In our last number we expressed a strong doubt as to the utility of works on Natural Theology, written with a view of convincing the sceptic, and thought that they must needs fail of effecting the end desired. This led to some observations on the reasoning faculty, and on its subserviency to passion in all matters which nearly concern our hopes and fears. The opinion expressed may to some appear exaggerated, but we think that it derives support from observation and experience. At all events it deserves farther consideration. Two men are discussing a question, and they employ the same premises, but come to different conclusions. How shall we explain the discrepancy? Is it that the reasoning faculty acts differently in the two cases;-that it pursues a different path in advancing from the premises to the conclusion? Is it not rather that each disputant, before he enters the lists, determines to win the battle; and to fight for victory, not for truth? Or take a case in which a point is argued affecting the interests of two parties. The premises are the same, but the conclusions opposite. The parties interested can come to no decision to whom do they refer the solution of the difficulty? To one who has no interest in the question under discussion; that is to say, to one whose reason can act without bias, and pursue its natural and consistent course, neither distorted by passion nor bribed by self-interest.

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A serious, and oftentimes a fatal error arises from confounding the excesses of passion with the defects of reason. Madness, for instance, is said to be a malady of the reason, and men wonder much to find madmen reason well from premises partly correct and partly incorrect;-correct when the subject is one remote from the halucination which possesses them, but incorrect when the halucination supplies the materials for thought. Now the process of reason is the same in both cases: it signifies not whether the premises are true or false; they fully warrant the conclusion. We do not now speak of cases of fatuity, produced by severe injury to the head, or sudden shock to the mind, when all its faculties are at once overthrown; but of madness in the more ordinary acceptation of the term. Now we contend that in the majority of cases of madness the reasoning faculty is intact, and that in all its strange wanderings it is made

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the slave of the predominant passion, or of the ruling idea, in the same way, though in a much greater degree, than in those whom we call sane. There are many cases of madness, indeed, in which reason asserts her rights, and gives ample proof that she is not the willing instrument of passion. We remember a case in point which made a strong impression on our own mind. A poor woman had long been remarkable among her neighbours for her affectionate care of her family, and for her sober and orderly conduct; after a severe illness the idea entered her mind, and ultimately gained the entire mastery over it, that her husband no longer loved her as he had done; she became jealous, and her jealousy increased day by day, in spite of every attention and every protestation. Her husband and her children were neglected. At length she heard voices whispering in her ear, and calling her names, and she said that these voices were her husband's. When her reason was directly appealed to,when the question was put whether her husband was near her when she heard the voices which she stated to be his, she at once saw the dilemma in which she was placed, and burst into tears; and this occurred as often as a strong appeal was made to the reasoning faculty. In the stronger sex the same appeal excites ungovernable rage, or ends in unintelligible ravings. And to And to these same expedients does passion have recourse in the sane. Tears are a woman's refuge, rage a man's, and both are blended in the child. The above is but one of many illustrations that might be given in support of the view we have taken, that the reason of the madman is merely enslaved, but not destroyed.

It has been said that all men are mad, and that there is no one who does not depart more or less widely from the rule of reason, and the dictates of prudence. Though this opinion can scarcely be received as true, it is in the highest degree probable that madness in its most marked form is nothing more than an exaggeration of that state of mind which leads in the sane to errors of reason and of action ;-that the reason of the madman is the slave of passion or of fancy, whilst the reason of the sane is merely their servant. The reason of the madman cannot emancipate itself from bondage, but the reason of the sane is free to leave the service of its masters. In the madman the will is paralyzed; in the man of sane mind the will remains, though it be exercised with difficulty. Madmen yield to their passion or their fancy without an attempt at resistance; the sane can struggle for freedom, and bring other faculties of the mind to their aid against that which would enslave it. We hear of a moral insanity: what is this but reason become the slave of passion? We know of an intellectual insanity: what is this but reason become the slave of fancy? There is a religious insanity: what is this but reason enslaved by conscience? For conscience, though less liable to err than any other instinct of the mind, has, nevertheless, its excesses, and sometimes attains a sensitiveness so acute as to constitute a disease.

How closely the condition of the sceptic and the infidel border on that of the madman, God only knows. How fearfully dangerous the state of that man is who, whether by sins of omission or commission, gives too much power to thoughts, and too much force to habits, opposed to the belief in a religion which promises reward and threatens punishment, it requires no super human penetration to discover. No one knows how soon the habit of doing wrong may end in the impossibility of thinking aright; nor to what extent a train of thought may be safely indulged, and how often

repeated, before the mind shall lose all power of preventing its intrusion, and hold itself free from its enthralment. Man cannot draw the line between sanity and madness. They border on each other, and pass into one another by insensible gradations; there may be a line of demarcation, but it has hitherto escaped the learned and the wise. He who fears madness will keep far from every excess of thoughts and action. He who would act aright must guard his thoughts; and he who would think aright must be jealous of his actions. Danger is not far from any of us, and the hidden precipice yawns for its victims. Fast and furious does passion drive us to its brink, and reason is weak to save us from destruction.

