and their action thereupon correspondingly energetic, who, in a little time, are just as vehemently excited in an opposite direction. The Will is impressed now by one motive, then it is again impressed by another; and no impression seems to have the power of lasting, or of enduring for any time. Others there are, who, when they come under the influence of motive, seem to have the power of fixing that motive in their Will as a future guide, of stamping, as it were, the immediate volition* in the Will, and sealing it therein, as a set decree and law of future action. This power of determinate Purpose, this capacity of ordaining a present decree, upon present motives, that shall be an inward law and rule for future action, is manifestly quite a different thing from that other of admitting or not admitting motive. We can distinguish them in the action of our own minds; we can see them as distinctly in other men's actions; and we mark them by a variety of words, implying the difference: the words "freedom," "choice," "liberty," express the one action of the will; "purpose, "determination," "fixedness," "decision," the other.

Nay, this fact of Purpose you shall see manifest itself in every department of life. Enter into a school, and you shall find one class sent there by their parents, and there for that reason; rising in the morning at the appointed hour, because of another external circumstance, studying because there are lessons set, and there are tutors that teach,-obeying for the reason that obedience is the law of the place, and so making circumstance their law, and never once looking forward beyond the day, never troubling themselves for any thing beyond the circumstance immediate to them in time and place. What is their Purpose? they have no Purpose;-they mean to get through. What their determination ?—they have no determination: they let Chance and Circumstance, Position, and the Will of any that think it worth while to rule them, decide for them. Such persons I have seen in all states and conditions of life, in schools, in colleges, in professions, in trades, in society, in whom the faculty and power of Purpose and predetermination either had never been trained to action, or else had perished; floating weeds upon the waves of circumstance; ships, with sails and helm, but unprovided with chart and compass, or hand to hold the helm,—such are men without the power of Purpose.

*Volition means an act of the Will.

Others I have seen quite different from these:—who look around them, that they may see their relation to existing circumstance, and what they can do in modifying it for their good;-who look inwardly upon themselves, their hopes and fears, and power and desires, and see what they wish, what is their Will, and their Desire; and who then form steady purposes, which, inwardly framed and inwardly settled, are laws of life and of action, binding, self-imposed upon the Will, ruling it as the helmsman's hand and eye rules the helm of a vessel,-and who henceforth guide it, according to that inner law of Purpose, across the waves, and through them, against the wind or with it, but still according to the inward law self-imposed, of set Purpose, and fixed determination.*

So, while the power of resistance to external motive is in the will by nature, and in it is freedom, the power of Purpose is that by which the will sets and establishes to itself a Law of action; appoints to itself an end in the future, after which to struggle, lifts its eye up from the present, its objects and its delights, or its miseries and sorrows, and setting to itself a distant point, perhaps in tracts of time so distant that it only may reach them, perhaps upon the extremest bounds of possibility, fixes its aim upon that remote and distant point.

Ask whether there are such men, and who they are? And the same experience that shows us the one class, the men of infirm and uncultivated Purpose, wandering through the wastes of life as animals that now rest upon a sunny bank, now move a few steps towards a greener patch of herbage, now flee from the heat to the shelter of a grove,―the same experience that shows to us these men without purpose, will show us that other class, that have an aim to which they are pressing, that know what they want to obtain, and are struggling towards it, that have an object and an end in view, and are not mere animals, chance loiterers in the paths of life.† And wherever they are, in whatever situa

* I would, of course, have my readers note here that there may be a power of purpose, which, being determined and set to evil, may, because of this, be evil. Still the same might have been set to good as strongly. This faculty, then, of fixedness and decision, is, in itself good; only by being set towards evil is it bad.

The lofty Stoic poet, whom I before quoted, illustrates this well. The Stoics placed all virtue in a self-governing Will exerting itself by a fixed and

tion of life they may be, of whatever sex or age, they have respect from others, and they respect themselves. The man without a Purpose is a mere animal, the man with a Purpose is so far

a man.

Let us look at this faculty of Purpose, and upon analysis we shall find in it indications of many things Spiritual. Every one sees that to have Purpose, this is man-like; to be purposeless, this is to be like the animals: and, therefore, that to have an aim to the future, according to an inward law of the Will superior to external motive, this is most in accordance with man's true being. Three things are there in this: 1st, an object; 2d, in the future; 3d, a law of the Will self-imposed, which has the power of rejecting other motives. Look at all men of Purpose, and these three things are clearly and distinctly seen in them. Men place the object in the future. There is no man would say, I would be content with the Present and all its circumstances, and see it established as one eternal NOW. All men desire the Present to pass away, and the Future to arrive. And, although they may, as travellers do, set limits to themselves, and establish in their imagination a period and a station further on, wherein they shall desire no Future, and pursue no object after they have arrived at them;still, when they reach the destined point on their journey, greener vales and shadier hills expand to their view, another object further on is marked out for their final resting-place, the terminal station, which reached, they shall no further purpose, but dwell and abide there satisfied and no more desiring;-is not this the nature of Man, and this his doom?

