a long time without any restraint (and the same may be said of any one of the passions or affections), ultimately acquires the ascendency, and entirely prostrates, not only the Will, but the whole mind, at its feet. If, therefore, we duly estimate the great object of securing to the will a free, unperplexed, and vigorous action, we shall seriously endeavour, by the use of all those means which have a relation to a result so desirable, to restrain every appetite, propensity, and passion within its due bounds. Whenever they exhibit a disposition to pass the limits which a duly sensitive conscience has prescribed to them, let them be subjected to a rigid supervision and repression. If we permit them to take even one step beyond the sphere which nature has assigned them, we give them a sort of claim on another step and another; and, what is worse, we give them renewed power to enforce it. It is in their very nature, when they have once transgressed, to insist on repeated and continued transgression; and it is impossible effectually to evade their clamorous and unjust demands but by expelling them at once from their position, and bringing them back to the place where they belong.

It remains only to be added, that in the culture of the various forms of desire is to be included not only the repression of those which are evil, but the bringing out and strengthening of those which are good. The amiable and honourable propensities and passions, together with those of a purely religious kind, are entitled to a position in our sentient constitution of the first and highest rank; but how frequently does it happen that they are expelled from their appropriate place, and are compressed into some obscure nook, by the spreading and strengthening of those of a different character? But it is certainly incumbent on every one, who is desirous of securing the great object of freeness, vigour, and rectitude in the mental operations, to make them the subject of special and long-continued attention, to allure them forth into the light, and in every suitable way to accelerate their expansion and enhance their beauty.

§ 197. Some instances and proofs of the foregoing statements. The subject of the inconsistency of the perfect exercise of the Will, with an undue and unnatural predominance of the appetites and passions, has been particularly introduced to the reader's notice in the chapter on the Slavery of the Will. In that chapter various illustrations and facts were brought forward, and, of course, it is not so necessary at the present time to enter into further illustrations and proofs at much length. A few additional remarks will suffice.

Every one must have observed how destructive to every good resolve and noble effort is the inordinate indulgence of the bodily appetites. When they obtain the ascendency, as they not unfrequently do, they make the unhappy subject of them an entire slave; obscuring his intellect, blunting his conscience, perplexing and overthrowing all his serious and wise determinations, and debasing him to a level but little short of that of the brutes. The unhappy results of such indulgences are so frequently witnessed, that we feel at liberty to pass them by with this mere reference. But the evil does not rest with the undue indulgence of the appetites alone. Those active principles which, under the name of the propensities and affections, rank decidedly higher in the scale of our sentimentive nature, are hardly less hurtful, when indulged to excess, than excessive bodily appetites. This remark may perhaps be illustrated by a brief reference to the operations of a passion, which is obviously implanted for wise and beneficial purposes, and whose perversions are both less numerous and less injurious than those of some others; we refer to the passion of Fear. If all the various facts which go to make up the history of this passion could be presented before the reader, he would at once see what an immense obstacle an undue intensity of the passions presents to the unencumbered and vigorous exercise of the Will, when such exercise is put forth or is proposed to be put forth in any direction at variance with the precise line of the passion itself. If

it be otherwise, how can it have happened that many persons of clear perception, and of undoubted powers of intellect in every respect, have nevertheless been the complete slaves of the irresistible sway of the passion now referred to!

There is one individual, whose mournful history is so familiar that a mere suggestion of it will answer our purpose; we refer to the English poet Cowper. The passion of fear in this amiable and interesting writer (operating undoubtedly on a constitution easily excited and nervous) was so undue in its influence, that the will was often entirely overcome and prostrated, and he was often unable to perform what other persons, greatly his inferiors in the length and breadth of intellectual perception, would have conceived a very easy thing to be done. While in some respects (all those which go to constitute a man of literature and a poet) but very few men could justly claim a superiority over him, he sunk in others to the grade of infantile weakness; and so conscious was he of this, that his vivid imagination represented himself as the subject of ridicule and sport among those he met with in the streets.

