suppose existence, which is a petitio principii.' If, therefore, properties, modes, or attributes in God be considered as perfections (and it is impossible to consider them as any thing else), then, by this confession of the great author himself, they must all or any of them presuppose existence. It is indeed immediately added in the same place, that bare necessity of existence does not presuppose, but infer existence;' which is true only if such necessity be supposed to be a principle extrinsic, the absurdity of which has been already shown, and is indeed universally confessed. If it be a mode or property, it must presuppose the existence of its subject as certainly and as evidently as it is a mode or a property. It might, perhaps, à posteriori infer the existence of its subject, as effects may infer a cause; but that it should infer in the other way à priori is altogether as impossible as that a triangle should be a square, or a globe a parallelogram."(5) The true idea of the necessary existence of God is, that he thus exists because it is his nature, as an independent and uncaused being, to be; his being is necessary because it is underived, not underived because it is necessary. The first is the suber sense of the word among our old divines; the latter is a theory of modern date, and leads to no practical result whatever, except to entangle the mind in difficulty, and to give a colour to some very injurious errors. Equally unsatisfactory, and therefore quite as little calculated to serve the cause of truth, is the argument from space; which is represented by Newton, Clarke, and others, as an infinite mode of an infinite substance, and that substance, God; so that from the existence of space itself may be argued the existence of one Supreme and Infinite Being. Berkeley, Law, and others, have however shown the fallacy of considering space either as a substance or a mode, and have brought these speculations under the dominion of common sense, and rescued them from metaphysical delusion. They have rightly observed, that space is a mere negation, and that to suppose it to have existence because it has some properties, for instance, of penetrability, or the capacity of receiving body, is the same thing as to affirm that darkness must be something because it has the capacity of receiving light, and silence something because it has the property of admitting sound, and absence the property of being supplied by presence. To reason in this manner is to assign absolute negations, and such as in the same way may be applied to nothing, and then call them positive properties, and so infer that the chimera thus clothed with them must needs be something. The arguments in favour of the real existence of space as something positive, have failed in the hands of their first great authors, and the attempts since made to uphold them have added nothing but what is exceedingly futile, and indeed often obviously absurd. The whole of this controversy has left us only to lament the waste of labour which has been employed in erecting around the impregnable ramparts of the great arguments on which the cause rests with so much safety, the useless encumbrances of mud and straw. The proof of the being of a God reposes wholly then upon arguments à posteriori, and it needs no other; though we shall see as we proceed, that even these arguments, strong and irrefutable as they are when rightly applied, have been used to prove more as to some of the attributes of God, than can satisfactorily be drawn from them. Even with this safe and convincing process of reasoning at our command, we shall find at every step of an inquiry into the Divine Nature our entire dependence upon divine revelation for our primary light. That must both originate our investigations, and conduct them to a satisfactory result. therefore self-existent, having been proved, the next question is, whether there exists more than one such Being, or, in other words, whether we are to ascribe to him an absolute unity or soleness. On this point the testimony of the Scriptures is express and unequivocal. "The Lord our God is ONE Lord." Deut. vi. 4. "The Lord he is God, there is NONE ELSE beside him." Deut. iv. 35. "Thou art God ALONE." Psalin lxxxvi. 10. "We know that an idol is nothing in the world, and there is none other God but ONE." Nor is this stated in Scripture merely to exclude all other creators, governors, and deities, in connexion with men, and the system of coated things which we behold; but absolutely, so a to exclude the idea of the existence, any where, of more than one Divine nature. Of this Unity, the proper Scripture notion may be thus expressed. Some things are one by virtue of composition, but God hath no parts, nor is compounded; but is a pure, simple Being. Some are one in kind, but admit many individuals of the same kind, as men, angels, and other creatures; but God is so one that there are no other Gods, though there are other beings. Some things are so one, as that there exists no other of the same kind, as are one sun, one moon, one world, one heaven; yet there might have been more, if it had pleased God so to will it. But God is so one, that there is not, there cannot be another GOD. He is one only, and takes up the Deity so fully, as to admit no fellow.