There is a general disinclination to regard mind in conexion with organirsitun from a fear. that this must seeds interfere with the cherished neligion, doctime of the spirit of man, & lower him to the level of the brute, ! & distinction therefore is drawn between oin mental manifestations & these of the lower imals, the latter being comprehendedf under the term instinct, while ours are collecting described as mind, mind being mind being a gain a received synon ume with soul, the domo tal par of. There is here a strange system of conLusion & error, which it is most imprudent to regard as essential to religion, since candid investigations of nature tend to show its untenableness. There is, in rea of man. juvent our regarding as s alitz, nothing to specially indowed with an immortal spirit, at the same time that his ordinay mental manthestations are looked upon as simple "Phenomena resulting from organization, those of the lower animal, being, Shenomore absolutely the same in character, though developed within narrower limit -bestiges of Creation, s. 227. ON THE SOUL. THE ARGUMENT IN FAVOR OF the separatE EXISTENCE OF AN IMMATERIAL SOUL JOINED WITH AND PLACED IN THE HUMAN BODY, IS AS FOLLOWS. MAN consists of a body, which, when living, exhibits a peculiar organization, and certain phenomena connected with it, termed intellectual; such as perception, memory, thinking or reasoning, and willing or determing. When the body ceases to live, it becomes decomposed into carbon, azote, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and lime; and perhaps another substance or two: all of them similar to what we find in the inanimate material bodies around us. We differ from them, so far as we can judge by our senses, in no way, but in possessing a peculiar organization which those bodies have not. But as no configuration or disposition of the particles of which our bodies are composed, can amount to any thing more than varieties of position-varieties of matter and motion, we have no reason to ascribe perception, memory, thought, or will, to any form of matter and motion, however varied. From matter and motion, nothing but matter and motion can result. The phenomena of intellect are too dissimilar to allow us to consider them as the result of, or as varieties of matter and motion. We must, therefore, recur to some other principle as the source of intellect; and that cannot be the body. It must be something different from mere matter and motion, something immaterial, something that has no relation to matter: that something, be it a separate being, or a separate principle, is the Soul. Will any arrangement of carbon, azote, hydrogen and oygen, produce a syllogism? Having no relation to matter, being essentially immaterial, this source of intellect is not, like matter, liable to decomposition and decay: it is therefore immortal: it dies not when the body dies. It puts a future state therefore, out of doubt, for it lives when the body is no more. Such are the views generally taken of this question by those who believe in the separate existence of an immaterial Soul as the cause and origin of all the phenomena termed mental or intellectual. With them, it is absurd to ascribe the sublime fictions of poetry, or the sublimer disquisitions of Newton and La Place, to a mere arrrangement of assimilated particles of the grossest kind; possessing, before their entrance into the body, and when thrown by the exhalent vessels out of it, nothing approaching the nature. of intellect under any of its denominations. In the present view of the subject, all arguments of a theological nature are excluded. They can be considered apart: and they are to the full as difficult of solution, as the arguments deduced from natural phenomena; and are productive of as much practical discrepancy. The Immaterialists of modern days are led on still further. They say that the tendency to organization itself, and all the results of that tendency, must have been originally imparted and communicated to inert matter, which could not have assumed this tendency by any effort of its own. That organization, life, and the properties connected with life, as feeding, digestion, assimilation, excretion, &c. as well as the phenomena termed intellectual, cannot arise from any known property of matter as such; and therefore must have been originally impressed by that Being to whom all creation is to be ascribed. That the phenomena termed intellectual, are clearly distinguishable from the other phenomena of living organized matter-they are peculiar to the human species-not to be accounted for from the common properties of organization or life, and are therefore owing to a separate and distinct communication from the author of our common existence. That not being ascribable to any form of organization, or to be regarded as the result of it, they must of necessity be ascribed to some separate being of a different and superior nature from matter; destined during the present life to act by means of the bodily organs. This separate being is the Soul. It is granted that we are not to argue from the possibility of any thing, to its actual existence, (a posse ad esse non valet consequentia,) but when the phenomena cannot be explained by any known properties of organized or unorganized matter, we are of necessity driven to something else than-something beside matter-something which is not matter, to explain appearances that are not material. I do not know how to state better, more fairly, or more forcibly, the views taken of this question by the writers who contend for the separate existence of the Soul, as a being perfectly immaterial, and by consequence incorruptible and immortal. ON THE OTHER HAND, The Materialists, who ascribe all the phenomena termed intellectual, to the body; and consider them as the properties of organized matter, the result of that organization-reason as follows: Their arguments may be considered, as 1. Metaphysical, and 2. Physiological. To begin with the FIRST class. 1. The only reason we have for asserting in any case that one thing is the property of another, is the certainty or universality with which we always find them accompanying each other. Thus, we say gold is ductile, because we have always found gold, when |