thus contemplated, renews its keen and bitter feeling.

We shall presently notice the assistance which the mind receives towards indulging this miserable process from the imagination.

With respect to the modifications of fear, they are as various as the objects of human regard, and the sensibilities of the human character. Personal fear is probably the most intense and overpowering. The fear of poverty, the apprehension of disgrace, the dread of responsibility, and of public display, each have in turn shaken the mind, and produced forms of monomania. The operation of these agents is perfectly consistent with our theory of insanity. Personal fear is, as we have observed, the strongest of them all. But it wants generally, except in regard to a future state, that enduring quality, which should enable it to usurp the power of will. The apprehension of responsibility and of disgrace is more frequently productive of the disease. The dread of poverty keeps a grim spectre constantly before our eyes, which has in many instances taken out of our hands the reins of thought.

I know not how far I may be considered erroneous in throwing under the same head the emotion of fear in regard to ignominy to poverty and to

personal danger. They seem to me to have common points sufficiently marked to warrant this arrangement. There is a physical and moral shrinking under all these emotions, which may well unite them.-Let a man be told that he will lose a sum of money, which is of importance to him, he turns pale, his breathing becomes quickened, his hand less warm. But these are also the phenomena of personal fear, though less intense in degree, as men are ordinarily constituted.

In prosecuting the general division, which I have borrowed from Mr. D. Stewart, I have neither restricted myself to his enumeration of properties, nor to his assignment of those which actually form a part of his system. Thus the property, which I have next to consider, constitutes one of Mr. Stewart's active principles; to me it appears to deserve a place among the passive conditions of the mind. I advert to the moral faculty.

It is true, that in regard to the choice both of objects and of means for their attainment, conscience affords its sanction or its disapproval. But the two elements which appear essential to an active principle, namely, desire of an object, and energy in its pursuit, must, in all such cases,

conformably with the common use of terms, flow from some other source. Thus, the active principle, which desires power and pursues it, is called ambition. But among the crowd of its appropriate objects, and of the means for their attainment, the choice of the ambitious is submitted to the authority of conscience, according to the extent to which this principle may exist in their minds, either naturally, or as developed by cultivation.

The description admirably given by Dr. Butler of benevolence, would seem to require us to place this also among the passive conditions of the mind. But as there is clearly an active principle, popularly distinguished by that term, I prefer the expression, kindliness, for that passive condition, which is the opposite of selfishness. As selfishness inclines us to find our pleasure in what promotes our own interests, so kindliness inclines us to find our pleasure in what promotes the interests of others.

As conscientiousness, or the large development of the moral faculty, tends to make a given act seem eligible, because it is agreeable to our sense of right, or pleasing to God; so, self-love and kindliness tend to make an action eligible, because it is expedient, the first in relation to ourselves, the second in relation to others.

I mean, then, to express by selfishness that state of mind, which occasions us to find our enjoyment in any given line of conduct as serviceable to ourselves, and not as serviceable to others. Now this is a state highly predisponent to insanity, since it gives ample food to a noxious principle, which we have already noticed, namely, the tendency to regret and disappointment;-and that, on principles, which will readily be admitted. The wishes of a selfish man, to be a source of gratification to him, require the achievement of some definite object; and this, of course, he cannot always secure. The wishes of the benevolent, on the other hand, are accomplished, sufficiently at least for a large amount of gratification, if he can satisfy his mind, that he has done his best. But it is unnecessary to enter in to any proof of the fact, that our endeavours are more within our power than their success can be. Thus the stoics placed happiness in the possession of their good and wise man, because they supposed him to be concerned only with his pursuits and avoidances, and not with any definite acquisition; justly appreciating the fact, that happiness should be placed out of the reach of fortune, and that nothing is placed out of the reach of fortune except our endeavours.

I have next to consider the relation of the moral faculty to the subject of madness. When of sufficient strength to predominate over conduct, it is indeed a powerful antagonist, as lessening the number of our regrets. And this point it effects, not merely by the preference which it may be supposed to produce of right conduct over wrong; but also by contributing to the formation of a general principle, which is very rarely laid hold of by the mind, the principle of acting or abstaining from action because it is right. Men do not readily feel the pangs of regret, when they can refer the point of conduct to any settled rule. Dirk Hatterick's regrets were tranquillised by the reflection, that he had adhered to his one principle, namely, the keeping faith with his ship-owners. How much greater must their freedom be from regretful emotions, when they find their conduct in unison with a principle, with which the sympathies of human nature are in strict harmony.

When sparingly developed, the moral faculty has a very different effect on the mind: many of those persons, in truth, who are pitied for an overwrought conscientiousness-a mind too fine for this world—are illustrations of this defect. These persons are miserable not from having too much, but from having too little conscience. The un