(7) The proof of this in portant doctrine from Scripture is short and simple. We have undoubted proofs of a revelation from the Maker and Governor of this present world. Granting him to be wise and good, "it is impossible that God should lie," and his own testimony assigns to him an exclusive Deity. If we admit the authority of the Scriptures, we admit a Deity; if we admit one God, we exclude all others. The truth of Scripture resting, as we have seen, on proofs which cannot be resisted without universal skepticism, and universal skepticism being proved to be impossible by the common conduct of even the most skeptical men, the proof of the Divine Unity rests precisely on the same basis, and is sustained by the same certain evidence. On this, as on the former point, however, there is much rational confirmation, to which revelation has given us the key; though without that, and even in its strongest form, it may be concluded from the prevalence of polytheism among the generality of nations, and of dualism among others, that the human mind would have had but too indistinct a view of this kind of evidence to rest in a conclusion so necessary to true religion and to settled rules of morals. To prove the unity of God, several arguments à pri ori have been made use of; to which mode of proof, provided the argument itself be logical, no objection lies. For though it appears absurd to attempt to prove à priori the existence of a first cause, seeing that nothing can either in order of time or order of nature be prior to him, or be conceived prior to him; yet the existence of an independent and self-existent cause of all things being made known to us by revelation, and confirmed by the phenomena of actual and dependent existence, a ground is laid for considering from this fact, which is antecedent in order of nature, though not in order of time, the consequent attributes with which such a Being must be invested. Among the arguments of this class to prove the Divine Unity, the following are the principal. Dr. S. Clarke argues from his view of the necessary existence of the Divine Being. "Necessity," he observes, "absolute in itself, is simple, and uniform, and universal, without any possible difference, difformity, or variety whatsoever; and all variety or difference of existence must needs arise from some external cause, and be dependent upon it." And again, "To suppose two or more distinct beings existing of themselves necessarily, and independent of each other, distinguish him from all other beings. Perfections, because they are the several representations of that one perfection, which is himself. Names and terms, because they express and signify something of his essence. Notions, because they are so many apprehensions of his being as we conceive of him in our minds."-LAWSON's Theo-Politica. (7) Ibid. implies this contradiction-that each of them being in-, that being, seems to require some ground or reason; dependent of each other, they may either of them be which reason, as it is foreign from the being itself, must supposed to exist alone; so that it will be no contra- be the effect of some other external cause, and consediction to suppose the other not to exist, and consequently cannot have place in the first cause. That the quently neither of them will be necessarily existing."(8) These arguments being, however, wholly founded upon that peculiar notion of necessary existence which is advocated by the author, derive their whole authority from the principle itself, to which some objections have been offered. The argument from space must share the same fate. If space be an infinite attribute of an infinite substance, and an essential attribute of Deity, then the existence of one infinite substance, and one only, ay probably be argued from the existence of this infinite property; but if space be a mere negation, and neither substance nor attribute, which has been sufficiently proved by the writers before referred to, then it is worth nothing as a proof of the unity of God. Wollaston argues, that if two or more independent beings exist, their natures must be the same or different; if different, either contrary or various. If contrary, each must destroy the operations of the other; if various, one must have what the other wants, and both cannot be perfect. If their nature be perfectly the same, then they would coincide and indeed be but one, though called two.(9) Bishop Wilkins says, if God be an infinitely perfect Being, it is impossible to imagine two such Beings at the same time, because they must have several perfections, or the same. If the former, neither of them can be God, because neither of them has all possible perfections. If they have both equal perfections, neither of them can be absolutely perfect; because it is not so great to have the same equal perfections in common with another as to be superior to all others.(1) "The nature of God," says Bishop Pearson, "consists in this, that he is the prime and original cause of all things, as an independent Being, upon whom all things else depend, and likewise the ultimate end or final cause of all; but in this sense, two prime causes are unimaginable: and for all things to depend on one, and yet for there to be more independent beings than one, is a clear contradiction."