We recollect to have seen it represented in a German writer of deserved celebrity, that the key to the character of the Apostle Peter, whose active and benevolent life was often strangely anomalous and inconsistent with itself, is to be found in the undue operation of the passion of fear. And there seems to be much truth in the remark. If one will carefully recall the incidents in the life of that devout and faithful follower of our Saviour, he will readily recognise how applicable the remark is. When the disciple, with an undue confidence which is not unfrequently found associated with an undue susceptibility to fear, assured the Saviour he would not forsake him though all others should, he undoubtedly uttered what he felt, and what he felt, too, when he made the asseveration, most deeply and sincerely. But when the Saviour's prospects were clouded, when the hour of

the prince and of the powers of darkness came, when the shepherd was smitten and the smiters seemed to have all might in their hands, then it was that those intense misgivings and fears, to which this devoted follower of Christ had probably been always subject, came rushing in, billow upon billow, till they overwhelmed all the landmarks of love and of duty, and bore him away captive into the camp of the enemy.

We repeat it, therefore, that we should carefully study the nature of the appetites, propensities, and affections; we must make them the objects of a patient and assiduous culture; we must, in particular, subject them to a strict supervision and control; otherwise, in some unexpected hour, they will arise in their might, and, in defiance of the clamours of conscience and the struggles of the volitional power, will bring the whole man under their dominion.-True as it undoubtedly is that the will has a real and substantive power in itself, it is still true that this power has its limits, and cannot withstand everything; it is still true that every inordinate exercise of the appetites and passions trenches upon the sphere of the volitional faculty, and diminishes something from the freeness and vigour of its action.

§ 198. Importance of repressing the outward signs of the passions. But is it a fact that the propensities and passions are actually under our control in any degree? It cannot be doubted. Instances have already been given which show it. There is a very striking remark of Mr. Locke on this subject, in his interesting chapter on Power. "Let not any one say he cannot govern his passions, nor hinder them from breaking out and carrying him into action; for what he can do before a prince or a great man, he can do alone, or in the presence of God, if he will."-But, granting the general fact, the inquiry still remains, What course shall be taken, what particular method shall be adopted, in order to control them and keep them in their place? Our limits will not permit us to undertake an answer

to this question at length, and we shall accordingly leave the whole subject to the reflections and good judgment of the reader, with a few remarks upon a single topic, which is the more interesting as it has seldom attracted notice; certainly not that degree of notice to which it is justly entitled.-There is a tendency in every emotion and passion to express itself outwardly by means of natural signs, such as the motions of the eye, the changes of colour in the countenance, the movements of the muscles, and the tones of the voice. As the tendency is a natural one, it may be difficult to control it entirely; but it is highly important to attempt to do so. And the reason is (and a singular fact it is in the economy of the mind), that the outward expression reacts upon the inward principle, and gives increased intensity to the internal feeling. "As every emotion of the mind," says Mr. Stewart, "produces a sensible effect on the bodily appearance, so, upon the other hand, when we assume any strongly expressive look, and accompany it with appropriate gestures, some degree of the correspondent emotion is apt to arise within us. Mr. Burke informs us that he has often been conscious of the passion of anger rising in his breast, in consequence of counterfeiting its external signs; and I have little doubt that, with most individuals, the result of a similar experiment will be the same. Campanella, too, the celebrated philosopher and physiognomist (as Mr. Burke further observes), when he wished to form a judgment of what was passing in the mind of another, is said to have mimicked, as accurately as possible, his appearance at the moment, and then to have directed his attention to the state of his own feelings."*

Furthermore, as the tendency of the emotions and passions is to express themselves outwardly, every suppression of the outward signs operates as a direct rebuke and curtailment of the passions themselves. The passions, when they are excited, are of such a violent

* Stewart's Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, vol. iii., ch. ii., § ii.