ELEMENT S

O F

MORAL SCIENCE.

PART FIRST.

PSYCHOLOGY.

"T

HIS fcience explains the nature of the several powers or faculties of the human mind. By the faculties of the mind, I understand thofe capacities which it has of exerting itself in perceiving, thinking, remembering, imagining, &c.; and by the mind itself, or foul, or fpirit*,

*These words are not ftrictly fynonymous; but it is needlefs to be more explicit in this place! A

of

of man, I mean that part of the human constitution which is capable of perceiving, thinking, and beginning motion, and without which our body would be a senseless, motionlefs, and lifelefs thing. These faculties were long ago divided into those of PERCEPTION and thofe of VOLITION; and the divifion, though not accurate, may be adopted here. By the perceptive powers we are fuppofed to acquire knowledge; and by the powers of volition, or will, we are faid to exert ourselves in action.

1

CHAPTER I.

THE PERCEPTIVE FACULTIES.

10.

Hefe may perhaps be reduced to nine. 1. External Senfation, by which we acquire the knowledge of bodies and their qualities. 2. Consciousness, by

which we attend to the thoughts of our minds, and which is also called Reflection. 3. Mémory. 4. Imagination. 5. Dreamings 6. The faculty of fpeech, whereby we discover what is paffing in the minds of one another. 7. Abstraction, a thing to be explained by and by. 8. Reafon, judgement, or understanding, by which we perceive the difference between truth and falfehood, 9. Confcience, or the Moral Faculty, whereby we distinguish between virtue and vice, between what ought to be done and what ought not to be . done.

11. Whether this diftribution of our perceptive powers be accurate, or fufficiently comprehenfive, will perhaps appear afterwards; at prefent we need not stop to inquire. I fhall confider them, not in the order in which I have just now named them, but in that order that shall seem the moft convenient. And I begin with the faculty of speech: that fubject being connected with fome others that my hearers are already acquainted with, and therefore likely to be attended with little difficulty,

even to those who are not much accuftomed to abstract inquiry; to which it will, for that reafon, ferve as a proper and easy introduction. But, before I proceed to it, a few remarks must be premifed for the purpose of explaining fome words which will frequently occur in the course of these inquiries.

12.

SECTION I

Some words explained.

THAT we exist, and are continually employed about a variety of things, is certain and self-evident. Sometimes we perceive things themselves; and this happens when they are fo far prefent with us as to affect our organs or powers of fenfation: thus we juft now perceive light, and the other things around us. Sometimes they are not in

we think of things when this fenfe prefent with us.

Thus at mid

night, or when our eyes are fhut, we can

think of light, and the other things we have feen or heard during the day. When we thus think of that which we do not perceive, that is, which does not affect our powers of fenfation or perception, we are faid, in the language of modern philofophy, to have an idea or a notion of it. Har bere notionem rei alicujus, is a Latin phrase of like import.

13. The word idea has been applied to many purposes; and, from the inaccurate manner in which fome writers have used it, has proved the occafion of many errors. It has been used to denote opinion, as when we speak of the ideas of Ariftotle, meaning his opinions or doctrines: but this sense of the word is rather French than English.. Sometimes it means one's particular way of conceiving or comprehending a thing; as when we fay, The Epicurean philofo-phy, according to Cicero's idea of it, was very unfriendly to virtue. It was long ufed to fignify an imaginary thing, by the intervention of which we were fuppofed to perceive external things, or bodies. For many ancient and modern philofophers

fancied,