(2) The best argument of this kind is, however, that which arises from absolute perfection; the idea of which forces itself upon our minds, when we reflect upon the nature of a self-existent and independent Being. Such a Being there is, as is sufficiently proved from the existence of beings dependent and derived; and it is impossible to admit that without concluding, that he who is independent and underived, who subsists wholly and only of himself, without depending on any other, must owe this absoluteness to so peculiar an excellence of his own nature, as we cannot well conceive to be less than that by which it comprehends in itself the most boundless and unlimited fulness of being, life, power, or whatsoever can be conceived under the name of a perfection. "To such a Being, infinity may be justly ascribed; and infinity, not extrinsically considered with respect to time and place, but intrinsically, as imparting bottomless profundity of essence, and the full confluence of all kinds and degrees of perfection without bound or limit."(3) "Limitation is the effect of some superior cause, which, in the present instance, there cannot be; consequently, to suppose limits where there can be no limiter, is to suppose an effect without a cause. For a being to be limited or deficient in any respect, is to be dependent in that respect on some other being, which gave it just so much and no more; consequently, that being which in no respect depends upon any other, is in no respect limited or deficient. In all beings capable of increase or diminution, and consequently incapable of perfection or absolute infinity, limitation or defect is indeed a necessary consequence of existence, and is only a negation of that perfection which is wholly incompatible with their nature; and therefore, in these beings, it requires no farther cause. But in a being naturally capable of perfection or absolute infinity, all imperfection or finiteness, as it cannot flow from the nature of (8) Demonstration, prop. 7. self-existent being is capable of perfection, or absolute infinity, must be granted; because he is manifestly the subject of one infinite or perfect attribute, namely, eternity, or absolute invariable existence. In this respect his existence is perfect, and therefore it may be perfect in every other respect also. Now, that which is the subject of one infinite attribute or perfection must have all its attributes infinitely or in perfection; since to have any perfections in a finite, limited manner, when the subject and these perfections are both capable of strict infinity, would be the fore-mentioned absurdity of positive limitation without a cause. To suppose this eternal and independent being limited in or by its own nature, is to suppose some antecedent nature or limiting quality superior to that being, to the existence of which no thing, no quality, is in any respect antecedent or superior. The same method of reasoning will prove knowledge and every other perfection to be infinite in the Deity, when once we have proved that perfection to belong to him at all; at least, it will show that to suppose it limited is unreasonable, since we can find no manner of ground for limitation in any respect; and this is as far as we need go, or perhaps as natural light will lead us."(4) The connexion between the steps of the argument from the self-existence and infinity of the Deity to his unity, may be thus traced. There is actually existing an absolute, entire fulness of wisdom, power, and of all other perfection. This absolute, entire fulness of perfection is infinite. This infinite perfection must have its seat somewhere. Its primary, original seat can be nowhere but in necessary self-subsisting being. If then we suppose a plurality of self-originate beings concurring to make up the seat or subject of this infinite perfection, each one must either be of finite and partial perfection, or infinite and absolute. Infinite and absolute it cannot be, because one self-originate, infinitely and absolutely perfect being will necessarily comprehend all perfection, and leave nothing to the rest. Nor finite, because many finites can never make one infinite; nor many broken parcels or fragments of perfection ever make infinite and absolute perfection, even though their number, if that were possible, were infinite. To these arguments from the Divine Nature, proofs of his unity are to be drawn from his works. While we have no revelation of or from any other being than from him whom we worship as GOD: so the frame and constitution of nature present us with a harmony and order which show, that their Creator and Preserver is but one. We see but one will and one intelligence, and therefore there is but one Being. The light of this truth must have been greatly obscured to heathens, who knew not how to account for the admixture of good and evil which are in the world, and many of them therefore supposed both a good and an evil deity. To us, however, who know how to account for this fact from the relation in which man stands to the moral government of an offended Deity, and the connexion of this present state with another; and that it is to man a state of correction and discipline; not only is this difficulty removed, but additional proof is afforded, that the Creator and the Ruler of the world is but one Being. If two independent beings of equal power concurred to make the world, the good and the evil would be equal; but the good predominates.-Between the good and the evil there could also be no harmony or connexion; but we plainly see evil subjected to the purposes of benevolence, and so to accord with it, which at once removes the objection. "Of the Unity of the Deity," says Paley, "the proof is, the uniformity of plan observable in the Universe, The Universe itself is a system; each part either depending upon other parts, or being connected with other parts by some common law of motion, or by the presence of some common substance.