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Show MERE SENSATION. the purely mental act of perce~ving 1·elqi~on, ~nd ~h~ mind's act through the senses In percmvmg 1 eal'lty, and for that reason we generally use only half our system-work with half our strength. Not. h~lf of it even--no, not a tenth; for the real power IS m the union of the two. When we use our senses, we do not thmk; and so the object of those senses can be turned to .no profit, and give us no pleasure. If we do. not thmk at the same time, the appearance~ of obJects have no more effect upon our organs of sense than .sunbeams when they play on the snow-clad su~nmit .of a lofty mountain; they are reflected away m an mstant; and that which would have. warmed a more genial place into life and beauty IS gone-wasted, never to return. How, scorpion-like, a little bit of the tail of some uay spent in favour.able plac.es, but spent thoughtlessly, will turn and stmg us with the remorse of how much we have lost, and lost never to be recalled or replaced! How often, even when the most delightfully instructive prospects are before us have we reason to address ourselves in the words of Macbeth to the ghost of his murdered friend : "Thou hast no speculation in these eyes Which thou dost glare with." And we, too, are murderers, and murderers "red hand" in the fact, and not in the remorse caused by the dogging ghost of that which we are murdering. We are murdering Time-the means of all knowledge and the measure of all enjoying; and, independ~ ntly of the direct loss, which is irreparable, if the (]'host of murdered Time shall, at any period, rise and haunt us, it is one of the most terrible of g~o~ts, and we must abide its tormentings alone and unpitied. This abuse of our time, and neglect of thinking, instead of working its own cure, throws us into the opposite fault ; and, jus~ bec~use we hav~ gazed without thinking, we thmk without observmg,. and lose both the time and the thought; and lose 1t 111 SEl'riBLANCE OF WISDOM. 43 utter oblivion, out of which not even the ghost of the ' departed day can return to torment us into the chance of amendment. If we would have the credit of being thought thinkers (for the course that we pursue is any thing but that which will lead us to the reality), we must "look wise," and turn up our eyes, and shut our ears, and, as it were, barricade ourselves against every possible intrusion of the external world. It is true that there is no direct harm in a man's looking as wise as ever he pleases, if so be his fancy-though looking wise is proverbially not one of the signs of being wise; but it is also true that men who always closet themselves for abstruse thinking, not only incapacitate themselves for active life, but defeat the very object they have in view. 'l'hey become moping and absent; and, following their own particular study into holes and corners out of its connexion and use, they get narrow and conceited views of it, and not only make it repulsive to the more active part of the world, but actnally advance it less than they would do if they treated it in a more popular manner, and blended their thinking with more of observation. It is true that observation and thought cannot go equally together on all subjects of which even the plainest man may have occasion to think. Observation is chained to matter-limited in time and iu .:pace ; and, in all respects, thought is free. So that any man's personal observation is the foundation of only a very limited portion of that which he learns. But still it is the test by which he tries the reality of the whole ; and the only test by which he can try whether each part be true, and deserve the name of knowledge. That being the case, though we cannot extend our personal observation to every thing, the more extensive that we can make it, always the better. Truth-the agreement of the relation with the nature of the subjects to which we apply it, can be ascertained only by observing the fact that it is so: and, therefore, by having the test of observation |