tisfactory soever to the man who perversely demands ocular demonstration of the existence of spirit,-like a blind man who should call for auricular demonstration of the light of the sun or the beauty of colour,-the direct mode of proof supplied by Revelation will be that to which the Christian will first and last recur, as the basis of his assurance that when absent from the body he shall be present with the Lord. But it is some satisfaction to be able to demolish the vain pretences of a spurious and arrogant philosophy; and this may be done without going very deep into either mathematical or physiological speculations.

Every one knows, without the aid of a definition, what idea we mean to convey by the words matter and mind. Between the objects which I see, hear, or feel, whose sensible qualities of size, shape, colour, and texture, I think of as making up their essence; and the thoughts and feelings of which I am conscious, and which, from my own consciousness, I learn to ascribe to others ;-between these two different classes of things, I make not an arbitrary, but a necessary distinction, when I consider the first as properties or forms of matter, the latter as acts of mind. Of matter, I inevitably think as having some form, and occupying some place, as discernible by its sensible qualities of extension, figure, and solidity; nor can I divest it of these qualities in idea, without depriving it of its existence, without reducing it to nothing. But of thought, or the thinking principle, I cannot imagine otherwise than that it is invisible, intangible, without figure or solidity, occupying no space, incapable of analysis; that is, having no parts. What matter is, or what mind is, I cannot define any better than that they are the assemblage of these opposite properties—the properties of which I obtain a knowledge by means of my senses, and the properties which have no relation to my senses, but which belong to my conscious self. Now, when the philosopher tells me that it is the same substance to which both these different sorts of properties belong, and that I am only thinking matter, I must ask him in the first place, What does he mean by matter? There must be at least wonderfully different kinds of matter, for one sort to be distinguished from another sort by opposite qualities, which I cannot even conceive of as attaching to the same thing. And if both are. matter, it might still be very convenient, for distinction's sake, to call the one sort of matter, matter, and the other sort, mind. But this, we are told, would be physiologically absurd, since mind is not a different substance, but only a result of a certain modification of matter called organization, which distinguishes live matter from dead matter. But both are matter; for matter

is every thing, and every thing is matter. According to this definition, and we can assure our readers it is the most philosophical one we have been able to deduce from the writings of the Materialists,-there is no denying that mind is matter, because it is something. But what is this same thing life, which we find attaching to certain portions of organized matter? Here is a new principle, not essential to matter, because I can think of matter as destitute of it, and perceive it to be actually destitute of it in the greater variety of its forms. It is therefore a principle distinct from its essence; not necessary to its identity, for organized matter may become deprived of this principle, and yet, retain for a while its sensible qualities; but an accident attaching to matter, a new property superinduced upon it. What is this property? Is it material or immaterial?

Life, says M. Bichat, is an assemblage of functions;'a sum total of functions,' says Sir Charles Morgan; the result of their exercise,' says Mr. Lawrence, or the result of the peculiar composition which distinguishes living bodies;' an organic spirit,' says Mr. Pring; the peculiar condition or • mode of existence of living beings,' says the Author of the article Life in Rees's Cyclopedia; union and cooperation of soul with body,' says the Prince of Lexicographers. And if in this last definition, which is all the better for being somewhat loose, and is as correct as any, the Dr. may seem to favour the notion, that to talk of life as independent of an animal body is incorrect, he has sixteen other definitions behind, which tell the other way. But what light do any or all of these definitions throw on the subject? Mr. Rennell, in his Remarks on Scepticism, defines Life, or active existence, to be inherent ac⚫tivity.' But this, again, is only putting a part of an idea for the whole; the fault of almost all attempts at metaphysical definition: it explains nothing. The fact is, that we use the word in all Dr. Johnson's seventeen different acceptations; and the attempt to fix it to any one, leads only to confusion. It is a condition, a mode, an assemblage of functions, a series of phenomena, a system, a result, an energy, a spirit; it is activity, vitality, it is-life.

But what is the principle on which those functions of organized bodies which we call their life, depend? On organi⚫zation,' say the Materialists: life is an attribute of organized matter. But an organ is an instrument, and organization is only a system of instruments, or an orderly arrangement of parts. How comes that series of functions which we call life, to be exercised by that system of parts which we call organization? It is not a property of matter as matter, to live, or even to move; nor is it a necessary property of organised

matter, since that may cease to live, and it then only returns to the natural state of matter, which is inert. How, then, can a mere different arrangement of matter, confer on it a property the very opposite to that which belongs to its nature? To answer, Because it is organized, is absurd, since, were its organization the cause of its life, an organized being could not cease to live; or, at least, death could not precede the mechani cal destruction of its organization. But life is that which produces this very arrangement of parts on which itself is said to depend. It is life which makes matter take the shape and acquire the organization by means of which its subsequent functions are carried on. Organization, therefore, may be said to be the effect, rather than the cause of life. Could matter come into life of itself, it would be an effect without a cause. Under any form, organized or unorganized, it must derive its motion, or whatever properties it is susceptible of, from a cause external to itself. That property which we call life, is invariably found to be propagated by life; and organization is nothing more than a susceptibility in matter so arranged, of receiving imparted life. To seek the origin of life in matter is, therefore, even physiologically speaking, absurd. The proximate cause of the life of one being, is, not its organization, or the adaptation of certain parts to certain functions, but the life of another being, to which it stands related as its offspring or production. And the power of imparting that life, must à fortiori be referred, not to the organization of that other being, but to a final cause infinitely removed from our observation, the Selfexistent Parent and Fountain of life.