-One principle of gravitation causes a stone to drop towards the earth, and the moon to wheel round it. One law of attraction carries all the different planets about the sun. This philosophers demonstrate. There are also other points of agreement among them, which may be con (4) Dr. GLEIG. sidered as marks of the identity of their origin, and of their intelligent author. In all are found the convenience and stability derived from gravitation. They all experience vicissitudes of days and nights, and changes of season. They all, at least Jupiter, Mars, and Venus, have the same advantages from their atmospheres as we have. In all the planets, the axes of rotation are permanent. Nothing is more probable, than that the same attracting influence, acting according to the same rule, reaches to the fixed stars; but if this be only probable, another thing is certain, namely, that the same element of light does. The light from a fixed star affects our eyes in the same manner, is refracted and reflected according to the same laws, as the light of a candle. The velocity of the light of the fixed stars is also the same as the velocity of the light of the sun, reflected from the satellites of Jupiter. The heat of the sun, in kind, differs nothing from the heat of a coal fire. fixed basis or immoveable fulcrum, without which mechanically they could not act. The crust of an insect is its shell, and answers the like purpose. The shell also of an oyster stands in the place of a bone; the bases of the muscles being fixed to it, in the same manner as, in other animals, they are fixed to the bones. All which (under wonderful varieties, indeed, and adaptations of form) confesses an imitation, a remembrance, a carrying on of the same plan." If in a large house, wherein are many mansions and a vast variety of inhabitants, there appears exact order, all from the highest to the lowest continually attending their proper business, and all lodged and constantly provided for suitably to their several conditions, we find ourselves obliged to acknowledge one wise economy; and if in a great city or commonwealth there is a perfectly regular administration, so that not only the whole society enjoys an undisturbed peace, but every member has the station assigned him which he is best "In our own globe the case is clearer. New coun-qualified to fill, the unenvied chiefs constantly attendtries are continually discovered, but the old laws of ing their more important cares, served by the busy innature are always found in them; new plants perhaps, feriors, who have all a suitable accommodation, and or animals, but always in company with plants and food convenient for them, the very meanest ministering animals which we already know; and always possess to the public utility, and protected by the public care; ing many of the same general properties. We never if, I say, in such a community we must conclude get among such original or totally different modes of there is a ruling counsel, which if not naturally yet is existence, as to indicate, that we are come into the politically one, and unless united, could not produce province of a different Creator, or under the direction such harmony and order; much more have we reason of a different will. In truth, the same order of things to recognise one governing intelligence in the earth, in attends us wherever we go. The elements act upon which there are so many ranks of beings disposed of in one another, electricity operates, the tides rise and fall, the most convenient manner, having all their several the magnetic needle elects its position in one region of provinces appointed to them, and their several kinds the earth and sea as well as in another. One atmos- and degrees of enjoyment liberally provided for, withphere invests all parts of the globe, and connects all; out encroaching upon, but rather being mutually useful one sun illuminates; one moon exerts its specific at- to each other, according to a settled and obvious subortraction upon all parts. If there be a variety in natural dination. What else can account for this but a sove effects, as, for example, in the tides of different seas, reign wisdom, a common provident nature presiding that very variety is the result of the same cause, acting over, and caring for the whole?(5) under different circumstances. In many cases this is proved; in all, is probable. The importance of the doctrine of the Divine Unity is obvious. The existence of one God is the basis of all true religion. Polytheism confounds and unsettles all moral distinction, divides and destroys obligation, and takes away all sure trust and hope from man. There is one God who created us; we are therefore his property, and bound to him by an absolute obligation of obedience. He is the sole Ruler of the world, and his one immutable will constitutes the one immutable law of our actions, and thus questions of morality are settled on permanent foundations. To him alone we owe repentance, and confession of sin; to one Being alone we are directed to look for pardon, in the method he has appointed; and if he be at peace with us, we need fear the wrath of no other, for he is supreme; we are not at a loss among a crowd of supposed deities, to which of them we shall turn in trouble; he alone re "The inspection and comparison of living forms add to this argument examples without number. Of all large terrestrial animals, the structure is very much alike; their senses nearly the same; their natural functions and passions nearly the same; their viscera nearly the same, both in substance, shape, and