1. What is the general principle which it is always necessary to bear in mind while treating of the various faculties of the human soul ?
The soul of man is one single indivisible agent, not an organ- ized whole consisting of several parts ; and, therefore, what we call its several faculties are rather the capacity of the one agent, for discharging successively or concurrently the several functions involved, and are never to be conceived of as separately existing parts or organs. These several functions exercised by the one soul are so various and complex, that a minute analysis is abso- lutely necessary, in order to lay open to us a definite view of their nature. Yet we must carefully remember that a large part of the errors into which philosophers have fallen in their interpreta- tion of man's moral constitution, has resulted from the abuse of this very process of analysis. This is especially true with respect to the interpretation of the voluntary acts of the human soul. In prosecution of his analysis the philosopher comes to recognize separately the differences and the likenesses of these various func- tions of the soul, and too frequently forgets that these functions themselves are, in fact, never exercised in that isolated manner, but concurrently by the one soul, as an indivisible agent, and that thus they always qualify one another. Thus, it is not true, in fact,
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that the understanding reasons, and the heart feels, and the con- science approves or condemns, and the will decides, as different members of the body work together, or as the different persons constituting a council deliberate and decide in mutual parts ; but it is true that the one indivisible, rational, feeling, moral, self- determining soul reasons, feels, approves, or condemns and decides. The self-determining power of the will as an abstract faculty is absurd as a doctrine, and would be disastrous as an experience, but the self-determining power of the human soul as a concrete, rational, feeling agent, is a fact of universal consciousness, and a fundamental doctrine of moral philosophy and of Christian theology.
2. How may the leading faculties of the human soul be clas- sified ?
1st. The intellectual. This class includes all those faculties in different ways concerned in the general function of knowing ; as the reason, the imagination, the bodily senses, and the moral sense (when considered as a mere source of knowledge to the un- derstanding.)
2d. The emotional. This class includes all those feelings which attend, in any manner, the exercise of the other faculties.
3d. The will.
It will be observed that the functions of the conscience in- volve faculties belonging to both the first and second classes, (see below, question 5.)
It is often asked which of our faculties is the seat of our moral nature ? Now while there is a sense in which all moral questions concern the relation of the states or acts of the will to the law of Grod revealed in the conscience, and therefore in which the will and the conscience are preeminently the foundation of man's moral nature, it is true, nevertheless, that every one of the faculties of the human soul, as above classified, is exer- cised in relation to all moral distinctions, e. g., the intellec- tual in the perception and judgment ; the emotional in pleas- ant feeling or the reverse ; the will, in choosing or refusing, and in acting. Every state or act of any one of the facul- ties of the human soul, therefore, which involves the judging, choosing, refusing, desiring, upon a purely moral question, or the
218 THE ORIGINAL STATE OF MAN.
feeling corresponding thereto, is a moral state or act, and all the faculties, viewed in their relations to the distinction between good and evil, are moral faculties.
3. What is the Will ?
The term will is often used to express the mere faculty of volition, whereby the soul chooses, or refuses, or determines to act, and the exercise of that faculty. It is also used in a wider sense, and in this sense I use it here, to include the faculty of vo- lition, together with all of the spontaneous states of the soul (designated by Sir William Hamilton, " Lectures on Meta- physics/' Lect. XI., the faculties of conation, the excitive, striv- ing faculties, possessing, as their common characteristic, " a ten- dency toward the realization of their end") the dispositions, affec- tions, desires, which determine a man in the exercise of his free power of volition. It must be remembered, however, that these two senses of the word will are essentially distinct. The will, as including all the faculties of conation (the dispositions and desires), is to be essentially distinguished from the single faculty of soul exercised in the resulting volition, i. e., the choosing or the acting according to its prevailing desire.