DEDICATION

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PROFESSOR THALES.

IN listening to the confessions of Cuthburt, we could not but call to mind the advantages which the Jesuits possessed over all other philosophers, in the means afforded them by the discipline of a church which required men to lay open their whole hearts in confession. It was to this insight into the soul, they owed that wonderful sagacity, by means of which, they established and maintained, for a long time, a power over the consciences of men, which, if suffered to extend, might, in a few years, have united all Europe, if not the whole world, under the government of reason.

It has been the fashion to decry the Jesuits and applaud their antagonists: for their religious opinions, they were opposed by the dogmatists: for their latitudinarianism, they were hated by the bigots; and for their worldly policy, they were feared by courts. They were dangerous to the privileged orders, because, aiming at the universal establishment of their own influence and

power, they struck at the foundation of all other arbitrary governments.

In doing this, however, they taught men to think, and to investigate, and thus, perhaps unintentionally, contributed to enlighten and elevate the sovereign power, Public Opinion, to which, subsequently, has been added its legitimate minister, The Free Press,-liable to be employed as the agent of tyranny and corruption-of being debased and lowered as the vehicle of little passions-of frivolizing the age by its licentiousness and want of dignity-but when consecrated by patriotism and talents, the guardian of virtue, the promoter of excellence, the patroness of letters and the arts, and the protectress of rights.

How much the science of mind has been retarded by the abolition of the order, we can conjecture only from the extension it received under its direction: at least there probably would be no such want of materials for thinking as you now lament, and you would not have to solicit your auditors to collect from every quarter, whatever may contribute to the construction of that beautiful and harmonious system, of which you profess to have conceived only the outline.

In accordance with your wishes, we have endeavoured to review the influence of that passion, whose history you

in part accomplished in your Lecture "on the principles of the human mind,"-in this report of the confessions of our devotee. We say, in part; for you professed to be unfurnished from actual experience with a very extensive collection of facts relating to the tender passion-an ignorance very pardonable in a professor of the analytical science, the sedate severity of whose character puts the fair sex so much on their guard, as to render it extremely difficult, by any process of examination, to elicit from them the story of their loves. The graceful reserve, the winning evasion, the seductive frankness, the deceitful confidence-are, to the philosopher, anomalies which no sagacity, time, or abstraction, can reduce, and classify, and arrange under specific principles; while the badinage with which these are treated by men of the worldwise in their own conceit, yet the greatest dupes to female ingenuity-confounds all the speculations of philosophy, or leads to hypotheses as absurd as ever floated in the head of a visionary.

Your means of knowledge, and of that knowledge which is to be compacted into a system more luminous and satisfactory than any metaphysician ever conceived of accomplishing,-therefore depending on the labors of others, the memoranda of those who have penetrated this wilderness of sweet and bitter-who have winded its in

tricacies and explored its labyrinths-who have been entangled in its briers, or lacerated by its thorns-or of those who have collected the reports of living travellers, will not be unacceptable.

As you observed, that general principles were to be ascertained only by an extensive survey and severe analysis of human action in detail, and that this detail would be incomplete, unless it comprehend every variety belonging to the class, it was to be feared that ages would elapse before the whole region could be sufficiently explored to afford much assistance in completing the work you meditate.

There are two ways of considering all subjects: the first may be denominated the ancient and intellectual, and the second, modern and mechanical. The first considers the abstraction of its own creation, or the conception of Genius of what is perfection in its kind, and is, in relation to the arts, what is termed the beau idéal. The second is inductive, and consists in the accumulation, selection, and disposition of particulars, which talents and taste may mould into forms that may warm the imagination or melt the heart. Genius seeks among the scattered beauties of natural objects for those forms and those colors which may exemplify its own abstract ideas: it finds no entire picture of the image in its own mind, and