Philosophers have talked of this as a "fault of Human Nature," a "delusion," and have said to men that they should repress it, that they should rest in the Present and enjoy it, and think not of the Future, and so forth. In short, they have talked an im

stable Purpose, and I must say, not without a considerable degree of truth, although not all, for assuredly half the miseries of life come from weakness and instability. In conformity with this, he addresses such a character as those whom we have spoken of in the text as "chance loiterers in the paths of life,"

"Est aliquid quo tendis, et in quod dirigis arcum?

An passim sequeris corvos testâque lutoque,

Securus quo pes ferat, et ex tempore vivis?

mense amount of that vain babble of Heathenism, those "morals of Seneca," that might have done well enough in a pagan, to whom the Present is absolutely certain, the Future and any existence in it, a shadowy possibility, and a vague uncertainty; and feeble, narrow-minded Moralists have vented a great deal of this heathenish philosophy, and thought it Christianity, and have wondered how absurd and perverse men are, that they cannot be prevailed on to live in the Present, and to set for themselves no object in the Future.

We give no such advice. We say, "Here is a power of mind and a peculiar action, by which you, by your nature, are compelled to travel onward in aims and desires towards the Future ;-this is no vain desire to be repressed by moralizing or self-restraining effort, but a power and an instinct having its proof and its perfection in Revelation and in God,-a living proof that there is an end in view onward still and onward, where there is rest and contentment: a sure inward proof that man is no animal, to dwell in the Present and its delights, but a traveller onward through a road which he wishes perpetually to end,—and which will end. And in despite of Heathen Morality upon the duty of dwelling in the Present, in despite of Heathenism of belief, this* "feeling of the Traveller," as the middle age Christians call it, ever shall make man know that his dwelling is not here, but out of Time, out of Space, in Eternity!

We then tell not men to dwell in the Present, to fix no object in the Future. We tell them to look through that flitting and changeable future of things temporal that hitherto has been so unsatisfactory, to look through this painted veil, this gorgeous bank of sun-tinted clouds that we call Time, upon Eternity, and there they shall find their true and satisfactory object of Purpose. The power of purpose in us that exists in Time, leads us of its own nature towards Eternity, thereunto it points, therein its proper and peculiar end and object is.

Again, in this power of Purpose in the Will, besides this looking to the Future, we see the fact of a self-imposed law. The Will is not in man simple in action, but it acts according to Law; in the case of Purpose, to a law self-imposed and self-applied. A motive, for instance, engrosses the mind of a man; this motive he

* Animus Viatoris.

has the power of making to be a law of his Will that shall henceforth work upon its action, and make it within him capable of resisting, habitually and constantly, even stronger powers than the original one has been. This is essentially one of the elements of Purpose, the bringing of the will under the rule of a voluntary Law, for such it may be seen is the act of Purpose. The man who says "I will," in reference to future action, he evidently prescribes a law of action for that amount of time, to his Will.

Hence we see the relation of the Will, the faculty of Action, to the Reason, the faculty of Law; hence, too, we see the permanent freedom of the Will reconciled to the fact of its being under fixed law, that so far as it freely makes the principles of Eternal Morality its Law of Purpose, so far it is permanently free: but this subject has been so fully discussed in other parts of the book, that we need not now more than indicate it.

But one may say, do not we see this second law of Purpose to exist in the animals, this of a law self-imposed, that shall control immediate desires?

And we say, No;-you may see long and continuous action upon a present motive, giving an appearance of Purpose, but when you examine it closely, it is no Purpose, no law of action self-imposed, but the permanence of an animal motive, inducing permanence of action. The lion lies for days by the one lonely spring in the African desert; the wolves follow the track of a deer for days together here is continuance of action, from permanence of the animal motive of hunger,-that gone, the action comes to an end: there is permanent action continuing under a motive as long as that motive exists, but no Purpose. The animal not hungry would not hunt,—the man without hunger chases after animals with the same perseverance, from a set purpose for the future, under a determination self-imposed, and not necessarily under the movement of an immediate appetite.

And when it is necessary that something should be done for the Future by the mere animals, we find it done in them by an irresistible instinct, framed and formed in entire accordance with the circumstances of their natural habitation: and to confirm this view of ours, that the animals have not, in such cases, any real Purpose, but an instinct that in its stead prepares for the Future; when they are transferred to climates wherein circumstances are different, we see them still acting upon the instinct, although it