advanced above, must necessarily be as fatal to the annihilating clause which is inferred from them, as one million. For if there be any force in that mode of argument which has been termed the reductio ad absurdum, it is evident that a single exception to each of the intermediate assertions, between the first position and the last, forces the materialist upon the monstrous necessity of admitting two discrete orders of men, and that there is one law of existence for one description, and a second for another. If we pursue the analogy no farther than history, experience, and observation warrant, and this is the only logical mode of pursuing it, we are then forced upon the absurdity mentioned above. The only analogical chain which the facts authorize us to form, is as follows: the mind is infantile with the body, it is sometimes manly in the adult, sometimes sick and debilitated by disease, sometimes enfeebled in the decline of life, sometimes doting in decrepitude, and sometimes annihilated by death!!! If the mind be only sometimes annihilated with the body, it must sometimes survive it; but an argument that would make one class of men mortal, and another immortal, by proving too much, proves nothing, and must fall by its own absurdity Circa Deos negligentur quippe addictus mathematice, is an accusation that is not, I fear, con fined in the present day to any particular pursuit, for as there have been some mathematicians so devout as to fancy they have discovered the trinity in a triangle, so there are some anatomists who wil' not believe in the existence of a soul, because they • One devoted to mathematics, treats the gods slightly. PUB have never yet been able to transfix it upon the point of their knife: yet methinks there is one circumstance that ought to lower the dogmatical confidence of the materialist, and this is, that mind happens to be the only thing on whose existence we can by intuition itself rely. We may go on heaping proof upon proof, and experiment upon experiment, to establish, as we suppose, the reality of matter, and after we have done all this, I know not of one satisfactory answer that we could give, to those who chose to affirm that with all our pains, we have only established the reality, not of matter, but of sensation. We may also doubt about the existence of matter, as learnedly and as long as we please, as some have done before us, and yet we shall not establish the existence of matter by any such dubitations; but the moment we begin to doubt about the existence of mind, the very act of doubting proves it. Another great source of error, in this most important of all questions, is the mistaking of a strong but inexplicable connexion, for an inseparable identity. In the first place, I should humbly conceive that it is quite as unphilosophical to say that a lump of brain thinks, as that an eye sees; the one, indeed, ministers to thought, as the other to vision ; for the eye, although it be necessary and subservient to vision, can, strictly speaking, no more be said to see, than a microscope or a telescope; it is indeed, a finer instrument than either, but still an instrument, and capable of being assisted by both. This observation would apply, mutatis mutandis, to all of the senses, but I have selected that of vision, as the most refined. We all know that the two eyes paint two minute and inverted images of an object, upon the retina; having done this, they have done all that is expected of them. Wha: power is it then that rectifies all the errors of this machinery, as to number, position and size, and presents us with one upright object, in its just dimensions and proportions? All this is certainly not effected by the eyes, for a paralysis of the optic nerve instantly and totally destroys their powers, without in the slightest manner affecting their organization. The optic nerve, then, it seems, and the eye, are both necessary to vision, but are they all that is necessary? Certainly not; because if we proceed a little farther, we shall find that certain effects, operating upon the brain, will completely and instantly destroy the powers of vision, the optic nerve and the eye both remaining unaltered and undisturbed. How then are these effects produced? are their causes always mechanical, as from pressure, or the violence of a blow? No, they are often morbid, the result of increased action, brought on by inflammation, or of diseased structure, superinduced by abscess. Are there not causes neither morbid nor mechanical, that have been found capable of producing similar effects? Yes-a few sounds acting on the tympanum of the ear, or a few black and small figures scribbled on a piece of white paper, have been known to knock a man down as effectually as a sledge hammer, and to deprive him not only of vision, but even of life. Here then we have instances of mind acting upon matter, and I by no means affirm that matter does not also act upon mind; for to those who advocate the intimate connexion between body and mind, these reciprocities of action are easily reconcileable; but this will be an insuperable difficulty to those who affirm the identity of mind and body which however is not for us, but for those who maintain this doctrine, to overcome. If mind be indeed so inseparably identified with matter, that the dissolution of the one must necessarily involve the destruction of the other, how comes it to pass that we so often see the body survive the mind in one man, and the mind survive the body in another? Why do they not agree to die together? How happened it that the body of Swift became for so many years the living tomb of his mind ; and, as in some cases of paralysis, how are we to account for the phenomena of the body, reduced to the most deplorable and helpless debility, without any corresponding weakness or hebetation of the mind? Again, if the mind be indeed not the tenant of the corporeal dwelling, but an absolute and component part of the dwelling itself, where does the mysterious but tangible palladium of this temple reside? Where are we to go to find it, since, if material, why cannot it be felt, handled, and seen? She resides, we are informed, in the inmost recesses of her sensorium, the brain; a mere assertion that can never be proved; for if she doth indeed enlighten this little citadel, it is with a ray like that of those sepulchral lamps, which, the instant we discover, we destroy. If we return to the evidence of facts, the dissections carried on by Morgagni, Haller, Bennet, and others, do most thoroughly and irrefutably establish one most important, and to me at least, consoling truth; that there is no part of the brain, either cortical, or medullary, not even the pineal gland itself, that has not, in one instance or in another, been totally destroyed by disease, but without producing in the patient any corresponding alienation or hallucination of mind; in some cases, without any suspicion of such disease during life, and without any discovery of it, until after death, by dissection. We shall be told, perhaps, that the thinking faculty may be something residing in the very centre of the pineal gland, but so minute as to survive the destruction even of that in which it is enclosed. The pineal gland does indeed contain a few particles of a schistous or gritty substance, but which, alas, prove little for the argument of him who would designate thought to be nothing more than the result of a more curious and complicated organization; since these particles, on examination, turn out to be nothing more nor less chan phosphate of lime! This intimate union between body and mind, is in fact analogous to all that we see, and feel, and comprehend. Thus we observe that the material stimuli of alcohol, or of opium, act upon the mind through the body, and that the moral stimuli of love, or of anger, act upon the body through the mind; these are reciprocities of action, that establish the principle of connexion between the two, but are fatal to that of an identity. Those who would persuade us that the thinking faculty is an identical part of the body, maturescent in it, and dying with it, impose a very heavy task upon themselves; and if we consider the insuperable difficulties of their creed on the one hand, and the air of conviction with which they defend it on the other, we are perhaps justified in affirming that these men are the very last persons in the universe, to whom the name of skeptic ought to be applied ; but a dogmatic doubter, although it may be a something beyond our philosophy, is too often not |