angel, Cherubim and Seraphim, shall lend you aid; and in the very being and frame of the individual man, even cf him who opposes you, therein shall that faculty that is the Image of God desire and yearn after the Eternal Truths that come from God; and a word of these from you shall be a seed that shall bear fruit after years are gone.

Let the Parent, then, not fear his own weakness,—or the Magistrate his want of eloquence, or the Clergyman his want of influence—if the "eternal truths" are in him held and acted upon really and honestly, he has a power that shall and will tell in the strongest way.

But if he only talks, and is "eloquent and impressive," or even learned, in a mere logical, or mental, or rhetorical way, upon things of which he has no "Spiritual Apprehension," or Feeling, or Principle; he may be sure that he cannot communicate to others that which he has not himself. He need not wonder that in uttering to children, or pupils, or citizens, or congregations, the words and bare verbal enunciation, the outward shell of that Eternal Truth, that they should not make quite so great an impression as the same words shall from the mouth of the man who feels, and apprehends, and realizes that truth, as a Law of life more precious than gold or silver, and which he would be hewn asunder before he would transgress.

This subject, then, of the Divine Reason, we here dismiss, leaving it here, because only under the light of Revelation can it be completed; but yet so far as Natural Ethics go, discussed and examined, we trust satisfactorily. The remainder of the subject, the "Moral Harmony" of the Spiritual Reason, and its progress to perfection, properly belong to Religion.

Heart or Affections.-Its meaning.-Towards Persons.--Appetites and Desires towards Things.-It is towards Persons in Society.—Society in reference to this Power is a School of Love.-Errors that may be avoided by this consideration.-Use of Instinct in Animals.—Moral Principle and Rule of the Affections deducible from this.-What is "Nobleness" of Heart, and what Meanness.

WE have entitled this book of the "Heart or Affections,' thereby manifestly taking the one phrase and the other to be identical, as to that particular class of emotions that they signify. And we have given the two titles to the book, because each of these words is liable to be used in a somewhat varying sense, so that either might be mistaken for something that we do not mean; but the union of the two in the title, and the use of the one as an equivalent to the other, will, better than any formal definition, convey to our readers that particular idea that we wish to give to them.

By the "Heart," then, "or the Affections," we mean to imply the third of the "governing" powers of man,-those four powers, namely, by which we take him to be a moral being, and which we take him to have, as a living creature having a "Spirit;" and the animals not to have, as not having a "Spirit." While we admit, at the same time, that as being an "Animal," he has the “Animal" Mind and all its qualities; just as being an "extended" and "material" body, he has the qualities that

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belong to "matter filling space." But as a "man," he has to these last two, superadded the "Spirit" or "Rational Soul," of which we have taken "Conscience," "Reason," "the Affections," "the Will," to be the four faculties.

For this word "Heart" which we have employed, there are doubtless many significations which may occupy the attention of those that wish to quarrel and argue upon words; but there is no doubt at all that the one predominant meaning, setting aside peculiarities of idiom and metaphor, is that one which we have given. And he, who in ordinary discourse hears the word, save that its meaning is determined to some other of the other senses by the connection, he shall generally understand "the Affections," and these Affections, as not belonging by any means to the brute creation, but as peculiar to man; in one word, he shall conceive it to be peculiarly a Human faculty, and only by a very high metaphor, which every one that hears shall understand to be an exaggeration of speech, shall he apply the words to the brute creation. To the Dog, the Horse, or the Elephant, those that come nearest to the human race of all mere animals, the word "Heart" is never applied. This, then, is one distinction which serves to mark off and limit the meaning, that it is a quality that belongs not to brute animals, but to men

And when we look at it as so limited to man, notwithstanding a multitude of meanings derived from various idioms and various circumstances, still in our own Anglo-American, and, indeed, I believe in all the Gothic dialects, we shall find the predominant signification to be that the Heart means the "Affections."

True, there are other meanings. It means memory, or seems to do so, in that strange phrase, "getting by heart," commemorated and illustrated in the epigram:

"John has no heart, they say,-I do deny it :

He has a heart-and gets his speeches by it."

