judge of the substitute he offers.

"The primary or

elementary animal structures are endued with vital properties; their combinations compose the animal organs, in which, by means of the vital properties of the component elementary structures, the animal functions are carried on. The state of the animal, in which the continuance of these processes is evidenced by obvious external signs, is called life." Again, he lays a charge against "those who think it impossible that the living organic structures should have vital properties without some extrinsic aid; that they require no such assistance for the equally wonderful affinities of chemistry, for gravity, elasticity, or the other properties of matter."* This I conclude to be

a mistake; for, on the contrary, it will appear as necessary to suppose it in the latter cases as in those of life.

Now, I am persuaded that the author, in thus arguing for the possibility of matter refining itself or being refined into thought, and for its unaided efficiency for all the subordinate operations in which it is physically concerned, lays himself open to the charge of an assumption, or petitio principii, which, consistently with the acknowledgment he afterwards makes, and if he had followed strictly the rules of inductive reasoning, he could scarcely have been warranted in advancing.

The passage to which I first referred, with the

* See 3d Lecture.

K

acknowledgment contained in it, follows this question, "Shall I be told that thought is inconsistent with matter; that we cannot conceive how medullary substance can perceive, remember, judge, reason? I acknowledge that we are entirely ignorant how the parts of the brain accomplish these purposes-as we are how the liver secretes bile, how the muscles contract, or how any other living purpose is effected :as we are how heavy bodies are attracted to the earth, how iron is drawn to the magnet, or how two salts decompose each other. Experience is in all these cases our sole, if not sufficient instructress; and the constant conjunction of phenomena, as exhibited in her lessons, is the sole ground for affirming a necessary connexion between them. If we go beyond this, and come to inquire the manner how, the mechanism by which these things are effected, we shall find every thing around us equally mysterious, equally incomprehensible :-from the stone, which falls to the earth, to the comet traversing the heavens:-from the thread attracted by amber or sealing-wax, to the revolutions of planets in their orbits :-from the formation of a maggot in putrid flesh, or a mite in cheese, to the production of a Newton or a Franklin.”*

He acknowledges that "every thing is equally mysterious and equally incomprehensible." Yet, amidst all this darkness, he undertakes to clear up the difficulty by deciding that a peculiar conforma

* See Lectures, &c. p. 105.

tion of matter produces all the phenomena in brute and intelligent natures, which we see in the world. He assumes, gratuitously enough, that matter alone, in an organized or inorganic state, executes all the purposes he has assigned to it. Yet he admits that "the manner how, and the mechanism"-in other words, if I may express it-the power and the wisdom "are equally mysterious and equally incompresible."

I take for granted that he makes the assumption I have stated; because he seems to think that he has brought the arguments of his opponents to that state which is called by logicians a reductio ad absurdum, by compelling them to admit the following conclusion. That " if the intellectual phenomena of man require an immaterial principle superadded to the brain, we must equally concede it to those more rational animals, which exhibit manifestations differing from some of the human only in degree. If we grant it to these, we cannot refuse it to the next in order, and so on in succession to the whole series; to the oyster, the sea anemone, the polype, the microscopic animalcule. Is any one prepared to admit the existence of immaterial principles in all these cases? if not, he must equally reject it in man."

Now I do not perceive that there is any thing absurd in the supposition that an immaterial principle should operate or be at work in the creatures formed by the same principle. If the Deity has condescended to the workmanship, is it unreasonable that he should

guide the machine and superintend the movements? If we admit the existence of a Creator, we are called upon to admit the actions of those creatures, which are not accountable, and therefore cannot resist his will, as part of his works also. The divine energy operating in his works is no new idea in philosophy. Some of the wisest men have entertained the persuasion; because, without it, the skill and design manifest in the creation could not be explained. When a caterpillar moves its four thousand muscles in regular order, it knows nothing of the astonishing perfection of the mechanism: therefore it must obey a power superior to itself. But it does not follow, because we concede that an immaterial principle guides and directs all the objects in the creation, that it should therefore become a part of the constitution of those objects, and make them divine also that it should, as it were, become united to them, as though it were one with their substance. This is no necessary consequence. It is in vain that we inquire how the divine power operates-mediately or immediately. This we can never know. But we may safely presume that it pervades every atom in the universe and this has been the general opinion from Cicero and Virgil to Newton and Pope.

Magnetism and gravitation may show us that actual contact between masses of matter is not necessary to produce a simple physical effect. How much less should actual union be necessary between a divine immaterial spirit and a material form! Yet the pos

sibility of the latter is not denied, though it is beyond our comprehension; nor is a divine influence questioned in regulating all physical events.

A stone cannot fall without it, nor a crystal shoot, a plant cannot vegetate, an animal move a limb, nor an intelligent being think and act. But we must distinguish between the power that communicates a faculty or endowment, and the absolute divinity and immateriality of the faculty;-for this reason, that in the present scheme of things, it has pleased Divine wisdom universally to connect these manifestations of his power both in nature and in man, with certain states of material conformation. Consequently, to assert that, in this state, the mental constitution of man is absolutely and independently immaterial, might be as unphilosophical as to assert that it was material. By natural research we come to something which cannot be explained by any laws of matter; and by natural research we prove an intimate and indissoluble connexion during life, between mental phenomena and cerebral configuration. This is what Lawrence expressly affirms, and what is freely granted to him. The exclusive inference which he draws, by implication, in ridiculing any immaterial agency, is objected to, on his own grounds.

That brutes and every thing else of an inferior nature, are guided, in the best manner, and to the best ends, which regard their being, is surely no argument against a divine interference. And the argument that as man does not himself follow that