teacher, History, to the great school, Posterity, have been oftener evil than good. They who set an example make a highway. Others follow the example, because it is easier to travel on a highway than over untrodden grounds. As the mind becomes habituated to travel in the great thoroughfares which example makes, it seems even unnatural to leave them. The daughter, taught by example to expend her whole capacities of admiration on dress, equipage, and manners, when she arrives at a marriageable age, will probably worship the Nash or Brummel of her caste, though the ten commandments lie in fragments about him. THE LAW OF CAUSE AND EFFECT. HERE is an inherent power or law of the THERE mind which we are but just beginning to learn how to use, -I mean the power or law which makes us ask the cause of whatever we see. Every event in this world is the effect of some precedent cause, and also the cause of some subsequent effect. Every event is linked, at one end, to a chain reaching forward into eternity. Myriads of the chains of causes and effects coëxist. They lie, as it were, side by side, and layer upon layer, sometimes running on parallel to each other, sometimes a thousand causes converging to one event, and again, one event diverging or branching out into a thousand others. In each case, if each cause were different, the effect would be different. / 6 A SUPERSTITION NATURAL. MONG a savage people, a pestilence chances to be stayed, after human sacrifices; and hence, whenever a pestilence rages, the anger of the gods must be appeased by human sacrifices again. Now, the authors of all these follies and cruelties were instinctively right in believing a cause to exist for each event. To this the law of their minds compelled them. But they were all wrong in their designation of the antecedent, casual fact. The mind, by its involuntary action, generalized these fortuitous connections into universal laws; and what floods, ocean-deep, of the direful miseries of superstition and barbarity, have, in consequence of these errors, been poured upon the world! THROUG CAUSE AND EFFECT. HROUGH the want of a clear perception and tween causes and effects, grows out of the present, that is, how the future we are prone to seek immediate pleasure or good, however small, rather than remote pleasure or good, however vast./ A REFLECTION-PERCEPTION. S it regards the intellectual man, nothing en larges or diminishes his power and usefulness more than the predominance of the reflective over the perceptive faculties, or that of the perceptive over the reflective. The reflective man is immeasurably superior to the perceptive one. His analysis is always deeper, so that he not only shows his antagonist to have been wrong, but shallow as well as wrong. I would not say a word against the cultivation of the perceptive powers; but it is most desirable that the reflective ones should maintain the ascendency. The true office of the former is to supply materials for the latter to work upon. INFLUENCES OF CITY AND COUNTRY. N the city, owing to the endless variety of inter IN esting objects which are presented to the senses, the perceptive faculties are more cultivated; in the country, the reflective or reasoning. It has been said, a thousand times, that if the health and robustness of the country were not regularly transferred into the city, the population of the latter would soon die out. The remark would be as true in regard to intellect and power as to physical stamina. W TEMPERAMENT. HETHER a man has one temperament or another, is described all over him, in his hair, in his eyes, in his complexion, in the style of his features, and in the firmness or sponginess of his flesh. I say, therefore, the proofs of a man's temperament are written all over him. He cannot help himself, any more than a horse can help showing how old he is by his teeth, or an ox by his horns, or a rattlesnake by his rattles. We know, too, that there is such a thing as a natural language, which is more truthful and unambiguous than the English language, or any other that was ever invented. This natural language consists in the peculiar tones of the voice, in the expression of the countenance, and in the gestures, the air and carriage, of a man, all betokening the spirit within. These outward signs declare what thoughts and emotions have made up the inward history of our lives; they declare what thoughts and emotions we are now indulging, and what, probably, we shall continue to indulge. NATURAL LANGUAGE. YOMMON emotions, no less than tragic pas sions, have their proofs, although it is not every man to whom these proofs are legible. But it no more follows that these proofs do not exist, because all men are not able to recognize them, than it does that there are not different species in botany or zoology, because all men are not able to distinguish one species from another. The common observer knows only a few different kinds of fishes. But had any dried bone, belonging to any variety in the whole class of mammalia, been shown to Cuvier, from the inspection of that bone he could construct the whole animal to which it belonged, and tell whether it lived upon flesh or grass. Let a single, solitary scale of a fish be shown to Agassiz, and he will make a picture of the whole fish to which the scale originally belonged. By tokens and testimonies still more numerous, he who understands the laws of temperament, and can read the natural language of man, can decipher their original tendencies, and learn, to a great extent, their present character |