APHORISM VIII.

Leighton and Coleridge.

It is a matter of great difficulty, and requires no ordinary skill and address, to fix the attention of men on the world within them, to induce them to study the processes

[continue]and superintend the works which they are themselves carrying on in their own minds; in short, to awaken in them both the faculty of thought¹¹   Distinction between thought and attention. --By thought is here meant the voluntary reproduction in our minds of those states of consciousness, or (to use a phrase more familiar to the religious reader) of those inward experiences, to which, as to his best and most authentic documents, the teacher of moral or religious truth refers us. In attention, we keep the mind passive: in thought, we rouse it into activity. In. the former, we submit to an impression we keep the mind steady, in order to receive the stamp. In the latter, we seek to imitate tho artist, while we ourselves make a copy or duplicate of his work. We may learn arithmetic, or the elements of geometry, by continued attention alone; but self-knowledge, or an insight into the laws and constitution of the human mind and the grounds of religion and true morality, in addition to the effort of attention requires the energy of thought. and the inclination to exercise it. For alas! the largest part of mankind are nowhere greater strangers than at home.