to justify us in dismissing the volume as the unintelligent effusion of a man discharged from moral accountability by the visitation of God.

We return to Mr. Lawrence. He, too, like Mr. Pring, must needs call in physiology to clear the ground for his speculations.

'Life,' he tells us, using the word in its popular and general sense, which at the same time is the only rational and intelligible one, is merely the active state of the animal structure. It includes the notions of sensation, motion, and those ordinary attributes of living beings which are obvious to common observation. It denotes what is apparent to our senses; and cannot be applied to the offspring of metaphysical subtlety, or immaterial abstractions, without a complete departure from its original acceptation,-without obscuring and confusing what is otherwise clear and intelligible.'

He then proceeds to inform his pupils, that the Latin anima comes from the Greek aveμos, wind, and that spiritus also means merely breath;' that the same is the case with the Greek μ. And this,' he says, is the original sensible object, out of which all the abstractions and fancies, all the verbal sophistry and metaphysical puzzles, about spirit, have proceeded."

Anatomy and physiology should be cultivated together: we should combine observation of the function with examination of the organization. The subjects are often distinctly treated in books: let not, however, this unnatural separation lead you into the error of viewing the vital manifestations as something independent of the organization in which they occur. Bear in mind, that every organ has its living phenomena and its use, and that the chief ultimate object, even of anatomy, is to learn the nature of the function ;-on the other hand, that every action of a living being must have its organic apparatus. There is no digestion without an alimentary cavity; no biliary secretion without some kind of liver; no thought without a brain.

'To talk of life as independent of an animal body,-to speak of a function without reference to an appropriate organ,-is physiologically absurd. It is in opposition to the evidences of our senses and rational faculties : it is looking for an effect without a cause. We might as reasonably expect day-light while the sun is below the horizon. What should we think of abstracting elasticity, cohesion, gravity, and bestowing on them a separate existence from the bodies in which those properties are seen?"

This is the gentleman who, in a note to his first page, sneeringly talks of Mr. Abernethy's early lessons in anatomy. When we con⚫ sider,' he says, that the audience to whom these Lectures were delivered, comprised the venerable elders of our profession, the general body of London surgeons, and the students of the several schools of medicine,' &c. !!

Before we enter into any argument on the general subject, we must premise a few remarks on the dogmatism by which the above passage is characterised. This is not quite the spirit of a philosopher. Such shallow assertions might impose on a student of the first year, when taken by surprise, and anxious, above all things, not to fall into a physiological absurdity. They might pass unexamined and undoubted in the lectureroom. But Mr. Lawrence's name will have no such charm with

the public. An infidel dogmatist is, of all dogmatists, the most insufferable, because what he is so positive about, is -non-existence, negation: what he is so peremptory in asserting, is, his doubts. Whatever reasons the Materialist might have to urge in support of the opinion, that there is no thought without a brain,' it is, in the nature of things, impossible, that he could demonstrate his negative position. He may imagine himself authorised to withhold his belief from a tenet which he considers as not resting upon the evidence appropriate to physical science, the evidence of the senses. But neither the inductive philosophy nor common-sense would teach a man stoutly to affirm the impossibility of a thing which, if not proved to exist, cannot be proved not to exist, or to maintain the certainty of what, from the nature of the thing, eludes the observation of the senses. If the position, that life is independent of organization, involved a contradiction in terms, he might safely affirm that it could not be true. But then, it would not only be physiologically absurd,' but metaphysically and theologically absurd too. For, however Mr. Lawrence may think to save appearances by such cant phrases as physiologically speaking,' and by exhorting his pupils to bear in mind, that the theological doctrine of the soul and its ⚫ separate existence have nothing to do with the physiological question, a physiological absurdity, if it means any thing, means a physical contradiction; and a real contradiction in physics, cannot be a theological truth. On the other hand, what is true, theologically speaking, cannot be absurd, physiologically speaking, because two different truths cannot contradict each other, which would be for truth to contradict itself.. Unless, therefore, Mr. Lawrence could prove that the theological doctrine of the soul implies a physical contradiction, such as would be involved in the assertion that 2 and 2 make 5, he could have no possible ground for affirming the physiological absurdity of its separate existence, even on his own principles. His dogmatism is as unphilosophical as it is indecent.

But, if the nature and separate existence of the soul have nothing to do with the physiological question, which, in a certain sense we admit, why mix up negative assertions re

specting its nature with such investigations? This is what we blame Mr. Lawrence for; not for his infidel opinions, for which he must answer at another tribunal. Here is a man who tells you he has nothing to do with any thing for which he has not the evidence of his senses, and yet carries his rash and crude speculations into a subject wholly foreign from his inquiries, and totally beyond the reach of observation. And he does this in a way adapted to prejudice his pupils against any other mode of investigation, or species of evidence. It is on this we found our charge of sinister, of deliberately irreligious intention. He tells them, that the theological doctrine of an immaterial spirit is in opposition to their senses and rational faculties.' A manifest falsehood, but, if credited, of no use whatever in their inquiries into animal structure and function. We defy Mr. Lawrence to shew that a single consequence of the slightest scientific or practical value, could be deduced from the alleged fact, that there is no thought without a brain. He will not seriously contend, that a firm believer in the Hunterian doctrine of life, to say nothing of the theological doctrine of the soul, may not be as skilful a practitioner and as profound a physiologist, as the most inveterate materialist. That the vital principle, or the animal function of life, or whatever else it be termed, is incapable of manifesting itself in man independent of organization, is admitted on all hands: the connexion between them is undeniable. And this acknowledged connexion explains all the phenomena of life just as well, and answers every physiological purpose just as well, as the notion of the Materialist, who confounds connexion with identity, who affirms that function is a mere effect of an unintelligent cause, and that an apparatus is not a means, but a power. These absurdities of his are, therefore, gratuitous absurdities. He has gone out of his way to give the lie to the Scriptures and the common sense of mankind. And on this account, his conduct as a Lecturer is wholly inexcusable, because no motive, at least no good motive, can be assigned for his stepping beyond the line of a prudent neutrality on subjects professedly foreign from his inquiries.

