nd especially, you will yourself take
a deep and permanent pleasure, in guiding and controlling the power you
have thus obtained.

This is peculiarly the case with experiments upon mind, or experiments
for producing effects through the medium of voluntary acts of the human
mind, so that the contriver must take into consideration the laws of
mind in forming his plans. To illustrate this by rather a childish case:
I once knew a boy who was employed by his father to remove all the loose
small stones, which, from the peculiar nature of the ground, had
accumulated in the road before the house. He was to take them up, and
throw them over into the pasture, across the way. He soon got tired of
picking them up one by one, and sat down upon the bank, to try to devise
some better means of accomplishing his work. He at length conceived and
adopted the following plan. He set up, in the pasture, a narrow board,
for a target, or as boys would call it, a mark,--and then, collecting
all the boys of the neighborhood, he proposed to them an amusement,
which boys are always ready for,--firing at a mark. I need not say that
the stores of ammunition in the street were soon exhausted; the boys
working for their leader, when they supposed they were only finding
amusement for themselves.

Here now, is experimenting upon the mind;--the production of useful
effect with rapidity and ease, by the intervention of proper
instrumentality;--the conversion, by means of a little knowledge of
human nature, of that which would have otherwise been dull and fatiguing
labor, into a most animating sport, giving pleasure to twenty, instead
of tedious labor to one. Now the contrivance and execution of such plans
is a source of positive pleasure; it is always pleasant to bring the
properties and powers of matter into requisition to promote our
designs,--but there is a far higher pleasure in controlling, and
guiding, and moulding to our purpose the movements of mind.

It is this which gives interest to the plans and operation of human
governments. They can do little by actual force. Nearly all the power
that is held, even by the most despotic executive, must be based on an
adroit management of the principles of human nature, so as to lead men
voluntarily to cooperate with the ruler, in his plans. Even an army
could not be got into battle, in many cases, without a most ingenious
arrangement, by means of which half a dozen men can drive, literally
drive, as many