mind, or in the mind itself. This question would involve physiological principles which we have not room to discuss; and it is not necessary to our purpose. We only express our full and deliberate conviction, that a careful and thorough inductive inquiry will establish incontrovertibly the facts, that all sensation is in the mind and not in the organ, and that there is no intermediate link between them. Our purpose will be accomplished by describing the operation itself. What is memory? It is a process more complex than perception, but it as certainly belongs to the intellectual class, consequently to the understanding. The term can never be properly used as the name of a distinct faculty, because it denotes a complex process of thought. The analysis is simple and easy. To make the matter plain we may use a tautological explanation. It is the apprehension of an object, or thought, together with the apprehension of having apprehended it before. This may be either with or without the precise time or place associated. Take any process of memory, and this is its whole analysis; and nothing else belongs to the mental operations. If, however, we use the term in a sense a little more extended, as may be entirely proper, to include recollection, there will often be a longer process of analysis. The circumstances of time, place, similar things, relations and connexions of facts, may be so associated as to awaken all the apprehensions, and furnish the process of memory and recollection. The latter differs from the former only by including a voluntary exertion, to recal former apprehensions: but beside this, there is nothing in the whole mental process except a combination of simple apprehensions; to this every mental act in memory is reducible. Beyond this, they cannot be separated. We are well apprized that memory has been called a distinct. faculty of the mind; also that some have attempted to resolve the phenomena into a law of suggestion; others have called it a power of association; and it has been de-scribed as a particular mode of operation belonging to a supposed faculty of suggestion. But all these are mere hypotheses, and not the result of inductive examination and analysis. The stubborn fact, which no thinking man can avoid, is, that the whole process of memory has no other generic character than simple apprehension. Every man, who adopts the only principle of classification which can be defended, will refer it to the same generic class with perception and apprehension; consequently it cannot be a distinct faculty. With respect to the faculty of suggestion, which some very respectable philosophers have supposed to exist in the mind, and to which belong, as appropriate exercises, conception, memory, imagination and habit, we have room only to state that it is a fanciful theory, tending more to perplex than to simplify the subject. The terms are indefinite, and seen to us, calculated to cover ignorance under general names, without any proper attempt to analyze the mental process. The doctrines of relations, resemblances, contrast, and contiguity, which are made so conspicuous in the scheme, and associated with mental operations, seem to have misled the advocates of the system. They seem to have forgotten that the relations of ob jects and the mental recognitions of them, are distinct things to be examined. States of the mind, and suggestions of the mind to itself, or of relations founded on resemblance, contrast and contiguity, as their laws, suggesting the succession of one mental state after another, all seem to us much like talking very wisely without any definite meaning; or more properly, it is confusion confounded. The truth, as it seems to us, is altogether in opposition to this theory. A careful inductive analysis would have set it aside, and shown its authors and advocates that they were contemplating different combinations of simple apprehension operations of the understanding. What is judgment? It is an operation of the understanding, recognizing some relation between two or more objects. It respects relations only, and is an apprehension of their character. It is perfect or imperfect, clear or indistinct, according to the character of the apprehensions in the case. A man recognises the difference between a stone and bread, between a circle and a triangle, and between a plain matter of fact and an obvious falsehood. But in each of these cases the process is an exercise called judgment, easily reduced to simple apprehensions of the things and their relations. The correctness of the judgment, involves the distinctness and certainty of the apprehensions in the process. What is reason? In this question we refer not to any syllogism, or form of words in which reasoning is expressed-this consists in a series of related and connected propositions. We mean that process of intellection by which the mind reaches its conclusions. It corresponds with the description of judgment in having relations for its objects; and it differs only in the number and combination of the apprehensions. In judgment the relations are obvious and the process short; but in reasoning they are not immediately obvious, some other connecting things, having relations to both, are interposed and compared to discover the relations sought. This is reasoning. Now the whole intellectual process, be it long or short, is nothing more than a concatenation of simple apprehensions. The whole complexity arises from the number and arrangement of simple operations, having the samine nature. What is that intellectual operation in which the mind discovers one relation or quality? It is apprehension. The same, by which two, three, or more are known, when the exercises are arranged in a certain order, constistitutes reason. It is not, therefore, a distinct faculty of the mind, but only a process of thought, of the same character with judgment, whose nature is simple apprehension. We need not lumber this discussion with examples to illustrate a process so familiar to every mind. All appropriate arguments, short or long, and on any subject to which argumentation can apply, will furnish examples for analysis. And every analysis inductively made, will but investigate the same process of apprehension. The What is imagination? phenomena of imagination are modified conceptions. We combine and abstract our apprehensions of facts, qualities, and relations, not only as things exist, but in forms and connexions never actually found. This is a process of imagination. We also arrange and combine apprehensions of resemblances, and relations for the illustration and embellishment of subjects, which is also called imagination. Perhaps the only difference between conception and imagination, consists in a more extended combination of apprehensions, or giving, as a whole, liveliness and strength to the latter, which do not necessarily belong to the former. Any process of imagination may be resolved into conceptions, and these again into simple apprehensions. The same process of analysis directly