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 often it may have been dissolved. What vestiges can now be traced of those scientific attainments which, in early times, drew to Egypt, from every part of the civilized world, all those who were anxious to be initiated in the mysteries of philosophy? The symbols which still remain in that celebrated country, inscribed on eternal monuments, have long lost the correspondent minds which reflected upon them their own intellectual attributes. To us they are useless and silent, and serve only to attest the existence of arts, of which it is impossible to unriddle the nature and the objects.

Variis nunc sculpta figuris Marmora, trunca tamen visuntur mutaque nobis; Signa repertorum tuimur, cecidere reperta.

What has now been remarked with respect to written characters, may be extended very nearly to oral language. When we listen to the discourse of a public speaker, eloquence and persuasion seem to issue from his lips; and we are little aware, that we ourselves infuse the soul into every word that he utters. The case is exactly the same when we enjoy the conversation of a friend. We ascribe the charm entirely to his voice and accents; but without our co-operation, its potency would vanish. How very small the comparative proportion is, which, in such cases, the words spoken contribute to the intellectual and moral effect, I have elsewhere endeavoured to show.

I have enlarged on this part of the Cartesian system, not certainly on account of its intrinsic value, as connected with the theory of our external perceptions (although even in this respect of the deepest interest to every philosophical inquirer), but because it affords the most palpable and striking example I know of, to illustrate the indissoluble associations established during the period of infancy, between the intellectual and the material worlds. It was plainly the intention of nature, that our thoughts should be habitually directed to things external; and accordingly, the bulk of mankind are not only indisposed to study the intellectual phenomena, but are incapable of that degree of reflection which is necessary for their examination. Hence it is, that when we begin to analyze our own internal constitution, we find the facts it presents to us so very intimately combined in our conceptions with the qualities of matter, that it is impossible for us to draw distinctly and steadily the line between them; and that, when Mind and Matter are concerned in the same result, the former is either entirely overlooked, or is regarded only as an accessary principle, dependent for its existence on the latter. To the same cause it is owing, that we find it so difficult (if it be at all practicable) to form an idea of any of our intellectual operations, abstracted from the images suggested by their metaphorical names. It was objected to Descartes by some of his contemporaries, that the impossibility of accomplishing the abstractions which he recom- 4