The present volume embraces only a portion of those subjects that should find a place in a course of elementary reading in Mental Philosophy. I still keep in view what would give completeness to the plan that has been so long projected. STANFORD RIVERS, November, 1857. I. T. V. Metaphysics: Concretive Abstractions.... VI. Metaphysics: The Sense of Fitness and Order................................. XII. Intellectual Emotions and their Results.................... 153 XIII. Contingent Development of the Intellectual Faculties.. 181 XIV. Language as related to Mental Operations............................ XV. Relative Value of Certain Terms................. XVI. The Emotions: Distribution of the Subject............................ 217 XVII. Emotions related to the Individual Well-Being.......... 224 XVIII. Cementing Emotions of the Social System......................... 246 XIX. Antagonistic Emotions of the Social System.............. 277 THE WORLD OF MIND. I. STATEMENT OF THE SUBJECT. 1. A DEFINITION can be strictly applicable only when the subject to which it relates is thoroughly known to us. But the subject now before us includes much that is obscure, and to many of the questions which meet us on this ground a conjectural answer only can be given; we therefore abstain from attempting that which, though it might be precise and exact as to the terms employed, must assume more than is certain, and would so far be delusive. 2. In place of a formal definition of what we intend by the word MIND, or by the phrase THE WORLD OF MIND, I offer a descriptive statement, which at least will serve to mark off our proper subject, and to keep it apart from other subjects to which it stands related, and with which it is very liable to be confounded. A descriptive statement, such as we have now in view, must not be regarded as if it were dependent, in any rigid manner, upon the precise words that may be employed to convey it. Language must not affect to teach more than is actually known. 3. MIND, so far as we are cognizant of it by our individual consciousness, and by our intercourse with those like ourselves, and by observation of the various orders of animated beings around us, although it is conjoined with an animal organization, is always clearly distinguishable therefrom as the subject of intellectual science. But when we attempt to describe it, we can only do so as if it were one with that animal framework, apart from which we have no direct knowledge of it in any way or in any single instance. 4. MIND, as conjoined with an animal organization, is that which lives, not merely as vegetable structures live, but more than this; for it is related to the outer world by organs of sensation: it moves, and it moves from place to place by an impulse originating within itself; and it has also a consciousness, more or less distinct, of its own existence; that is to say, it possesses, in a greater or less degree, a reflective life, and it is capable of enjoyment and of suffering. 5. THE WORLD OF MIND comprehends all orders of beings that exhibit those conditions of life which we here specify. The world of Mind is, therefore, a wide world; it constitutes a community that is incalculably extended and multiplied on all sides; it is a community in the midst of which the human species stands as an exceptive instance, in two respects broadly marked-first, by the vast interval which separates it from the classes next below itself on the scale of faculty or power; and, secondly, in a numerical sense, for this higher order of Mind is but as one to millions, incalculably many, of the inferior rank. 6. When we attempt to mark off the world of Mind |