which in our elder writers is often called difcourfe, or the difcurfive faculty, as by Hooker, Lord Bacon, and Hobbes and an understanding enlightened by reafon Shakespeare gives as the contradiftinguishing character of man, under the name 'discourse of reason.' In fhort, the human understanding poffeffes two diftinct organs, the outward fenfe, and the mind's eye, which is reason: wherever we use that phrase, the mind's eye,' in its proper sense, and not as a mere synonyme of the memory or the fancy. In this way we reconcile the promise of revelation, that the blessed will fee God, with the declaration of St. John, No man hath feen God at any time.*

I will add one other illuftration to prevent any mifconception, as if I were dividing the human foul into different effences, or ideal perfons. In this piece of steel I acknowledge the properties of hardness, brittleness, high polifh, and the capability of forming a mirror. I find all these likewife in the plate glass of a friend's carriage; but in addition to all these I find the quality of transparency, or the power of transmitting, as well as of reflecting, the rays of light. The application is obvious.

If the reader therefore will take the trouble of

the chickens afterwards, and find the food for them. I have myself known a Newfoundland dog, who watched and guarded a family of young children with all the intelligence of a nurse, during their walks.

1 Ep. iv. 12.-Ed.

bearing in mind these and the following explanations, he will have removed before hand every poffible difficulty from The Friend's political fection. For there is another use of the word, reason, arifing out of the former indeed, but lefs definite, and more exposed to misconception. In this latter use it means the understanding confidered as ufing the reason, so far as by the organ of reason only we poffefs the ideas of the neceffary and the univerfal; and this is the more common use of the word, when it is applied with any attempt at clear and distinct conceptions. In this narrower and derivative sense the best definition of reason, which I can give, will be found in the third member of the following sentence, in which the understanding is described in its three-fold operation, and from each receives an appropriate name. The fenfe,vis fenfitiva vel intuitiva — perceives: vis regulatrix-the understanding, in its own peculiar operation-conceives: vis rationalis-the reason or rationalized understanding-comprehends. The first is impressed through the organs of sense; the fecond combines these multifarious impreffions into ¡ndividual notions, and by reducing these notions to rules, according to the analogy of all its former notices, constitutes experience: the third fubordinates both of them, the notions, namely, and the rules of experience, to abfolute principles or neceffary laws: and thus concerning objects, which our experience has proved to have real existence, it demonstrates, moreover, in what way they are

poffible, and in doing this conftitutes fcience. Reason therefore, in this fecondary sense, and used, not as a spiritual organ, but as a faculty, namely, the understanding or foul enlightened by that organ,-reafon, I fay, or the scientific faculty, is the intellection of the poffibility or effential properties of things by means of the laws that conftitute them. Thus the rational idea of a circle is that of a figure constituted by the circumvolution of a ftraight line with its one end fixed.

Every man must feel, that though he may not be exerting different faculties, he is exerting his faculties in a different way, when in one instance he begins with some one self-evident truth,—that the radii of a circle, for inftance, are all equal,and in confequence of this being true fees at once, without any actual experience, that fome other thing must be true likewise, and that, this being true, fome third thing must be equally true, and fo on till he comes, we will fay, to the properties of the lever, confidered as the spoke of a circle; which is capable of having all its marvellous powers demonstrated even to a savage who had never seen a lever, and without fuppofing any other previous knowledge in his mind, but this one, that there is a conceivable figure, all poffible lines from the middle to the circumference of which are of the fame length or when, in another inftance, he brings together the facts of experience, each of which has its own separate value, neither increased nor diminished by the truth of any other fact which

may have preceded it; and making these several facts bear upon fome particular project, and finding some in favour of it, and some against it, determines for or against the project, according as one or the other class of facts preponderate: as, for example, whether it would be better to plant a particular spot of ground with larch, or with Scotch fir, or with oak in preference to either. Surely every man will acknowledge, that his mind was very differently employed in the first cafe from what it was in the second; and all men have agreed to call the results of the firft clafs the truths of science, such as not only are true, but which it is impoffible to conceive otherwise: while the results of the second class are called facts, or things of experience and as to these latter we must often content ourselves with the greater probability, that they are fo or fo, rather than otherwise-nay, even when we have no doubt that they are so in the particular cafe, we never prefume to affert that they must continue fo always, and under all circumstances. On the contrary, our conclufions depend altogether on contingent circumftances. Now when the mind is employed, as in the cafe first mentioned, I call it reafoning, or the ufe of the pure reason; but, in the fecond cafe, the understanding or prudence.

This reafon applied to the motives of our conduct, and combined with the sense of our moral responsibility, is the conditional cause of conscience, which is a spiritual sense or testifying state of the

coincidence or discordance of the free will with the reason. But as the reasoning confifts wholly in a man's power of seeing, whether any two conceptions which happen to be in his mind, are, or are not in contradiction to each other, it follows of neceffity, not only that all men have reason, but that every man has it in the fame degree. For reasoning, or reafon, in this its fecondary fenfe, does not confift in the conceptions themselves or in their clearness, but fimply, when they are in the mind, in seeing whether they contradict each other

or no.

And again, as in the determinations of conscience the only knowledge required is that of my own intention—whether in doing such a thing, instead of leaving it undone, I did what I should think right if any other perfon had done it; it follows that in the mere question of guilt or innocence, all men have not only reason equally, but likewise all the materials on which the reafon, confidered as conscience, is to work. But when we pass out of ourfelves, and speak, not exclufively of the agent as meaning well or ill, but of the action in its confequences, then of courfe experience is required, judgment in making use of it, and all those other qualities of the mind which are fo differently dif pensed to different perfons, both by nature and education. And though the reafon itself is the fame in all men, yet the means of exercifing it, and the materials,- that is, the facts and conceptions on which it is exercifed, being poffeffed in