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another , and now she cat * say lo herself , I exist ; I am myself ; and I am perpetually the same being , "
On Will «* By the affections which accompany feeling the will is developed , the highest manifestation of the life of the soul , its power of self-motion ; the power which it possesses to follow one or another of its different and often conflicting appetencies ; to govern them , more or less , also its feelings and ideas ; and to do this freely , that is , independently of any compulsory determination to act thus or otherwise ; and therefore to direct its power upon this or that point , self-determined , but confined within the circle of its affections . This freedom of the will is an internal fact which no unbiassed observer can deny , because every man is conscious of it in every self-determination . By the freedom of the will every endeavour of the soul becomes its own act and deed , and by this the active , conscious being is raised to personality . The actions of men do indeed proceed out of the heart , in which is the spring of the affections which give to human life impulse and aim ; but desire is not will ; it is a merely passive state ; it furnishes to us the objects of action , but it does not determine the direction oH the active power . This is done only by the highest power of the soul , the will , through
which its course of living becomes its own act , and through which it raises or degrades itself , according as it yields itself up to the higher or lower affections . Thus the relation between the three faculties of the soul , capacity to feel , consciousness and will , and the order in which they are unfolded , appears to be this—the heart is the source out of which the others flow , and out of which they create their matter and their object . "
On the Ideas of Morality and Religion , € t An idea is the necessary inward image of the received impression ; it is not a creation ; it is only a representation . The clearer the impressions , the more distinct are the ideas produced by them . These are retained and expressed by ns through the instrumentality of language ; and a word has been described the vehicle of a thought formed out of an invisible breath . The information of others can obtain entrance into the mind only as it has a relation to our prior experience . We understand it only as it is composed of ideas which we can recognize ; but if it contains any thing quite insulated , and which has never stood before our attention , it is not intelligible by us ; for the soul can conceive only what it has experienced , and by no art can we raise in one born blind an idea corresponding to our idea of colour . It is the same with the ideas of intellect as with those of sensation : we obtain them only by reflection upon that which has first been felt by us . Whence should the thought of a suprasensible world occur to us , if not
suggested to us by our internal feeling , by that inquisitive and monitory intimation from which the thought of it is at length clearly developed ? How should the belief of immortality be awakened in us , if the heart did not feel a reluctance from annihilation , and an appetence to a continued existence ? And how should we attain to the idea of a divine government , if the active feeling of our dependence upon a higher power did not force it
upon our minds ? The feelings exist within us before the ideas which represent them . They are the oflfepring of our inmost nature . They are not derived from impressions of the sensible world : rather , their source is a secret to ourselves , and we can ascribe them only to the influence of the great Creator : for this reason they are represented in the Scriptures as effects of the Holy Spirit . This source of ideas which are obtained from
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Letters / rom Germany . 291
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1831, page 291, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2597/page/3/
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