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    that it is our first object to make a knowledge of matter react beneficially on a knowledge of mind . Let me preface what I have to say on these subjects ., by recalling to your recollection a common but important division of the objects of knowledge , which separates them into things external

    to ourselves—as matter and its properties ; and things internal to ourselves—as thoughts and their modifications : and let me remind you , that as it is by perception , through the senses , that we become acquainted with things external to ourselves , so it is by consciousness , an intuitive feeling of the workings of our reasons , that we become acquainted with things internal to ourselves .

    Let me avail myself of this well-known distinction to observe , that a person with an inactive imagination and apathetic feelings may be said to have within him a blank , instead of the intellectual world of which others may say , but he cannot , * my mind to me a kingdom is , ' a world of thoughts and feelings , in which ample materials for happiness may be found . On the other

    hand , of a person whose imagination is restless , and whose feelings are excitable , it may be said , that though his mind is a kingdom , it is a rebellious and an ill-ordered kingdom . In the first case , that of a person with an inactive imagination and apathetic feelings , the mind may be compared to a vacuum , empty of every thing ; and in the second case , the case of a person with a restless imagination and excitable feelings , the mind may be likened to a haunted chamber , full of ' unreal mockeries . ' In neither

    case is the mind a well-ordered world , full of physical realities , and intellectual truths , and moral principle ., out of which a sound happiness may be constructed . May I be allowed to say that Wesley found men ' s minds , and that not only in small country towns , with imaginations inactive and feelings apathetic , sunk in the bigotries of orthodoxy and the

    carelessness of scepticism ; and that he adopted a discipline calculated to make the imagination restless and the feelings excitable , instead of a discipline fitted to make the imagination wholesomely active , and the feelings wholesomely excitable . If

    it be objected that our plan , namely , of commencing by exciting the imagination and rousing the feelings , is in danger of producing something of the restlessness and excitability which Wesley ' s discipline produced , we will not again urge that the strong sense we may acquire from Shakspeare may balance the vivid

    imagination he has roused within us ; but we will frankly acknowledge there is some such danger in the discipline we have proposed as has been objected , and will now proceed to consider the remedy Should any one exclaim * Why have you proposed a discipline likely to produce a state of mind requiring a remedy V I answer , that if I had been acquainted with any discipline whi ch

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    270 The Dijfltiion of Knowledge amongtt the People .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1834, page 270, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2632/page/38/