23. It is generally easier to plan what is beyond the reach of others than to execute what is within our own; and it had been well if the range of this introductory essay had been something less extensive, and its reasoning more careful. Its search after truth is honest and impetuous, and its results would have appeared as interesting as they are indeed valuable, had they but been arranged with ordinary perspicuity, and represented in simple terms. But the writer's evil genius pursues him; the demand for exertion of thought is remorseless, and continuous throughout, and the statements of theoretical principle as short, scattered, and obscure, as they are bold. We question whether many readers may not be utterly appalled by the aspect of an "Analysis of Human Nature"—the first task proposed to them by our intellectual Eurystheus—to be accomplished in the space of six semi-pages, followed in the seventh by the "Development of the Individual Man," and applied in the eighth to a "General Classification of Individuals": and we infinitely marvel that our author should have thought it unnecessary to support or explain a division of the mental attributes on which the treatment of his entire subject afterwards depends, and whose terms are repeated in every following page to the very dazzling of eye and deadening of ear (a division, we regret to say, as illogical as it is purposeless), otherwise than by a laconic reference to the assumptions of Phrenology.
"The Individual Man, or Man considered by himself as an unit in creation, is compounded of three distinct primary elements.
1. Sense, or the animal frame, with its passions or affections;
2. Mind or Intellect;—of which the distinguishing faculties—rarely, if ever, equally balanced, and by their respective predominance determinative of his whole character, conduct, and views of life—are,
i. Imagination, the discerner of Beauty,—
ii. Reason, the discerner of Truth,—
the former animating and informing the world of Sense or Matter, the latter finding her proper home in the world of abstract or immaterial existences —the former receiving the impress of things Objectively, or ab externo, the latter impressing its own ideas on them Subjectively, or ab interno—the former a feminine or passive, the latter a masculine or active principle; and
iii. Spirit—the Moral or Immortal principle, ruling through the Will, and breathed into Man by the Breath of God."—"Progression by Antagonism," pp. 2, 3.
24. On what authority does the writer assume that the moral is alone the Immortal principle—or the only part of the human nature bestowed by the breath of God? Are imagination, then, and reason perishable? Is the Body itself? Are not all alike immortal; and when distinction is to be made among them, is not the first great division between their active and passive immortality, between the supported body and supporting spirit; that spirit itself afterwards rather conveniently to be considered as either exercising intellectual function, or receiving moral influence, and, both in power and passiveness, deriving its energy and sensibility alike from the sustaining breath of God—than actually divided into intellectual and moral parts? For if the distinction between us and the brute be the test of the nature of the living soul by that breath conferred, it is assuredly to be found as much in the imagination as in the moral principle. There is but one of the moral sentiments enumerated by Lord Lindsay, the sign of which is absent in the animal creation:—the enumeration is a bald one, but let it serve the turn—"Self-esteem and love of Approbation," eminent in horse and dog; "Firmness," not wanting either to ant or elephant; "Veneration," distinct as far as the superiority of man can by brutal intellect be comprehended; "Hope," developed as far as its objects can be made visible; and "Benevolence," or Love, the highest of all, the most assured of all—together with all the modifications of opposite feeling, rage, jealousy, habitual malice, even love of mischief and comprehension of jest:—the one only moral sentiment wanting being that of responsibility to an Invisible being, or conscientiousness. But where, among brutes, shall we find the slightest trace of the Imaginative faculty, or of that discernment of beauty which our author most inaccurately confounds with it, or of the discipline of memory, grasping this or that circumstance at will, or of the still nobler foresight of, and respect towards, things future, except only instinctive and compelled?
25. The fact is, that it is not in intellect added to the bodily sense, nor in moral sentiment superadded to the intellect, that the essential difference between brute and man consists: but in the elevation of all three to that point at which each becomes capable of communion with the Deity, and worthy therefore of eternal life;—the body more universal as an instrument—more exquisite in its sense—this last character carried out in the eye and ear to the perception of Beauty, in form, sound, and color—and herein distinctively raised above the brutal sense; intellect, as we have said, peculiarly separating and vast; the moral sentiments like in essence, but boundlessly expanded, as attached to an infinite object, and laboring in an infinite field: each part mortal in its shortcoming, immortal in the accomplishment of its perfection and purpose; the opposition which we at first broadly expressed as between body and spirit, being more strictly between the natural and spiritual condition of the entire creature—body natural, sown in death, body spiritual, raised in incorruption: Intellect natural, leading to skepticism; intellect spiritual, expanding into faith: Passion natural, suffered from things spiritual; passion spiritual, centered on things unseen: and the strife or antagonism which is throughout the subject of Lord Lindsay's proof, is not, as he has stated it, between the moral, intellectual, and sensual elements, but between the upward and downward tendencies of all three—between the spirit of Man which goeth upward, and the spirit of the Beast which goeth downward.