Page:Essays on the Principles of Human Action (1835).djvu/126

 separately and for the moment? If there is no perception of the relation between different feelings, no proper comparison of the one with the other, there may indeed be a stronger impulse towards the one than there is towards the other in the different seats of perception which they severally affect, but there can be no reasonable attachment, no preference of the one to the other in the same general principle of thought and action. And consequently on this supposition if the objects or feelings are incompatible with each other, I, or rather the different sensible beings within me will be drawn different ways, each according to its own particular bias, blindly persisting in its own choice without ever thinking of any other interest than its own, or being in the least affected by any idea of the general good of the whole sentient being, which would be a thing utterly incomprehensible. To perceive relations,—if not to choose between good and evil, to prefer a greater good to a less, a lasting to a transient enjoyment, belongs only to one mind, or spirit, the mind that is in man, which is the centre in which all his thoughts meet, and the master-spring by which all his actions are governed. Every thing is one in nature, and governed by an absolute impulse. The mind of man alone is relative to other things, it represents not itself but many things existing out of itself; it does not therefore represent the truth by being sensible of one thing but many things (for nature, its object, is manifold), and though the things themselves as they really exist cannot go out of themselves into other things, or compromise their natures, there is no reason why the mind, which is merely representative, should be confined to any one of them more than to any other, and a perfect understanding should comprehend them all as they are all contained in nature, or in all. No one object or idea therefore ought to impel the