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    of the corporeal frame . The capacity of the mind should he continually enlarging , so that sublime ideas may be received with less and less pain and difficulty , new and strange notions be contemplated without surprise or aversion , and a judgment be formed with a continually increasing accuracy , from a wider and a wider survey of the worlds of matter and of mind . The

    natural and happy consequences of such enlargement of capacity in fitting us for further improvement , we shall hereafter endeavour to shew . Shadowy and bounded as is our view of the future , and awful as is the faint conception of the extent of those regions of science which remain to be explored , we may yet attain to sufficient assurance to pronounce that there is not a wider intellectual difference between the new-born infant and such a

    philosopher as Newton , than between a man of weak and neglected mind , and him , however circumstanced externally , whose " large discourse , " whose power of *« looking before and after , " afford some intimation of the ultimate destination of that being who is empowered to become 4 i so noble in reason , so infinite in faculties ; in action , so like an angel , —in apprehension , so like a God !"

    V * The modes in which the mind may be employed upon the information which the senses bring to it are various ; and are commonly ( though improperly ) included in one class , under the term Meditation . When trains of ideas are allowed to enter and depart , while the understanding remains passive , the mind cannot properly be said to be engaged in meditation , but is rather amused in reverie . Though this is the very lowest intellectual occupation , it is the one we all spend the most time in , and like the best . The most active thinkers have ever lamented the loss of

    time and power which their tendency to reverie has occasioned ; and those who are less aware of the existence of the evil , are in the habit of making yet greater sacrifices to intellectual sloth . We should all be ashamed of sitting at a window , for hours of every day , to gaze idly on what was passing without ; yet we indulge our minds in indolence of a similar kind to an awful extent , unconscious or regardless of the danger of losing all power over our thoughts , and of enervating every faculty we possess . By the law

    of association , every idea entertained in the mind introduces other ideas , which , in their turn , bring in more . This law we cannot suspend ; but it is in our power to controul its operation , and to make choice of the mode in which our ideas shall be combined . By voluntary power , ideas may be recalled in the order in which they were first presented , which is an act of the memory ; as when we wish to fix in our minds a conversation with a friend , or the contents of a book we have been reading . By voluntary

    power we may combine ideas in a new series , as we never combined them before . This is an act of imagination ; as when we think of our friend placed among new scenes , and plan what his conduct will be in untried circumstances . Either of these operations may be made useful to the mind by enabling it to lay a firmer hold on knowledge previously gained , or to derive refreshment from a change of occupation ; but if the processes are indiscriminately mixed , or if the memory be employed on unworthy objects , or the imagination indulged to an undue degree , it would have been better

    ? T « v « of these Essays are inserted in the present number in order that the series may be completed next month , and this valuable manual of Thought be presented entire to the possessors of the volume for the current year . Ei > .

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    Essays on the Art of Thinking . 761

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1829, page 751, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2578/page/7/