office; digestion, nutrition, circulation, secretion, go on, in a similar manner, in all; the great circulating fluid is the same; for I think no difference has been discovered in the properties of blood from whatever animal it be drawn. The experiment of transfusion proves that the blood of one animal will serve for another. The skeletons also of the larger terrestrial animals show particular varieties, but still under a great general affinity. The resemblance is somewhat less, yet sufficiently evident, between quad-ceives prayer, and he is the sole and sufficient object of rupeds and birds. They are all alike in five respects, for one in which they differ. "In fish, which belong to another department, as it were, of nature, the points of comparison become fewer. But we never lose sight of our analogy; e. g. we still meet with a stomachi, a liver, a spine; with bile and blood; with teeth; with eyes, which eyes are only slightly varied from our own, and which variation, in truth, demonstrates, not an interruption, but a continuance of the same exquisite plan; for it is the adaptation of the organ to the element, namely, to the different refraction of light passing into the eye out of a denser medium. The provinces, also, themselves of water and earth, are connected by the species of animals which inhabit both and also by a large tribe of aquatic animals, which closely resemble the terrestrial in their internal structure; I mean the cetaceous tribe, which have hot blood, respiring lungs, bowels, and other essential parts, like those of land-animals. This similitude, surely, bespeaks the same creation, and the same Creator. "Insects and shell-fish appear to me to differ from other classes of animals the most widely of any. Yet even here, besides many points of particular resemblance, there exists a general relation of a peculiar kind. It is the relation of inversion; the law of contrariety; namely, that whereas, in other animals, the bones to which the muscles are attached lie within the body; in insects and shell-fish they lie on the outside trust. When we know HIM, we know a Being of absolute perfection, and need no other friend or refuge. Among the discoveries made to us by Divine Revelation, we find not only declarations of the existence and unity of God, but of his nature or substance, which is plainly affirmed to be spiritual, "God is a SPIRIT." The sense of the Scriptures in this respect cannot be mistaken. Innumerable passages and allusions in them show, that the terms spirit and body, or matter, are used in the popular sense for substances of a perfectly distinct kind, and which are manifested by distinct and in many respects opposite and incommunicable proper ties: that the former only can perceive, think, reason, will, and act; that the latter is passive, impercipient, divisible, and corruptible. Under these views and in this popular language, God is spoken of in holy writ. He is spirit, not body; mind, not matter. He is pure spirit, unconnected even with bodily form or organs;' the invisible God whom no man hath seen or can see," an immaterial, incorruptible, impassable substance, an immense mind or intelligence, self-acting,' self-moving, wholly above the perception of bodily sense; free from the imperfections of matter, and all the infirmities of corporeal beings; far more excellent than any finite and created spirits, because their Creator, and therefore styled, "the Father of spirits," and "the God of the spirits of all flesh." Such is the express testimony of Scripture as to the Divine Nature. That the distinction which it holds (5) ABERNETHY's Sermons. between matter and spirit should be denied or disregarded by infidel philosophers, is not a matter of surprise, since it is as easy and as consistent in them to materialize God as man. But that the attributes of spirits should have been ascribed to matter by those who nevertheless profess to admit the authority of the biblical revelation, as in the case of the modern Unitarians and some others, is an instance of singular inconsistency. It shows with what daring an unhallowed philosophy will pursue its speculations, and warrants the conclusion, that the Scriptures in such cases are not acknowledged upon their own proper principles, but only so far as they are supposed to agree with or not to oppose the philosophic system which such men may have adopted. For, hesitate as they may, to deny the distinction between matter and spirit, is to deny the spirituality of God; and to contradict the distinction which, as to man, is constantly kept up in every part of the Bible, the distinction between flesh and spirit. To assert that consciousness, thought, volition, &c. are the results of organization, is to deny also what the Scripture so expressly affirms, that the souls of men exist in a disembodied state: and that in this disembodied state, not only do they exist, but that they think, and feel, and act without any diminution of their energy or capacity. The immateriality of the Divine Being may therefore be considered as a point of great importance, not only as it affects our views of his nature and attributes; but because when once it is established, that there exists a pure Spirit, living, intelligent, and invested with moral properties, the question of the immateriality of the human soul may be considered as almost settled. Those who deny that, must admit that the Deity is material; or, if they start at this, they must be convicted of the unphilosophical and absurd attempt to invest a substance