resolvable, so that the one is as incapable as the other of enabling matter to think. As to organic action, though it may give rise to the most diversified and complicated operations, yet is it but the combination of a few simple motions, none of which approach nearer to thought than the flight of a cannon ball, or the play of lightning. Elasticity and vibration are the principal kinds of motion, by means of which the advocates of materialism, account for the production of thoughtbut the researches of physiologists have proved that the nerves are not tense and solid bodies.' fixed at their extremities to hard substances, which it is essential to this theory they should be. As to the notion of the nerves being tubes, filled with the animal spirits, through which liquid substance, impressions are conveyed to the encephalon, the change of relative position must ultimately be adopted as the solution, if thought be a quality of matter. Mere motion is not thought, whether it be mechanical, chemical, or organic, for every man feels that there is some conscious power within him, observing and attending to the relative changes which take place there. The absurd theory of a modern French physician that thought is a secretion of the brain, scarcely deserves notice, but like every other scheme of materialism, must be resolved into the change of relative position, which we have seen can never account for the origination of thought. Should it be said that thought is a quality not resident in all matter, but only superadded to certain organic portions of it, it will be sufficient to remark, that to talk of a quality being superadded to matter, and not inherent in it, is a perfect absurdity, and that if the evidence of consciousness is to be at all relied on, so far from thought being a 1. Haller. property, it is an act, or operation, of something quite distinct from matter. Among the principal and most ingenious advocates of the materiality of the human soul, was Dr. Priestley, who boldly maintained, that revelation is in perfect accordance with what he supposed to be conclusions authorized by just reasoning. Dr. Rush too has been supposed, in his treatise, on the influence of physical causes upon the moral sense, to have favoured the same idea. But whatever may have been his private views, which, to do but justice to his memory, we are persuaded were controled by his faith in the written word of God as to all its facts and doctrines, there is nothing in that interesting tract which necessarily implies such a belief. That physical causes have an influence on the moral sense or conscience, is a fact which cannot be denied; but, it by no means follows, that, in order to such influence, man must be wholly, conscience and all, a material being. The reasonings of those who advocate materialism, will be found alike unphilosophical and unscriptural. Thomas Jefferson has, in his posthumous writings, appeared among the boldest, and we must be allowed to say, the most reckless of modern preachers of materialism. "I can conceive thought, says he, to be an action of a particular organization of matter, formed for that purpose by its Creator, as well as that attraction is an action of matter, or magnetism of load-stone." His mode of confirming such an idea, is a specimen of the argument from ignorance and begging of the question. "To talk," continues he, "of immaterial existences, is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, God, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no God, no angels, no soul." Who does not see that this is actually begging the question, and yet he candidly confesses in the very next sentence-"I cannot reason otherwise," and to apolo gize, in some measure, for his having thus confessed his imbecility, he observes, "But I believe I am supported in my creed by the Lockes, &c." and having, as he thought, defended himself with the authority of so great a name, he as ignorantly and impudently brands the doctrine of immaterialism, with the charge of "masked Atheism," and refers to the fathers of the three first centuries, and even to Christ Himself as opposed to such heresy!!!! Locke says distinctly, "perception and knowledge, in that one eternal Being where it has its source, it is visible, must be essentially inseparable from it; therefore the actual want of perception in so great a part of the particular parcels of matter, is a demonstration that the first Being from whom perception and knowledge is inseparable, is not matter." Speaking of the soul he says "it may be proved that it is to the highest degree probable that it is immaterial."2 There can be no excuse for such ignorance, or deception, and of one or the other is Mr. Jefferson guilty, in citing Locke as a materialist. A man that can believe and cite authorities at this rate is not worthy of respect; nor are arguments such as he has employed, deserving of attention. Dr. Priestley rejects the idea that matter is an impenetrable inert substance; and because he finds that sensation and thought in man have ever been found in connection with an organized system, infers, that those powers necessarily exist in, and depend on such a system. How they result from organization he will not pretend to say, but presumes, that if sensation and thought be not incompatible with the properties of matter, it is quite unphilo sophical to suppose that there is any substance, in the human constitution, essentially different from matter. Who does not see, that the argument here is based on a vague 1. Letter to President Adams, in 1830. 2. See his controversy with the Bishop of Worcester. - idea with respect to the nature and properties of matteras though it were something, quite contrary to the common apprehensions of mankind--not possessing solid extension, and therefore having no relation to space, and in this respect resembling spirit rather than body. In attempting to maintain his denial of the existence of spirit, he does in fact convert matter into spirit. His argument amounts to little more than a begging of the question. Besides is it not altogether a false inference, to contend, that matter and thought are the same, because they are found connected and dependent? Were the principle adopted what endless confusion would it introduce? There is a connection and dependence between the strings of an instrument of music, and the sounds produced by them when struck; but does it follow that the strings are the sounds? So while we admit (and no advocate for the existence of mind ever denied it,) that there is a connection between the brain and thought, and that ever certain vibrations, or motions of the former, may give rise to the latter, it by no means follows that the brain is thought. The advocates of materialism seem to be aware, that this inference is altogether untenable, and they have therefore asserted, that these vibrations themselves are thought. And so confident and unblushing is Dr. Cooper, that he hesitates not to declare, that whosoever is not convinced of the truth of materialism, now that Collins, and Hartley, and Priestley have thrown such immense light on the subject, is not to be reasoned with. The Doctor himself, after distinguishing between sensations and ideas, making the former to consist in the motions of the brain produced by external impressions transmitted through the nerves, and the latter the motions of the same "arising, or produced without the impressions of an external object," thinks it demonstrable that these motions are vibratory. 1. Cooper's memoirs of Dr. Priestley, p. 334, 335. We cannot help remarking here with regard to the consistency of the advocates of materialism. At one moment they tell us, that thought is a quality of matter, and in the next that it is motion! No doubt they were compelled to this by noticing, what could not possibly have eluded their observation, that perception is an act, an event, a phenomenon, something that takes place, and does not lie like a dormant quality unmoved and undisturbed in matter. Admitting that motions do take place in the brain, and even give rise to thought, does it therefore follow that motion is mind? The vibrations of the cords of an instrument give rise to sounds, but they are not the sounds. But on the principle referred to, that connection and dependence imply identity, they must be the same. The truth is that notwithstanding those who deny the materiality of the human mind are not to be reasoned with, according to Dr. Cooper, we must take the liberty of saying, that this assertion of thought being mere vibratiunculœ, is altogether unintelligible. For to use the language of an acute writer, "there may be little shakings in the brain, for any thing we know, and there may even be shakings of a different kind accompanying every act of thought or perception, but that the shakings themselves are the thoughts or perception, we are so far from admitting, that we find it absolutely impossible to comprehend what is meant by the assertion. The shakings are certain throbbings, vibrations, or stirrings, in a whitish half-fluid substance like custard, which we might see perhaps, or feel, if we had eyes and fingers sufficiently small or fine for the office. But what would we see or feel, upon the supposition, that we could detect, by our senses, every thing that actually took place in the brain? We should see the particles of this substance change their place a little, move a little up or down, to the right or to the left, round about, or zig zag, or in some other course or direction. This is all that |