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its ^ effect in raising the mind ; the importance to a man ' s inward self of % h& feefing that he is an intellectual being ; that he has acquired something which takes him out of the class of inferior animals ; the animals , whose only guide is their senses , which have no range of ideas beyond the objects they have seen and touched and tasted , and are condemned to move in one unaltered and unimproving track from the beginning to the end of their career .
Compared with the dull , the monotonous , the gloomy existence made up of this narrow circle of sensations and ideas , tiresome because perpetually recurring , and less and less exciting as the sensibility of the organs decays , how infinitely superior , even as a thing to be enjoyed , as a companion , a $ the inmate of the breast , the dearest and most important of all companions , counsellers , and friends , is the mind , so furnished , and so instructed , that it looks behind and before , and on every side ; the mind that can bring before its possessor the vast spectacle of nature , and the laws by which its mighty
operations are guided , the astonishing powers which man has acquired over the events of nature , from observing philosophically the laws by which they are produced ; and the greater , unspeakably greater , power which he is yet destined to acquire , by the improved application of his intellect to the same important course of observation ; in fine , the mind which , not confined to the events and objects of the physical world , can trace the history of man , from his first rude beginnings , through the varied series of acts in the different regions of the earth , to that state of improvement in which , in the more favourable circumstances , he is now to be found ; and which can even
anticipate his future history , and exult in the progressive happiness which , through a long train of improvements , he is yet to attain ! Such a mind is a perpetual feast . No source of pleasure , no antidote against misery , worthy to be compared with it , is found in the lot of man . If we did nothing by enlarged education but open this source of happiness , no exertion would be too great to confer the blessing on as many as possible of our fellow-men . But this is not all ; this is a small portion only of the inestimable advantages it bestows . This , and this alone , is the mind which marks the circumstances
by which human improvement is accelerated or retarded , and exerts its powers for the aggrandisement of the one , the extinction of the other . This , and this alone , is the mind which takes rational cognizance of the institutions by which the order ' of society is more or less perfectly preserved , which marks the principles whence the good , the principles also whence the evil effects proceed , and can form a salutary notion of what ought to be done to render perfect the social institutions of man , and y ield to him all the advantages which his union with his fellows is calculated to afford .
The last which we shall mention of the salutary effects of an instructed mind , is the improvement of private morals . No fact of human nature is better ascertained than this , that the classes of men whose range of ideas is the narrowest are the most prone to vice . Of the labouring classes it is commonly observed , that those who have the most monotonous occupations , who are confined to the constant repetition of a small number of operations ,
and whose senses and thoughts , for almost the whole of their waking hours , are chained to a few objects , are the most irresistibly drawn to intoxication . In truth , it is not easy for a man who has no experience of a mind sated with the endless repetition of the same few ideas , to have any conception of the p leasure which men with minds in that unhappy state aerive from the stimulus of strong liquors . This it is which alone gives any variety to the irksome sameness of their minds , which imparts intensity for the time to images and feelings become dull from perpetual recurrence , and affords a
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and the London University . \_ fff
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1827, page 167, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1794/page/7/
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