allowed to be of an entirely different nature, the body of man, with those attributes of intelligence and volition which, in the case of the Divine Being, they have allowed to be the properties of pure unembodied spirit. The propositions are totally inconsistent, for they who believe that God is wholly an immaterial, and that man is wholly a material being, admit that spirit is intelligent, and that matter is intelligent. They cannot then be of different essences, and if the premises be followed out to their legitimate conclusion, either that which thinks in man must be allowed to be spiritual, or a material Deity must follow. The whole truth of revelation, both as to God and his creature man, must be acknowledged, or the atheism of Spinosa and Hobbes must be admitted. The decision of Scripture on this point is not to be shaken by human reasoning, were it more plausible in its attempt to prove that matter is capable of originating thought, and that mind is a mere result of organization. The evidence from reason is however highly confirmatory of the absolute spirituality of the nature of God, and of the unthinking nature of matter. If we allow a First Cause at all, we must allow that cause to be intelligent. This has already been proved, from the design and contrivance manifested in his works. The first argument for the spirituality of God is therefore drawn from his intelligence, and it rests upon this principle, that intelligence is not a property of matter. With material substance we are largely acquainted; and as to the great mass of material bodies, we have the means of knowing that they are wholly unintelligent. This cannot be denied of every unorganized portion of matter. Its essential properties are found to be solidity, extension, divisibility, mobility, passiveness, &c. In all its forms and mutations, from the granite rock to the yielding atmosphere and the rapid lightning, these essential properties are discovered; they take an infinite variety of accidental modes, but give no indication of intelligence, or approach to intelligence. If then to know be a property of matter, it is clearly not an essential property, inasmuch as it is agreed by all, that vast masses of this substance exist without this property, and it follows, that it must be an accidental one. This, therefore, would be the first absurdity into which those would be driven who suppose the Divine Nature to be material, that as intelligence, if allowed to be a property of matter, is an accidental and not an essential property, on this theory it would be possible to conceive of the existence of a Deity without any intelligence at all. For, take away any property from a subject which is not essential to it, and its essence still remains; and if intelligence, which in this view is but an accidental attribute of Deity, were annihilated, a Deity without perception, thought, or knowledge would still remain. So monstrous a conclusion shows, that if a God be at all allowed, the absolute spirituality of his nature must inevitably follow. For if we cannot suppose a Deity without intelligence, then do we admit intelligence to be one of his essential attributes; and, as it is easy for every one to observe that this is not an essential property of matter, the substance to which it is essential cannot be material. If the unthinking nature of unorganized matter furnishes an argument in favour of the spirituality of Deity, the attempt to prove from the fact of intelligence being found in connexion with matter in an organized form, that intelligence, under certain modifications, is a property of matter, may from its fallacy be also made to yield its evidence in favour of the truth. The position assumed is, that intelligence is the result of material organization. This at least is not true of every form of organized matter. Of the unintelligent character of vegetables we have the same evidence as of the earth on which we tread. The organization, therefore, which is assumed to be the cause of thought, is that which is found in animals; and to use the argument of Dr. Priestley, "the powers of sensation, or perception, and thought, as belonging to man, not having been found but in conjunction with a certain organized system of matter, the conclusion is that they depend upon such a system." It need not now be urged, that constant connexion does not imply necessary connexion; and that sufficient reasons may be given to prove the connexion alleged to be accidental and arbitrary. It is sufficient in the first instance to deny this supposed constant connexion between intellectual properties and systems of animal organization; and thus to take away entirely the foundation of the argument. Man is to be considered in two states, that of life, and that of death. In one he thinks, and in the other he ceases to think; and yet for some time after death, in many cases, the organization of the human frame continues as perfect as before. All do not die of organic disease. Death by suffocation, and other causes, is often effected without any visible violence being done to the brain, or any other of the most delicate organs. This is a well-established fact; for the most accurate anatomical observation is not able to discover, in such cases as we have referred to, the slightest organic derangement. The machine has been stopped, but the machine itself has suffered no injury; and from the period of death to the time when the matter of the body begins to submit to the laws of chemical decomposition, its organization