its parts; and the contrary emotions cause the limbs to struggle and become contracted from energy. Still, however, these facts may countenance the idea of the identity of the mental and vital principles; the reasons, Abernethy contends, for believing them to be distinct, are irresistible.

"Whilst, therefore, I feel interested," he says, "in oppugning, on the one hand, those physiological opinions which tend to confound life with organization; I would, on the other, equally oppose those which confound perception and intellect with mere vitality. My own mind, he eloquently adds, rests at peace in thinking on the subject of life, as I was taught to think by Mr. Hunter; that it is something, namely, independent of organization, of a subtil, invisible, and highly mobile nature, inhering in and connected with the evident materials of living beings; and I am visionary enough to imagine, that if these opinions should become so established as to be generally admitted by philosophers, that if they once saw reason to believe that life was something of the kind above described, superadded to organization, they would then see equal reason to believe that mind may be superadded to life, as life is to structure. Nay, that they would still further perceive how mind and matter might reciprocally operate on each other, by means of an intervening substance. Thus would physiological researches even enforce the belief which, I may say, is natural to man; that, in addition to his bodily frame, he possesses a sensitive, intelligent, and independent mind; an opinion which tends, in an eminent degree, to produce virtuous, honourable, and useful actions."

CHAPTER IX.

IN WHICH THE SUBJECT OF MATERIALISM IS FURTHER

CONSIDERED, AND THE

SOUL MAINTAINED.

IMMATERIALITY OF THE

Ir is difficult to understand how, in the face of the preceding declarations, Mr. Abernethy can be charged by his opponents with having fallen into a palpable dilemma. If the living principle, say they, for which he contends, be electricity, then is he himself a materialist; but this is an imputation from which neither he nor his friend Hunter would shrink, with reference to vitality merely, or the principle of animal life. The real materialists, against whom Abernethy has raised his voice, are they who deny that we have souls as well as bodies; for that is the plain English of the matter. And to these he says,-the operations of the mind afford as positive evidence of the existence of the soul, as the animal functions do of the existence of a living principle. To descend to a few simple particulars.—How does any one know that twice two do not make five? or, suppose my foot to ache; what is it that determines that it is my foot, and not my finger? Still more, with regard to sympathetic pains, What enables me to infer that a pain in the shoulder may indicate disorder of the liver? Experience? Aye! but what is that which gains experience,

and retains it, too, to the end of life; whilst every part of the bodily frame, even the brain itself, is undergoing wear and tear and renovation perpetually? What but that intelligent, as well as sentient, portion of our being, whose highest prerogative is reason,-that lamp within us, which leads us to all the knowledge we possess of ourselves, and of the world around us; which investigates all truth, physical as well as moral, whether derived from natural or revealed religion; and which sits in judgment on all the faculties, either of our minds or bodies, with their respective operations, as they are diversely manifested in ourselves and others. But whilst we thus admit, and willingly sustain, the good sense and good feeling of what Abernethy has written upon this subject, how lamentable is it that there should have been a necessity for such an exhortation to renounce the desperate tenets of ancient and modern materialism! Besides, after all that such excellent men as he and John Hunter can tell us, we get no nearer to any definite knowledge of life and immortality. On the contrary, so intimate is the connexion between our souls and bodies, and so completely does our individuality seem to depend upon their union, that we must pass alike beyond the utmost limits of physiology, or of metaphysics, before we can attain the sure and certain hope on which alone we can rest with satisfaction and contentment. What the principle of life is, we neither know, nor, with our present faculties, probably can know. Of the nature of the soul, we know, if possible, still less. It is to the book of Revelation,

and not to the book of nature, teeming as that book is with theology, that we must look for information respecting our immortal souls. If we believe the Bible, we shall believe not only that "it is God that has made us, and not we ourselves"-that "in Him we live and move and have our being"-but that there is a life after this; and that the hour will most assuredly come, when all that are in their graves shall arise, and their bodies, changed in a way of which, at present, we have no comprehension, be re-united to their souls, so to remain through all eternity.

fashion an insensible stone

Abernethy has adverted with particular emphasis to the concluding circumstances of the life of Socrates, who, having been a sculptor in the early part of it, was in the habit of remarking, more suo, "How strange it is that we should take so much pains to into the likeness of ourselves; and so little to prevent ourselves from resembling an insensible stone! After he had drunk the poison, one of his friends, anxious about his funeral, inquired of him what were his wishes respecting a subject which, to any real philosopher, must appear unimportant. "Bury me," said Socrates, "where you please, provided you can catch me; for it seems that I, who now reason with you, have not succeeded in convinc. ing you that, when I quit this lifeless body, I shall no longer be present."

The wish of Abernethy's heart was, to establish the truth of the existence of an immaterial principle, not identical with our animal frame, however close its con

nexion with it. He made no attempt beyond this: but whilst he might well boast of such associates as Socrates and Hunter, he had the mortification of finding his views attacked, and by no one more severely than by a distinguished pupil, who, like many other young men of talent of that day, preferred the lessons of Continental philosophers to those of their own sounder-thinking countrymen. Abernethy knew full well that the philosophy which deals with the mind as if it were the mere exposition of the functions of the brain, is prone to doubt the reality of a future state of existence; for however true it may be that materialism originally signified "the doctrine which, to the exclusion of a First Cause, maintained that all things have been produced from a fortuitous collision of atoms," it is far from incorrect to apply the same term to opinions which in any way oppose the recognition of mind, as distinct from matter.

It has been remarked how ready the adversaries of his opinions were to insinuate, that the vital fluid, for which Abernethy contends, whatever may be its subtlety, is, after all, material, and consequently that he is as much a materialist as themselves;-thus drawing the unprepared or incautious reader away from the main point,—that it is not for the immateriality of the principle of life that he is contending, but for the immateriality, unity, and integrity of the sentient and intelligent principle. He, in

*

Is not volition, itself, sufficient evidence of the independent nature of the mind of man? For let it, for the sake of illustration, be supposed that the