Now, in calling this an immaterial principle, what more do we mean, than that it is not inherent in matter, or necessary to matter; that matter can exist without it, and that there is no tendency in dead or inert matter to become of itself active, living matter? It is immaterial, because it is a foreign or imparted principle, leading matter continually to exert an activity which in itself it does not possess; nay, more, which it has a constant tendency to lose; the existence of its parts forming no security for the continuance of their functions. What? exclaims our indignant Lecturer, an immaterial principle in the brute, in the oyster, in the polype? We answer, there is something more than mere matter: there is motion, and the power of motion; there is imparted life. It might seem ridiculous to speak of the soul of an oyster; but, according to Mr. Lawrence's notions, it were not less absurd to speak of the soul of a man ;-unless by soul, we mean nothing more than life; and then, an oyster, as well as a man, may be said to have a soul. Be it so. The immateriality of the human

soul,' it has been well remarked, doth not fall, though the souls of brutes are at the same time immaterial: nor doth "the rational soul's being such, depend upon the brute soul's ⚫being not such. Though both are immaterial, it doth not follow that both are therefore equal, or of the same kind of • immaterial Beings; which the objection tacitly supposes; or ⚫that there are the same reasons why the souls of brutes should subsist after they are separated from their material systems, as that the human soul should. The one's being rational, and ⚫the other irrational, is certainly a specific difference, whch ar gues a difference of design in the Author of these two kinds of immaterial beings; unless we would say that a Being infinitely wise made specifically different beings, and not for different purposes. 'The same reasons do not conclude a soul.» immortal, which conclude it immaterial; and though the immateriality of it is not against its immortality, but rather a strong symptom of it; yet, without better reasons, the con clusion would be precarious and ill-supported.'*

Hitherto, we have been using the word soul as synonymous with the life of a thing, or as the cause why matter lives. This principle, being separable from matter, and not partaking of the necessary properties of matter, (namely, solidity, configuration, and inertness,) we term immaterial or spiritual. But what the soul is in its own essence, we know just as well as we know what is the essence of matter, which some have resolved into indivisible atoms, while Dr. Priestley, who seems to have waged war equally against mind and matter, makes it to be a number of centres of attraction and repulsion.'+ Those who deny to organized matter an immaterial spontaneous mover, affirm in effect, that the configuration of certain parts is the cause of their motion, that function is the result of mere struc-" ture, that the mechanism is the power that moves it:, which assertions, however illogical, would be perfectly innocent, were it life only, vegetable or even animal life, which is supposed to be nothing more than a quality of solid, extended, sensible matter. But the absurdity does not stop here.

If the connexion between matter and motion is so inscruta ble as to lead us to refer the gravitation of an apple, to an unknown law operating externally on the falling body; if the phenomenon of spontaneous internal motion or growth, being still more repugnant to the known sensible qualities of matter, refers us for its cause to an immaterial soul, acting upon and through the substance which undergoes that mysterious process or series of changes; how are we to conceive of a certain

Baxter on the Soul. Vol. I. p. 211. † Rees's Cyclop. Art. Matter.

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arrangement of matter, as issuing in consciousness? Yet, such is the doctrine of the Materialist! Inert matter of a certain texture, under a certain arrangement of its parts called organization, becomes living matter. Let living matter be somewhat differently modified in its form and chemical constituents, and from that arrangement of solids and fluids, will result-sensation. Let that reticular contractile tissue with fluids in its inter "stices,' which constitutes the essence of the animal structure, undergo another arrangement of its chemical and mechanical composition, and it will think! The structure is not simply in these several cases, the measure and criterion of the function,' but function is represented as the result of structure; and sensation and thought arise from its mechanical action. That which perceives, remembers, judges, reasons,' is, says our sapient Lecturer, the medulla of the brain, which, Bichat tells us, is dissolved by the action of caustic alkali. Thus, the thinking faculty is a species of matter whose chemical composition is capable of being held in solution by caustic alkali! Having proceeded so far towards the analysis of thought, who can tell but that, in the progress of animal chemistry, we may one day arrive at the art of producing that wonderful combination from which sentient, thinking matter may be originated?

There can be no thought without a brain.' 'I acknowledge,' says Mr. Lawrence, that we are entirely ignorant how the parts of the brain accomplish those purposes (of perceiving, remembering, judging, &c.), as we are how the liver secretes bile,' &c. There is nothing so convenient as an analogy. The thinking brain secretes thought, we do not know how; of course we do not, nor do we ask how. We are inquiring into facts. Now, the action of the brain being, like that of the liver, a mechanical, or, if you please, a chemical action, or something partaking of both, that which it secretes, or upon which it acts, must, like the bile elaborated by the liver, be a material substance capable of being so acted upon: it may be solid, fluid, or aëriform, but it must be matter. If the thinking organ is matter, thought, as secreted by that organ, must needs be a product of analogous or correspondent nature. Otherwise, we should have an effect not answering to its cause, a material organ secreting an immaterial substance; and then, as Mr. Lawrence ingeniously argues, in exposing the physiological absurdity of those who contend that thought is not an act of the brain, but of an immaterial substance, residing in or ⚫ connected with it,'-this large and curious structure would have nothing, after all, to do: its office would be only one ⚫ remove above a sinecure.' Like the bile which is secreted by 1. XVII. N. S. 2 P