fire of to-day, or in the sensation of warmth, considered as a mere sequence of it, from which the succession of a similar sensation to the fire of to-morrow can be inferred; yet we also rely on this future sequence, at least as strongly, as we believe any of the conclusions of our reasoning. In both cases the parallel is complete; and in both, the evidence of a particular intellectual faculty, must consequently be alike,--or in neither is there sufficient evidence of such a power. There is, indeed, one other sense, in which we often talk of our consciousness of a feeling, and a sense, in which, it must be allowed, that the consciousness is not precisely the same as the feeling itself. This is, when we speak of a feeling, not actually existing at present, but _past_--as when we say, that we are conscious of having seen, or heard, or done something. Such a use of the term, however, is pardonable only in the privileged looseness and inaccuracy of familiar conversation: the consciousness, in this case, being precisely synonymous with remembrance or memory, and not a power, different from the remembrance. The _remembrance_ of the feeling, and the vivid _feeling_ itself, indeed, are different. But the remembrance, and the consciousness of the remembrance, are the same--as the consciousness of a sensation, and the sensation, are the same; and to be conscious that we have seen or spoken to any one, is only to remember that we have seen or spoken to him. Much of this very confusion with respect to memory, however, I have no doubt, has been always involved in the assertion of consciousness as a peculiar and distinct power of the mind. When we think of feelings long past, it is impossible for us not to be aware that our mind is then truly retrospective; and memory seems to us sufficient to account for the whole. But when the retrospect is of very recent feelings--of feelings, perhaps, that existed as distinct states of the mind, the very moment before our retrospect began, the short interval is forgotten, and we think that the primary feeling, and our consideration of the feeling, are strictly simultaneous. We have a sensation;--we look instantly back on that sensation,--such is consciousness, as distinguished from the feeling that is said to be its object. When it is any thing more than the sensation, thought, or emotion, of which we are said to be conscious, it is a brief and rapid retrospect. Its object is not a present feeling, but a past feeling, as truly as when we look back, not on the moment immediately preceding, but on some distant event or emotion of our boyhood.