[Footnote 1: Byron's Letters, Moore's Life, Vol. II, p. 581.]
II. Next to the acquisition of knowledge, and the formation of opinions, calculated to act upon us as moral beings, is the important rule of habitually attending to them, so as to bring their influence to bear upon our volitions. He, who honestly attends to what is passing within, will perceive that this is a voluntary exercise of his thinking and reasoning faculties. When a particular desire is present to his mind, he has the power to act upon the first impulse, or upon a very partial and limited, perhaps a distorted, view of the considerations and motives by which he ought to be influenced;--and he has the power to suspend acting, and direct his attention deliberately and fully to the facts and principles which are calculated to guide his determination. This is the first great step in that remarkable chain of sequences which belong to the regulation of the will. It is what every one is conscious of; and, putting aside all those metaphysical subtleties in which the subject has been involved, this constitutes man a free and responsible agent. In this important process, the first mental state is a certain movement of one of the desires or one of the affections;--we may use the term Inclination as including both. The second is a reference of the inclination to the moral causes or motives which more peculiarly apply to it,--especially the indications of conscience, and the principles of moral rectitude.--If these be found to harmonize with the inclination, volition and action follow, with the full concurrence of every moral feeling. If the inclination be condemned by these, it is, in a well-regulated mind, instantly dismissed, and the healthy condition of the moral being is preserved. But this voluntary and most important mental process may be neglected;--the inclination may be suffered to engross the mind and occupy fully the attention:--the power may not be exercised of directing it to moral causes and motives, and of comparing with them the inclination which is present. The consequence may be, that the man runs heedlessly into volition and action, from which the due exercise of this process of the mind might have preserved him.