mind was produced by a real object. But if no impression is made upon the mind, what room is there for the exercise of belief? If he, like another blind man, has formed an idea that red is like the sound of a trumpet, the impression is a false one, and the belief appended to it is also false, that is, it is appended to a false impression. For faith must always derive its character from the impression to which it is appended.

If the impression is correct, the faith is correct; and if the impression is incorrect, the faith is incorrect. And when we are considering impressions as produced by objects supposed or known to be real, we may very properly explain faith to be the impression made on our minds by some such object.

A man altogether destitute of the faculty of discerning the relation of numbers and quantities, could not understand how two and two make four-there could be therefore no impression on his mind corresponding to this truth, and therefore there could be no faith in it. There are many persons whose minds have been so little exercised in this way, that, though they may not by nature be incapable of receiving such impressions, it would yet be absolutely impossible to make them comprehend a mathematical process of any intricacy. These persons may believe certain abstract truths on the authority of others; but they never can believe in the processes by which they are demonstrated, because there are no impressions on their minds corresponding to these processes. The same

reasoning holds good with regard to our knowledge and belief on subjects which address our moral faculties, and other internal sensations. We must have impressions made on our minds corresponding to moral qualities, or to the conditions which address our sensitive nature, before we can believe in those qualities, or in the meaning of those events and conditions. How, for instance, do we become acquainted with the idea of danger, but by an impression of fear produced in our minds? Can we become acquainted with it by any other way? Impossible; for the only meaning of danger is, that it is something fitted to excite fear. How do we become acquainted with the meaning of generous worth and excellence, but by the love, esteem, and admiration which they excite in us? To a man whose heart is utterly dead to kindness, what meaning could kindness. convey? Where there are no moral impressions on the mind, there can be no belief on moral subjects; and according to the degree of the impression is the measure of the belief: For, in fact, the impression is the belief, and the belief is the impression.

In illustration of this, let us suppose two men travelling together whose minds are differently constituted. One has the ordinary degree of alarm at the idea of death; the other is entirely devoid of any such feeling. They come into a situation in which their lives are endangered. A stranger passing by interposes between them and the danger, and saves their lives, but at the

expense of his own. Our two travellers have both of them the use of their eyes and their ears, they have both of them seen and heard precisely the same things, and when they tell their story, their two narratives agree most minutely: And yet they believe two essentially different things. The one believes that the disinterested and heroic generosity of a stranger has saved them from what he cannot but consider as a dark and awful fate. In consequence of this, he rejoices in his safety as far as his sorrow for his noble benefactor will permit-he feels himself laid under the most sacred obligation to reverence the memory of this benefactor, and to repay to his surviving friends or family that debt of gratitude which he owes for his deliverance. The other understands nothing and consequently believes nothing of all this-he saw no evil in the death with which they were threatened, and of course no generosity in him who rescued them from it by encountering it himself-he neither feels joy, nor sorrow, nor gratitude, excited by any part of the history. These two men do not believe the same thing in two different ways; they in fact believe two different things. Examine the two impressions. They may be compared to the traces left by the same intaglio on two different substances-the one substance too solid to yield to the pressure, or receive the mould of the sculpture, exhibits nothing perhaps but the oval outline of the stone -whilst the other, possessing the right consistency, and coming in contact with every por

tion of the substance, receives and retains its perfect image, and exhibits, it may be, lineaments which express all that mind can grasp in thought or feel in tenderness. The mind of the one traveller has come in contact with every part of the action, and bears away accordingly the impression of the whole; the mind of the other was incapable of coming in contact with the whole; and of course has received a most imperfect and partial impression. We can only know the qualities of things by corresponding susceptibilities in our own minds. The absence of the susceptibility of fear absolutely incapacitated our traveller for understanding danger, and consequently for comprehending the generosity of the stranger's interference, or for perceiving that there was any thing joyful in his own deliverance. The actions of men are not to be considered as mere external shells, or dead carcasses-they in so far resemble those who act them, that they have a spirit and internal life, as well as an outward form-and that this spirit constitutes their character. Of course then we do not understand nor believe a moral action, whilst we do not enter into its spirit and meaning: and we can only enter into the quality of its spirit, through the excitement of the corresponding susceptibilities of our own minds. In morals we really know only what we feel. We may talk about feelings which we never experienced, and perhaps even correctly enough: but it is just as a blind philosopher may talk about colours.

I have here put the extreme case of the total destitution of a particular susceptibility, and in

such a case there can be no doubt of the result. But it is no less clear, that, even when there is no absolute destitution, there must always be a relative proportion between the degree of susceptibility possessed by the mind and the capacity for understanding and believing in facts which address these susceptibilities.

There is a considerable analogy between faith and memory, which may serve to illustrate the character of both. As faith accompanies the exercise of the different faculties by which we acquire a knowledge of things external to ourselves, as a judge of the reality or non-reality of the objects which produce the impressions of which the mind is conscious; so memory accompanies these same faculties as a judge, whether the impressions made on them are new to the mind, or have been present to it before. It is quite evident that no blind man could be said to remember a colour-and that no man whatever could be said to remember what he never received an impression of.

We

We see, then, that the impression which any object makes on our minds, whatever that impression may be, sums up and defines our knowledge and belief of that object. ought then to guard against being deceived by names. A number of men may receive impressions from the same object, and all these impressions may be different, and yet each of them will give to his own impression the common name of the object which produced it. An indifferent hearer may, when he listens to their story, suppose that they all know and believe the same thing; but a judicious and curious