extensive division of corporeal diseases, so a like failure CLASS IV. or irregularity of performance in other ways lays a foun- III. Intel dation for as numerous a train of mental maladies. lectual principle. The nature of the mind but little known, ex cept from Of the nature of the mind or soul itself, we know little beyond what REVELATION has informed us; we have no chemical test that can reach its essence; no glasses that can trace its mode of union with the brain; no revelation. analogies that can illustrate the rapidity of its movements. And hence the darkness that, in this respect, hung over the speculations of the Indian gymnosophists and the philosophers of Greece, continues without abatement, and has equally resisted the labours of modern metaphysicians and physiologists. That the mind is an intelligent prin- Nature ciple we know from nature; and that it is a principle endowed with immortality, and capable of existing after intelligent: death in a state separate from the body, to which, how ever, it is hereafter to be re-united at a period when that which is now mortal shall put on immortality, and death itself be swallowed up of victory-we learn from the God of nature. And with such information we may well rest satisfied: and, with suitable modesty, direct our investi- preternatugations to those lower branches of this mysterious subject munication. that lie within the grasp of our reason. teaches that it is its other powers, and re-union ultimate with the body taught only by a Hence the sies concerning its entity have often ex hibited an unbecoming warmth and controver confidence. Whether its material or immaterial? I cannot, however, drop the subject altogether, without observing that the discussion concerning the particular entity of the mind, seems to have been conducted with an undue degree of heat and confidence on all sides, considering our present ignorance of whatever substance has been appealed to as constituting its specific frame. Is the essence of the mind, soul, or spirit, material or immaterial? The question, at first sight, appears to be of the utmost importance and gravity; and to involve nothing less than a belief or disbelief, not indeed, in its divine origin, but in its divine similitude and immortality. Yet I may venture to affirm that there is no question which has been productive of so little satisfaction, or has laid a foundation for wider and wilder within the whole range of metaphysics. And for this since neither plain and obvious reason, that we have no distinct ideas errors essence be The ques tion unsatisfactory and pregnant with errors, term affords a distinct idea. CLASS IV. III. Intellectual principle. of the terms, and no settled premises to build upon. Corruptibility and incorruptibility, intelligent and unintelligent, organized and inorganic, are terms that convey distinct meanings to the mind, and impart modes of being that are within the scope of our comprehension. But materiality and immateriality are equally beyond our Essence of reach. Of the essence of matter we know nothing, and altogether as little of many of its more active qualities : insomuch that, amidst all the discoveries of the day, it still remains a controvertible position, whether light, heat, magnetism and electricity are material substances, material properties, or things superadded to matter and of a higher nature. matter not known: : nor many of its most active qualities. Its relation to light, heat, mag netism and electricity not known. If they be matter, gravity and ponderability are not essential properties of matter, though commonly so regarded. And if they be things superadded to matter, they are necessarily immaterial, and we cannot open our eyes without beholding innumerable proofs of material and immaterial bodies co-existing and acting in harmo nious union through the entire frame of nature. But if we know nothing of the essence, and but little of the qualities of matter, of that common substrate which is diffused around us in every direction, and constitutes the whole of the visible world, what can we know of what is Immaterial immaterial? of the full meaning of a term that, in its strictest sense, comprehends all the rest of the immense fabric of actual and possible being; and includes, in its vast circumference, every essence and mode of essence of every other being, as well below as above the order of matter, and even that of the Deity himself? essences totally unknown. Whether extension be a distinc tive pro perty of matter. Whether possessed by space. Shall we take the quality of extension as the line of separation between what is material and what is immaterial? This, indeed, is the general and favourite distinction brought forward in the present day; but it is a distinction founded on mere conjecture, and which will by no means stand the test of inquiry. Is space extended? every one admits it to be so. But is space material? is it body of any kind? Des Cartes, indeed, contended that it is body, and a material body; for he denied a va CLASS IV. III. Intel In the pre to be in cuum, and asserted space to be a part of matter itself: but it is probable that there is not a single espouser of lectual this opinion in the present day. If then extension belong principle. equally to matter and to space, it cannot be contemplated sent day acas the peculiar and exclusive property of the former; and knowledged if we allow it to immaterial space, there is no reason why corporeal. we should not allow it to immaterial spirit. If extension appertain not to the mind or thinking principle, the latter can have NO PLACE of existence; it can exist NO WHERE: for WHERE or PLACE is an idea that cannot be separated from the idea of extension. And hence, the metaphysical immaterialists of modern time freely admit that the mind has NO PLACE of existence; that