forms some portion of the belief of the worshippers of Brahma and Budha.

It may be stated as a probable truth that, the correct view of physical and intellectual life is to be found in the mean of the two extreme theories which have been pronounced concerning it; or that, by uniting the opposed doctrines of the Materialists and Spiritualists, we at once acknowledge the animal life which is the result of organization, and the spiritual life, which is the immaterial entity, the imperishable superaddition to sentient existence.

The Material, or the Spiritual, doctrine, if advocated singly, involves so many perplexities, as to be altogether inconsistent with established facts, and with inductive reasoning. We will severally consider them.

OBJECTIONS TO THE DOCTRINE OF THE MATERIALISTS.

II.

ONE of the obvious tendencies of this doctrine is to suggest the belief of equivocal or spontaneous generation.* This creed, which is of Egyptian origin, was almost universally popular in the Philosophic Schools of Greece and Rome. It was one of the first principles of Democritus and Epicurus, who denied the superintendence of a Divinity in

* For convenience I have used the terms spontaneous generation, and equivocal generation, synonymously. There is strictly this difference between them-the former signifies the production of a living being from the accidental combination of inorganic elements; the latter considers the same result to follow the casual union (either by disordered function, or by decomposition) of elements which had previously composed some other dissimilarly organized body.

the formation of the world, and for the life of plants and animals, found a ready explanation in the peculiar and anomalous combination of material particles. In the Mythology of the Poets this belief also occupied a place, and Ovid, who copied Hesiod in his Narrative of the Antediluvian Age, represents Deucalion and Pyrrha as perpetuating their species by casting stones backwards.*

All other classes of animals, he tells us, were renewed spontaneously.

Cætera diversis tellus animalia formis

Sponte sua peperit;-METAM. LIB. 1.

All other tribes, howe'er diverse of make,
Earth bore spontaneous.

In another poem he speaks of the decomposing carcase of an ox giving birth to insect existence.

Fervent exanima putri

De bove; mille animas una necata dedit.—FASt. 1.

The putrid carcase now ferments amain,

And thousands spring to life for one that's slain.†

Our own Thomson expresses a similar belief in spontaneous

vitality.

From swampy fens,

Where putrefaction into life ferments

And breathes destructive myriads.

SUMMER, V. 1028.

* Homer compliments the Athenians by representing Erectheus, the founder of their republic, as the immediate offspring of the earth, although suckled by Minerva.-IL.B.544.

+ See Virgil Georg. iv. 302.

Dr. Darwin has also carried the idea of equivocal generation to a most fanciful extent

Hence, without parent, by spontaneous birth
Rise the first specks of animated earth;

From Nature's womb the plant or insect swims,
And buds or breathes, with microscopic limbs.

TEMPLE OF NATURE, 1. 247.

In the additional notes to this poem the Doctor gravely remarks "it may appear too bold, in the present state of our knowledge on this subject, to suppose that all vegetables and animals now existing, were originally derived from the smallest microscopic ones formed of spontaneous vitality; and that they have by innumerable re-productions, during innumerable centuries of time, gradually acquired the size, strength, and excellence of form and faculties they now possess; and that such amazing powers were originally impressed on matter and spirit, by the great Parent of Parents, Cause of Causes! Ens Entium !"

Unhappily for this doctrine, if advocated to the full extent of Materialism, it neither requires nor recognises the Cause of Causes! the Ens Entium! It has consequently been in all ages a fertile source of Atheistical dogmatism. For, in believing that a fortuitous concourse of atoms may primitively originate a mite, with its simple vitality, and subsequently generate a man, with all his complication of intelligence, we supersede the necessity of Divine interposition, and deny to the soul its accredited immortality. Hence says Lucretius

Nonne fatendum est,

Corporea natura animum constare, animamque?

DE RER. NAT. 3. v. 167.

Can we, then, doubt

That soul, that spirit, must corporeal spring?

Nunc

age, nativos animantibus et mortaleis
Esse animos, animasque leveis, ut noscere possis.

DE RER. NAT. 3. v. 418.

Now mark profound: to teach thee how this soul,
This subtle spirit, with th' external frame
Begot, alike must perish.-GoOD.

To reply to such absurdity were useless.

The theory of equivocal generation was warmly espoused and advocated by Aristotle, whose extreme popularity as a naturalist contributed most signally to establish his doctrine throughout nearly the entire of Europe. Its metaphysical integrity, however, was at last completely shattered by the exertions of Des Cartes, Bayle, Malbranche, and Newton; and its physiological soundness has been equally disproved by the microscopical researches of entomologists from Redi to Ehrenberg. It is now an admitted fact that, putrescence and fermentation, instead of generating organic life, merely afford a convenient and suitable nidus for hatching the germs and ova of animalculæ, which in myriads people the air, the earth, and the ocean.

III.

ANOTHER objection to the doctrine of the Materialists is, that, it declares matter to possess certain properties which are inconsistent with our established knowledge of material phenomena. It pronounces the highest intellectual function

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to be the offspring of organization, equally with the lowest vital sensibility. Liebig has daringly hazarded the opinion that, every conception, every mental affection, is followed by changes in the chemical nature of the secreted fluids; that every thought, every sensation, is accompanied by a change in the composition of the substance of the brain."*

To refute such a crazy conjecture by direct facts, is as little possible as worth while; but at least we may say that, with its fanciful author rests the responsibility of proving it.

From the confused language employed by Liebig to designate states and actions of the mind, it is evident that he is less a metaphysician than a physiologist. Still, from the error of his opinion, we may perhaps obtain a clue for our safer guidance towards a probable truth. We shall discover that there are some actions, apparently mental, so entirely dependent upon physical organization, that they may be considered a consequence of it; whilst other intellectual operations and states are so remote from all seeming and probable connexion with matter, that they may be regarded as the separate and independent operation of the immaterial entity, the exclusive mind itself.

SENSATION is the basis of intuitional or instinctive life.+ Its manifestation essentially depends upon a nervous structure.

Sensation, as affecting ourselves, is of two kinds, internal and external-the former relates to our bodily feelings, our appetites, and wants—the latter informs us of the nature and properties of the world without.

* Animal Chemistry, p 9.

+ The term sensation is not to be confounded with irritability, and its consequent contractility, as manifested in plants and some of the lower tribes of animals-the former being admitted not to possess a nervous system, the latter, in a few examples, affording no definite trace of it.