Will it be urged in defence of our Lecturer, that he has but translated and retailed the doctrines of the French physiologists? Will it be said, that Mr. Lawrence has been inadvertently misled by his admiration of Bichat, and other men to whom science is greatly indebted, into these atheistical errors? Were the plea valid, it would amount to no better defence than is set up by the utterer of forged notes, that he is not so bad as the forger. But the manner in which the Author has vented these articles of disbelief, his dogmatism, his ungen

tlemanly abuse of Mr. Abernethy, his laborious reiteration of the lessons of infidelity, while they shew that he has not erred through inadvertence, deprive him of all claim to our indulgence or respect. He may suppress his work, or he may republish it, according as sordid calculations or a regard for his own character may dictate. We anticipate little permanent harm from its circulation; for the argumentation is too flimsy to stand the test of perusal. But he cannot undo the harm he may have done in the lecture-room, where, taking advantage of the ignorance and the passions of the young men whose instruction was confided to him, he has undermined their religious principles, and encouraged them to shake off the restraints imposed by the hope and dread of an hereafter. This part of his conduct, had these lectures never passed the press, would have stamped his character with the broad mark of execration. And unless the rank of the culprit is to be the criterion of guilt, Carlile, in comparison with such a man, is a venial offender against society.

But how stands the question of Materialism? It is a very old doctrine, as every school-boy knows; and the sects of materialists have been almost as numerous and as various as the denominations of Christendom. There were the Epicurean materialists, who ascribed every thing to atoms and chance, whose absurdities have been immortalized by Lucretius; the Peripatetic materialists, who discarded chance and atoms in favour of a nec quid, nec quantum, nec quale, and an eternal, ever-shifting necessity; and the believers in the Stratonic doctrine of librations. In modern times, we have had the thinking matter of Hobbes and Spinosa, the vibrations of Hartley, and the immaterial matter and soul-sleeping scheme of Priestley. The chief difference between these several schools and the French organologists, is, that the latter would transfer the doctrine of Materialism from metaphysics to physiology; substituting organization for the atoms, or corpuscles, or emanations, or subtile fluids of the old philosophers, and making the soul a palpable thinking substance,-a modification of medullary matter.' Life itself is, it seems, nothing but organization set in motion: it is,' says M. Bichat, the 'assemblage of those functions which resist death.' Thought and volition are but functions of the animal, constituting part of his life, and produced by his organization: they are merely certain states or activities of the brain, developments of certain vital properties resident in the structure.

There is an end, then, to the fine-spun notion of a subtile, ethereal matter, a breath, a μa, which was once imagined to be thin enough to think. This metaphysical soul is as great

an absurdity, physiologically speaking,' as the theological soul referred to by Sir Charles Morgan. The whole difference between solid, inert, gravitating matter, and perceptive, thinking, feeling matter, is-organization. If a cabbage had a brain, it would think as well as we do. But thought does not enter into the assemblage of its functions, and therefore it must remain content with vegetative life. Thus, our physiological materialists would at least do us the service of ridding us of the metaphysicians. Theirs is Materialism brought down to the level of the meanest capacity. Abstruse disquisitions on the necessary properties of matter and spirit, the doctrine of a vis inertia on the one hand, or the theory of a mutual penetration of matter, on the other, are within the compass of the thinking functions of but few happily constituted organs. But, that the brain secretes thought, just as the liver secretes bile, is an assertion so easy and familiar as to require only a usual degree of activity in the medullary organ, or of delicacy of fibre, in order to its being instantaneously perceived.

When the separate existence of the soul was formerly agitated, the question was, whether the thinking principle must not needs have a material vehicle; and it was at least a harmless fancy which endowed it with a finer body of thin air, to prevent its escaping altogether from the relations of time and place, and becoming a vague and boundless entity. But now, we need not rack imagination to provide a vehicle rare enough for the disembodied spirit: such shadowy matter would not answer its purpose. To talk of a vehicle for the spirit, whether aerial or fleshly, would be as physiologically absurd, as to talk of a vehicle for elasticity. It is the nerves, blood, and medullary matter that think; and when these are deprived of their vital properties, the man undergoes a chemical decomposition, in which the soul escapes, like caloric, and mixes with inert and unorganised matter. The epitaph which a wag wrote on the most distinguished of modern Pyrrhonists, would seem to be, after all, no joke, but a most accurate account of the biological catastrophe.

Here lie comprest in oaken chest,

Or here did once at least lie,

The blood, and veins, and bones, and brains,
And soul of Dr. Priestley.'

The hypothesis of Materialism, (for it is nothing more than an hypothesis,) will not require a moment's examination in order to the detection of its fallacy, from any one that receives the testimony of Divine Inspiration respecting the separate state, and the immediate transition of the soul of the believer to the presence of Christ. This source of evidence, how un