it does exist No WHERE; while, at the same time, they are compelled to allow that the immaterial Creator, or universal Spirit, exists EVERY WHERE, substantially as well as virtually. of matter. not: Nor let it be supposed that the difficulty is removed by Whether adding to matter the quality of solidity in conjunction a property solidity be with that of extension, and hence distinguishing it as possessed of SOLID EXTENT; for the quality of solidity is less characteristic of it than any we have thus far taken Apparently notice of; and is perpetually fleeing from us as we pursue it. That matter is infinitely divisible we dare not say, because we should hereby reduce it to mathematical points, and because, also, there would, in such case, be no certain or permanent basis to build upon, and to ensure a punctuality of material cause and effect: and hence, Sir Isaac Newton was obliged to suppose that it is pos- but obliged sessed of ultimate atoms which are solid and unchange- for granted. able. But of these the senses can trace nothing, and our admission is nothing more than conjectural. to be taken racter of ble from natural and Let not the author, however, be misunderstood upon Real chathis abstruse and difficult subject. That the mind has a the mind DISTINCT NATURE and is a DISTINCT REALITY from the as deducibody; that it is gifted with immortality, endowed with reasoning faculties, and capacified for a state of separate revealed existence after the death of the corporeal frame to which it is attached, are, in his opinion, propositions most clearly deducible from revelation, and, in one or two points, ad evidence; III. Intel lectual principle. but its actual essence unknown, CLASS IV. umbrated by a few shadowy glimpses of nature. And that it may be a substance strictly IMMATERIAL and ESSEN~ TIALLY DIFFERENT from matter is both possible and probable; and will hereafter, perhaps, when faith is turned into vision, and conjecture into fact, be found to be the true and genuine doctrine upon the subject. But till this glorious era arrive; or till, antecedently to it, it be prov ed, which it does not hitherto seem to have been, that matter, itself of divine origin, gifted even at present, under certain modifications, with instinct and sensation, and destined to become immortal hereafter, is physically incapable, under some still more refined, exalted, and spiritualized modification, of exhibiting the attributes of the soul, of being, under such a constitution, endowed with immortality from the first, and capacified for existing separately from the external and grosser frame of the body; and that it is beyond the power of its own Creator to render it intelligent, or to give it even brutal percep tion, the argument must be loose and inconclusive: it may plunge us, as it has plunged thousands before, into errors, but can never conduct us to demonstration. and the hand has is full of In almost every view of the sub being: It may It is no fair objection, however, against the immaterialist, that by contemplating the mind as a distinct essence ject, man is from that of the body, man is hereby rendered a coma compound pound being, possessing at one and the same time two distinct lives mysteriously united in an individual frame, and running in parallel lines till the hour of death. For whilst the known and obvious laws and faculties of the mind and body are so widely different, as they are acknowledged to be on all hands, some such composite union has been and must be allowed under every hypothesis whatever. And least of all have the sceptical physiologists of the present day any right to triumph upon such and peculiarly so regarded by an objection; who, drawing no light from nature, and rejecting that of sacred writ, contemplate the mind as formed of the same gross modification of matter as the body, and doomed to fall with it into one common and eternal dissolution. For even these acute materialists, with all the aid of physiological, anatomical, and chemical research, instead of simplifying the human fabric, have made it more clumsily complex, and represented it sometimes, indeed, as a duad, but of late more generally as a triad, of unities, a combination of a corruptible life within a corruptible life two or three deep, each possessing its own separate faculties or manifestations, but covered with a common outside. CLASS IV. III. Intel lectual principle. most sceptical physiologists of modern times. This remark more especially applies to the philoso- Hypothesis of Dumas: phers of the French school: and particularly to the system of Dumas*, as modified by Bichat; under which more of Bichat. finished form man is declared to consist of a pair of lives, each distinct and co-existent under the names of an organic and an animal life; with two distinct assortments of sensibilities, an unconscious and a conscious. Each of these lives is limited to a separate set of organs, runs its race in parallel steps with the other; commencing coetaneously and perishing at the same momentt. This work appeared at the close of the past century; was read and admired by most physiologists; credited by many; and became the popular production of the day. Within ten or twelve years, however, it ran its course, and was as generally either rejected or forgotten even in France: and M. Richerand first, and M. Magendie since, have thought Hypothesis themselves called upon to modify Bichat, in order to of Riche render him more palatable, as Bichat had already modi- rand and fied Dumas. Under the last series of remodelling, which is that of M. Magendie, we have certainly an improvement, though the machinery is quite as complex. Instead of two distinct lives M. Magendie presents us with two distinct sets or systems of action or relation, each of which * Principes de Physiologie. 4 Tom. 8vo. Par. 1800-3. Magendie. |