matter that even his limited faculties could comprehend; much less can any man say that matter cannot have any properties that he cannot comprehend. We know the properties of matter only by our senses; but surely it may have properties from which we have no sense fitted to receive any impression. Were there no created being endowed with the faculty of sight, still there would be an eternal difference between light and darkness; and opacity and transparency would still be properties of certain organisations of matter.

Doctor S. Clarke maintains that "intelligence is not a mere effect or composition of unintelligent figure and motion, because it is a distinct quality or perfection*:" but is not every effect an ens, or being, distinct from its cause? If not, then is Spi

* Demonstration of the Being and Attributes, p. 50.

noza's opinion indisputable-that creation is not distinct from the creator; and therefore that there cannot possibly exist in nature more than one substance; and if there be a God, he must be that substance.

The doctor's reason for his opinion is curious*: “ It will easily appear,” says he, "that intelligence or perception is really such a distinct quality or perfection, and not possibly a mere effect or composition of unintelligent figure and motion; and that for this plain reason-because intelligence is not figure, and consciousness is not motion: for whatever can arise from, or be compounded of, any things, is still only those very things of which it was compounded.”

As well might the doctor maintain, that it was impossible for a seed to become a tree which should produce sour green leaves, a

Demonstration of the Being and Attributes, p. 52.

fragrant red blossom, and a sweet fruit; because the seed is not a tree, nor sour, nor green, nor leaves, nor fragrant, nor red, nor a blossom, nor sweet, nor a fruit. As well might the doctor maintain that it is impossible for the collision of flint and steel to impart ignition to gunpowder, and thereby cause its explosion and evaporation and the death of an animal, because collision is not fire, nor explosion, nor evaporation, nor death.

The only reason which man appears to me to have for asserting that thought is not the result of any combination of matter, is that he knows not of any combination of matter that can produce it, or, in other words, that he cannot produce it. This reason is surely not very cogent. Have we any reason for believing that vegetation is not the result of matter and motion? And can man impart the faculty or power

of vegetation to any portion of matter whatever? I presume that it will readily begranted to me, that the faculty of sight results from life and the organisation of the eye. Now life (which Dr. Harvey defines. -spontanea propulsio humorum) and sight are as unlike any of the properties of matter that are subject to human experiments, as thought is. Does it thence follow, that life and sight are spirits? If so, then not only every insect and animalcule, but every vegetable, is a spirit.

How one portion of matter should maintain its organised existence solely by the decomposition of other portions of matter, is incomprehensible by man: that all animals and vegetables do so, is obvious: Are they, therefore, spirits? In my humble opinion it is as absurd to ask is thought matter, as it is to ask is hunger matter: neither thought nor hunger is matter; but they are both the

necessary result of certain combinations or modifications of matter.

The soul, then, is not a distinct being or immaterial substance capable of existing per se, mysteriously united to the body, but is the result of our corporal organisation.

I will not draw any arguments (though I might much stronger ones than any used by spiritualists) against the supposed immateriality of the mind, from its growth with the body from infancy to manhood, and from its partaking with the body of the caducity of age-I will say nothing of the opinion, that, if I put a certain quantity of intoxicating substance into my stomach, it is not my body but my soul that gets drunk; that if my body is fatigued, my soul goes to sleep-I will say nothing of the absurdity of attributing immateriality to that which acts and is acted on by matter, because, in answer to all arguments founded on these