is as perfect as during life. If an opponent replies, that organic violence must have been sustained, though it is indiscernible, he begs the question, and assumes that thought must depend upon organization, the very point in dispute. If more modest, he says, that the organs may have suffered, he can give no proof of it; appearances are all against him. And if he argues from the phenomenon of the connexion of thought with organization, grounding himself upon what is visible to observation only, the argument is completely repulsed by an appeal in like manner to the fact, that the organization of the animal frame can be often exhibited, visibly unimpaired by those causes which have produced death, and yet incapable of thought and intelligence. The conclusion therefore is, that mere organization cannot be the cause of intelligence, since it is plain that precisely the same state of the organs shall often be found before and after death; and yet, without any violence having been done to them, in one moment man shall be actually intelligent, and in the next incapable of a thought. So far then from the connexion between mental phenomena, and the arrangement of matter in the animal structure being "constant," the ground of the argument of Priestley and other materialists, it is often visibly broken; for a perfect organization of the animal remains after perception has become extinct. In support of this argument, we may urge the representations of Scripture, upon that class of materialists who have not proceeded to the full length of denying its authority. Adam was formed out of the dust of the earth, the organism of his frame was therefore complete, before he became "a living soul." God breathed into him "the breath of lives," and whatever different persons may understand by that inspiration, it certainly was not an organizing operation. The man was first formed or organized, and then life was imparted. Before the animating breath was inspired, he was not intelligent, because he lived not; yet the organization was complete before either life or the power of perception was imparted; thought did not arise out of his organic structure, as an effect from its cause. The doctrine that mere organization is the cause of perception, &c. being clearly untenable, we shall probably be told, that the subject supposed in the argument is a living organized being. If so, then the proof that matter can think drawn from organization is given up, and another cause of the phenomenon of intelligence is introduced. This is life, and the argument will be considerably altered. It will no longer be, as we have before quoted it from Dr. Priestley, "that the powers of sensation or perception, and thought, never having been found but in conjunction with a certain organized system of matter, the conclusion is that they depend upon such a system;" but that these powers not having been found but in conjunction with animal life, they depend upon that as their cause. What then is life, which is thus exhibited as the cause of intelligence, and as the proof that matter is capable of perception and thought? In its largest and commonly received sense, it is that inherent activity which distinguishes vegetable and animal bodies from the soils in which the former grow, and on which the latter tread. A vegetable is said to live, because it has motion within itself, and is capable of absorption, secretion, nutrition, growth, and the reproduction of its kind. With all this it exhibits no mental phenomena, no sensation, no consciousness, no volition, no reflection, in a word, it is utterly unintelligent. We have here a proof then as satisfactory as our argument from organization, that life, at least life of any kind, is not the cause of intelligence, for in ten thousand instances we see it existing in bodies to which it imparts no mental properties at all. If then it be said that the life intended as the cause of intelligence is not vegetable, but animal life, the next step in the inquiry is, in what the life of an animal differs from that of a vegetable; and if we go into the camp of the enemy himself, we shall find him laying it down, that to animals a double life belongs, the organic and the animal, the former of which animals, and even man, has only in common with the vegetable. One modification of life, says Bichat (upon whose scheme our modern materialists have modelled their arguments), is common to vegetables and animals, the other peculiar to the latter. "Compare together two individuals, one taken from each of these kingdoms: one exists only within itself, has no other relations to external objects than those of nutrition; is born, grows, and perishes, attached to the soil which received its germ. The other joins to this internal life, which it possesses in a still higher degree, an external life, which establishes numerous relations between it and the neighbouring objects, unites its existence to that of other beings, and draws it near to, or removes it from them, according to its wants and fears."