But are we accounting it absolutely inevitable that the sequel must be in full proportion to this present fact,--_must_ be everything that this fact threatens, and _can_ lead to,--as we should behold persons carried down in a mighty torrent, where all interposition is impossible, or as the Turks look at the progress of a conflagration or an epidemic? It is in order to "frustrate the tokens" of such melancholy divination, to arrest something of what a destructive power is in the act of carrying away, to make the evil spirit find, in the next stages of his march, that all his enlisted host have not followed him, and to quell somewhat of the triumph of his boast, "My name is legion, for we are many;"--it is for this that the friends of improvement, and of mankind, are called upon for efforts greatly beyond those which are requisite for maintaining in its present extent of operation the system of expedients for intercepting, before it be too late, the progress of so large a portion of the youthful tribe toward destruction. Another obvious circumstance in the state of the untaught class is, _that they are abandoned, in a direct, unqualified manner, to seize recklessly whatever they can of sensual gratification_. The very narrow scope to which their condition limits them in the pursuit of this, will not prevent its being to them the most desirable thing in existence, when there are so few other modes of gratification which they either are in a capacity to enjoy, or have the means to obtain. By the very constitution of the human nature, the mind seems half to belong to the senses, it is so shut within them, affected by them, dependent on them for pleasure, as well as for activity, and impotent but through their medium. And while, by this necessary hold which they have on what would call itself a spiritual being, they absolutely will engross to themselves, as of clear right, a large share of its interest and exercise, they will strive to possess themselves of the other half too. And they will have it, if it has not been carefully otherwise claimed and pre-occupied. And when the senses have thus usurped the whole mind for their service, how will you get any of it back? Try, if you will, whether this be a thing so easy to be done. Present to the minds so engrossed with the desires of the senses, that their main action is but in these desires and the contrivances how to fulfil them,--offer to their view nobler objects, which are appropriate to the spiritual being, and observe whether that being promptly shows a sensibility to the worthier objects, as congenial to its nature, and, obsequious to the new attraction, disengages itself from what has wholly absorbed it.