The foregoing observations have not, we trust, led us too far from the subject we are considering. The object we have had in view is to show that the reason to which the Natural Theologist appeals is not always in a condition to listen to his arguments; and this, because habits of thought or of action opposed to conviction have gained the mastery over his mind; and that this condition of the intellect differs in degree only from that insanity which mankind in general regard, though we believe unjustly, as a malady of the reason.

Let nothing which has now been said lead the reader to think that we wish to undervalue the faculty of reason: on the contrary, we yield to none in our admiration of her power. Hers are the achievements of science and the triumphs of art. To her we owe our superiority to the brutes, and our mastery over all created things. She owns no limits but those which the senses prescribe: she knows no uncertainty where she suffers no interference. By her own unaided efforts she has constructed the instruments of knowledge; with scanty aid from the senses, she has solved the problem of the universe. She has explored the heavens, and measured the worlds which people them : she follows the planet in its course, and tracks the wandering comet. The future is not hidden from her view, for she foretells the coming of the dim eclipse. Calm and confident, she awaits the fulfilment of her prophecies. It is not in the heavens alone that she displays her power. She descends from her lofty height that she may enrich man with her discoveries: she makes the stars his beacons, and the moon his pilot: she guides the wanderer through the desert, and leads the mariner in safety across the pathless ocean. She teaches him to avoid the hidden shoal and the threatening rock, and brings him in safety to the wished-for haven. She explores the earth, and places all its riches at his disposal: she controls the powers which threaten him with danger, and turns them to his use. Science and art are her children, and she devotes them to the improvement of mankind.

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But whilst we admire this wondrous faculty of reason, let us not exalt it too much above the other faculties of our mind. It is a common error suppose that reasons acts with greater certainty than passion or instinct, and marches, so to speak, more directly and securely to her object. Those who think thus of reason forget her early wanderings and misdirected energies; they forget her long and heavy slumber, and her slow awakening; they forget how far she strayed from the path which leads to truth, and how hardly she has toiled up the steep ascent. What time, what labour has been employed to rear the fabric of our knowledge! And this how imperfect, how insecure, how unfinished! The inaccessi

ble heavens have been mapped out and measured by the rule and compass, the earth has been tortured till she confessed her secrets, the laws which govern the material universe have been unfolded to our view; but nothing which deserves the name of a cause has yet been found. Invisible and, in all probability, immaterial forces act within us and about us; but we know them only by their effects; their essence remains unknown. Matter acting upon matter renders some of these agents evident to our senses, and man can produce them to the sight at will. He makes the subtle element of heat his minister, and imprisons the flashing lightning: the force which draws the magnet to the pole seems to acquire new properties beneath his hand. Every day brings some new addition to his knowledge, and adds some new element to his power. But he remains pro*foundly ignorant of real causes, and is obliged to confess that the empire of reason is confined within the narrow limits of sense. The grander objects of creation are placed beyond his reach; the smaller ones elude his most careful search. All that we know forbids us to hope that reason will ever escape from the leading-strings of sense; and the experience of centuries can teach no other lesson than that which the priest of reason long since unfolded.

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Homo, naturæ minister et interpres, tantum facit et intelligit, quantum de naturæ ordine, re vel mente observaverit; nec amplius scit, aut potest."

If the discovery of real causes be denied to reason, then must the discovery of a first great cause be for ever placed beyond her reach. One step beyond the limits of sense, and all is dark and doubtful. The poets' fabled chaos is at hand, and the dark realm peopled with vain imaginings. Reason reels as she enters it; the rule and compass drop from her palsied hand, and she staggers back to a firmer soil and a brighter day. But within her own domain reason is all-powerful; and never can we enough admire her vast resources and her mighty deeds.

Is this, then, the being whom we have represented as the advocate of self-interest, and the ready slave of passion? We may safely answer this question in the affirmative; but, that we may not be solitary in our opinion, we must state our grounds for it; we must analyze the operations of reason, and trace her step by step in her march of discovery. In the first place, then, we would observe that reason advances slowly and laboriously in her pursuit of truth. She takes no step in advance till after mature consideration, and much time is consumed in ascertaining the firmness of the ground on which she treads. Her foot once securely planted, she is ready for a fresh advance, and the ground she has once gained is never lost. To drop all metaphor, the faculty of reason differs from all other faculties of the mind in this, that each conclusion obtained from correct premises becomes, in its turn, a premise, and this, again, the groundwork of a fresh conclusion. Hence, it happens that the work of reason has been compared to a chain consisting of link added to link, or to a building of which one stone is piled upon another; the uppermost stone being to the one to be laid upon it what the foundation stone was to the second from the ground. In comparing the operations of reason with those of passion, we must not confound the results with the process by which they were obtained. Let us suppose reason and passion to act together in the same mind: in order to gain an idea of their respective powers, we must compare what passion accomplishes with what reason effects in the same space of time. Before reason has laid down her pre