(6) This is only in other words to say, that there is one kind of life in man, which, as in the vegetable, is the cause of growth, circulation, assimilation, nutrition, excretion, and similar functions; and another on which depend sensation, the passions, will, memory, and other attributes which we attribute to spirit. We have gained then by this distinction another step in the argument. There is a life common to animals and to vegetables. Whether this be simple mechanism or something more, matters nothing to the conclusion; it confers neither sensation, nor volition, nor reason. That life in men, and in the inferior animals, which is common to them and to vegetables, called, by Bichat and his followers, organic life, is evidently not the cause of intelligence. What then is that higher species of life called animal life, on which we are told our mental powers depend? And here the French materialist, whose notions have been so readily adopted into our own schools of physiology, shall speak for himself. "The functions of the animal form two distinct classes. One of these consists of an habitual succession of assimilation and concretion, by which it is constantly transforming into its own substance the particles of other bodies, and then rejecting them when they have become useless. By the other he perceives surrounding objects; reflects on his sensations, performs voluntary notions under their (6) Recherches sur la vie et la mort. influence, and generally communicates, by the voice, his pleasures or pains; his desires or fears."" The assembled functions of the second class form the animal life." This strange definition of life has been adopted by Lawrence, and other disciples of the French school of materialism; but its absurdity as a definition is obvious, and could only have been adopted as a veil of words to hide a conclusion fatal to the favourite system. So far from being a definition of life, it is no more than a description of the "fanctions" of a vital principle or power, whatever that power or principle may be. Function is a manner in which any power developes itself, or as Lawrence, the disciple of Bichat, has properly expressed it, "a mode of action;" and to say that an assemblage of the modes in which any thing acts, is that which acts or "forms" that which acts, is the greatest possible trifling and folly. But Bichat is not the only one of modern materialists who refuse honestly to pursue the inquiry, "what is life?" when even affecting to describe or defend it. Cuvier, another great authority in the same school, at one time says, that, be life what it may, it cannot be what the vulgar suppose it, a particular principle (principe particulier.) In another place he acknowledges that life can proceed only from life (la vie naît que de la vie). Then again he considers it an internal principle (un principe interieur d'entretien et de reparation); and last of all says, what Mr. Lawrence has since repeated verbatim, that life consists in the sum total of all the functions (il consiste dans l'ensemble des functions qui servent à nourir le corps, c'est a dire la digestion, l'absorption, la circulation, &c.) Thus he makes life a cause which owes its existence to its own operations, and consequently a cause, which, had it not operated to produce itself, had never operated nor existed at all!(7) "It is truly pitiful," says a physiologist of other opinions, "to think of a man with so many endowments, natural and acquired, driven as if blindfold by the fashion of the times, a contemptible vanity, or some wretched inclination, endeavouring to support with all his energy the extravagant idea that the phenomena of design and intelligence displayed in the form and structure of his species might have been the effects of some impulse or motion, or of some group of functions as digestion, circulation, respiration, &c., which have accidentally happened to meet without any assignable cause to bring them together, to hold them together, or to direct them."(8) These and many other examples are in proof, that the cause of vital properties cannot, we do not say be explained, but cannot even be indicated on the material system; and we are no nearer, for any thing which these physiologists say, to any satisfactory account of that life which is peculiar to animals, and which has been distinguished from the organic life that is common to them and to vegetables. It is not the result of organization, for that "is no living principle, no active cause." "An organ is an instrument. Organization, therefore, is nothing more than a system of parts so constructed and arranged, as to co-operate to one common purpose. It is an arrangement of instruments, and there must be something beyond to bring these instruments into action."(9) If life cannot, therefore, be organization or the effect of it, it is not that inherent, mechanical, and chemical motion which is called life in vegetables, and which the physiologists have decided to be the same kind of life which they call organic in animals ; for even the materialist acknowledges that to be a different species of life in animals, on which sensation, volition, and passion depend. What then is it? It is not a material substance; in that all agree. It is not the material effect of the material cause, organization; that has been shown to be absurd. It is not that mechanical and chemical inherent motion which performs so many functions in vegetables and in animals, so far as they have it in common with them; for no sensation, or other mental phenomena are allowed to result from these. It is therefore plainly no material cause and no effect of matter at all; for no other hypothesis remains but that which places its source in an immaterial subject, operating upon and by material organs. For, to quote from a writer just mentioned, "that there is some invisible agent in every living organi d system, seems to (7) Vide Medical Review, Sept. 1822, Art. 1. (8) Dr. Barclay on Life and Organization. (9) Rennell's Remarks on Skepticism. |