reduces both, and brings us to the same result. No distinct faculty is developed, no new generick class of phenomena is furnished; it is only a development of the understanding, in some of its most rapid and variously combined operations. A good imagination, therefore, means a readiness of apprehending appropriate relations: and a lively imagination, intends a ready combination of resemblances or contrasts, abstracting and associating, without any regard to existing connexions. In the same manner attention, abstraction, comparison, habit, and every intellectual process, may be analyzed. Let the combination and arrangement be distinguished, the nature of each exercise be examined by itself, and the class to which it belongs will be easily determined. Such a process of examination conducted throughout, on inductive principles, will be satisfactory and profitable. There are some phenomena, or combinations of mental exercises, having appropriate names, which belong partly to the intellectual class, and partly to others, because they combine operations differing in their nature. But when they are analyzed, each part of the combination can easily be assigned to its class and appropriate faculty. We shall have occasion to examine some exercises of this description, after we have considered the phenomena of different natures, according to the radical principle of classification. Such are conscience, faith, hope, and several graces of Christianity. We close this article with some general remarks on the use of the understanding. This faculty constitutes man an intelligent being; it is important to man in all the relations of his nature. The use of the understanding, expressed in a simple abstract term, is to know. Its first development is in the acquisition of knowledge. The same process is repeated again and again, new combinations are formed as the faculty developes, and through man's life on earth, its appropriate employment is to acquire knowledge. From these facts we might infer, that the design of this important faculty is to be forever employed in learning the perfections, works, and government of God. It is an expanding capacity, ever increasing in strength by exercise, and improving in its present brief lodgment, until the organs, which connect it with this world, decay. The intimate and mysterious connexion between the mind and its mortal habitation, must remain to us an inexplicable fact; and how mind can act or know without the intervention of material organs, we cannot explain. But the fact rests not on inference, or our desire of its truth. God, who formed both the spirit and the body, has assured us of the mind's immortality, and its capacity to know and improve, after its release from the mortal habitation. The objects of knowledge are infinitely multiplied, and sufficient to employ this expanding capacity for ever. At present, we know only in part, but how wide, even here, the different degrees of knowledge in infancy and ripened age! But such differences vanish, when we think of the cloudless intelligence of unembodied spirit. The progress of knowledge, when men task their intellectual power to its utmost effort, under comparatively favourable circumstances, seems to us rapid. But, in another view, this is slow improvement, and no investigation is completed. What must be the march of intellect, when no clog shall hang on this continually expanding capacity? In looking abroad through a little portion of the vast expanse, and thinking how little we know, and how unbounded and sublime the materials of knowledge, we would like to become philosophers with angelick wings, that we might explore the worlds and wonders of creation. Could we thus soar for ages amid the systems of worlds, with the mightiest intellect of man's possession in this life, we should have learned little of the works and ways of God. We might find everlasting employment for all our intellectual efforts in this survey. We must have indefinitely enlarged capacity, even to scan the material worlds. But there are subjects of higher interest to be investigated in the development of redemption. This scheme of grace will doubtless furnish angelick and redeemed minds with objects of intense and ceaseless investigation. These thoughts, which we think are authorized by intimations of revelation, suggest the important use of this intellectual faculty in the present and future life. F. (To be continued.) PRACTICAL METHODISM. (Concluded from p. 192.) But what is, perhaps, the greatest evil of Methodism, is yet to be named. I mean its effect in begetting improper notions in regard to divine truth. The influence which our views of divine truth exert on the heart and conscience, is extensive and powerful. In regard to In regard to the production of proper religious feeling, our views of truth are every thing. When they are obscure and undefined, there will be a corresponding confusion in our feelings; when rational and luminous, they impart warmth, vigour, and propriety to every holy affection. In this view of the subject, how deplorable the extension which is given to views and notions based on clouds, and borne up by vapours, which vanish into thin air before the light of reason and Scripture. Were it not that I resolved, at the commencement, to exclude all doctrinal discussion from these papers, I could easily elucidate what I mean, by a slight glance at some peculiarly erroneous sentiments. I would refer to them, however, merely as to their practical tendency. Among the Methodists there is very much religious irreverence, arising, no doubt, from their improper views of the character of God. It is impossible to support their creed without derogating from some of the essential attributes of his nature. His sovereignty, omniscience, foreknowledge and unchangeableness, are by implication, set aside; and having lost a just view of his majesty, he can be approached with the less reverence. Hence their boisterous and unmeaning prayers, the great familiarity with which they treat the Most High,-their crude notions on the subject of "getting religion," and of sinless perfection. They suppose that religion can be obtained and lost at any timethat it consists in a boisterous agitation of the passions-that other means than prayer and the avoidance of temptation, are to be used in overcoming the devil,*—and that reverence and order in religious worship are the characteristics of coldness and formality. So incorrect are their notions in regard to some truths, and so lax and gross as it regards others, that where Methodism has been to any extent prevalent, it is almost impossible to make a proper impression upon the mind. You can do but little else than look upon, and A man of my acquaintance, a few years since, cried out, in an evening meeting among the Methodists, "brethren, I have got the devil, and will not let him go till I kill him." He continued fisting his Satanic Majesty against the wall, for half an hour, whilst the cries of "Amen," and "Glory to God," were rising all around him. |