us of these
volitions when they have attained a certain rapidity; or do I become a
mere automaton as respects such actions? and therefore an automaton nine
times out of ten, when I act at all?' To this query two opposite answers
are given by different minds; and by others, perhaps wiser, none at all;
while, often, opposite answers are given by the same mind at different
times. In like manner has every action, every operation, every emotion
of the mind been made the subject of endless doubt and disputation.
Surely if, as Soame Jenyns imagined, the infirmities of man, and even
graver evils, were permitted in order to afford amusement to superior
intelligences, and make the angels laugh, few things could afford them
better sport than the perplexities of this child of clay engaged in the
study of himself. 'Alas,' exclaims at last the baffled spirit of this
babe in intellect, as he surveys his shattered toys--his broken theories
of metaphysics, 'I know that I am; but what I am--where I am--even how
I act--not only what is my essence, but what even my mode of
operation,--of all this I know nothing; and, boast of reason as I may,
all that I think on these points is matter of opinion--or is matter
of faith!' He resembles, in fact, nothing so much as a kitten first
introduced to its own image in a mirror: she runs to the back of it,
she leaps over it, she turns and twists, and jumps and frisks, in all
directions, in the vain attempt to reach the fair illusion; and, at
length, turns away in weariness from that incomprehensible enigma--the
image of herself.

One would imagine--perhaps not untruly--that the Divine Creator had
subjected us to these difficulties--and especially that incomprehensible
trilemma,--that there is an union and interaction of two totally
distinct substances, or that matter is but thought, or that thought is
but matter,--one of which must be true, and all of which approach as
near to the mutual contradictions as can well be conceived,--for the
very purpose of rebuking the presumption of man, and of teaching him
humility; that He had left these obscurities at the very threshold--nay,
within the very mansion of the mind itself,--for the express purpose of
deterring man from playing the dogmatising fool when he looked abroad.
Yet, in spite of his raggedness and poverty at home, no sooner does man
look out of his dusky dwelling, than, like Goldsmith's little Beau,
who, in his garret up five pair of stairs, boasts