Again, in the dissolute times that followed close upon the English Commonwealth, there was a translation into English of a French Idiom, in which profligate men spoke of "Affairs of the Heart," (affaires du Coeur,) meaning seductions and adulteries; and licentious women spoke of "wanderings of the heart," (egaremens du Cœur,) meaning thereby adulterous love and profligate amours. And there is undoubtedly a whole range of English

literature, that of the age of Charles the Second, in which this word is so employed as the vile translation into English of the word cœur, employed in as vile a sense in French. But it is now antiquated, the word has cast off the meaning, and but few would understand it in that sense. This meaning, then, being merely the idiom of a time, and now fallen into almost total disuse, we shall pass by, having noticed it merely for the sake of distinctness.

Again, there is another idiom which is naturalized in our language, that which makes the "Heart" to be an idiomatic expression for courage or strength of mind as noticeable in the phrases, "Take heart," "Faintness of heart," "In good heart." And this we at once distinguish as an idiom, by using it in the phrase in that sense; but even in the same words apart from the phrase in an utterly different meaning. For instance, we say such "man is of a good heart," this is a moral commendation,-but "be of good heart" denotes courage.

Again, there is in a passage of the Bible an idiomatical use of it for the "Conscience," by the verbal translation of which, the verse is made almost unintelligible, "Brethren, if our heart condemn us not, then have we peace with God; if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our hearts, and knoweth all things."* A passage in which the Greek and English are only verbal, not real translation of the Hebrew word, "leb," (heart,) meaning "conscience."

So far with regard to the idiomatic meanings of the word. We shall now proceed to the metaphoric meaning. It means unquestionably, in metaphor, the innermost part of anything; as for instance, "the heart of the earth," "the heart of the country," "the heart of a tree," all which are figurative meanings for the "innermost part." And in this sense it may employed as a metaphor for the "whole moral nature" of man as the inner and most mysterious part of his being,-but still this shall be only metaphoric, and not a proper and peculiar sense.

Another metaphoric meaning, derived undoubtedly from the heart, the physical organ, is that which signifies that part wherein the strength lies, as "the farmers are the heart of the country;" and "to give heart," is to give strength.

* John iii. 20.

Putting aside all these peculiarities, we come to this conclusion: the word "Heart," in the idiom and metaphor of the English language, applied to persons in respect to Human Nature, means the "Affections." And this, in our language, is the predominant meaning, and the one generally understood by every one that hears the word, setting aside the peculiar cases under the peculiar circumstances above mentioned, in which each one naturally understands the exception, and takes it to be an exception, although perhaps the principle upon which he does so, is not present to his mind.

Having thus, with regard to this subject, obtained as much knowledge as we can obtain from the verbal examination, we shall now go onward to the examination of the thing itself,—that is, the governing power, which we have called by the name of the Heart or Affections. And the first and most evident character of the Affections is this, they are turned towards persons, they dwell upon persons, and in persons have their end and object. We have "Appetites" for things that are immediately required for the support of the body, as for food and sleep; "Desires" for other things which we would possess, as money, real estate, power. "Appetites and "Desires" for things, but "affections" for

persons.

It is plain that the "Appetites" belong to the body, and that in a manner so exclusive, as in the animals, almost to shut out the idea of reasoning or mental interference in any way. There seems to be a peculiar conformation in the animal, by which a certain particular kind of food shall, to the sense, give an overpowering pleasure. And he that shall look at the intense occupation and hurrying eagerness with which animals eat their food, he need not doubt that "appetite" in the brute is almost entirely exclusive of reasoning; brute-mechanical, if we may use the word, depending upon the "Sensation" almost wholly, and its power of being moved in a particular way, by a particular object. And that these appetites are required for the direct and immediate support of the body.

Now "desires" are likewise directed towards "things" as well as the "appetites ;" and when we look at these last, we find that there is not one of these that does not tend just as directly, though more remotely to "physical good," the good of the body, as the