assuredly have been granted for some high purpose, and it stamps him with the impression of peculiar estimation. A power to resist Omnipotence, and to rise by free choice, or virtuous conformity to the divine counsels, into nearer union with the source of infinite perfection! what an inestimable privilege, and how greatly is it abused! He cannot surely conceive that the creatures appointed for his temporal use, whatever likeness they may bear him, can have any interest in that immortal state, to which his own hopes instinctively point; or that they hold any relation, like that springing up in his own mind, from new sympathies, affections, and desires, wholly unconnected with this world, to superior intelligences and kindred spirits, with whom his budding capacities are alone capable of enlargement.

Now, to return to the subject; the gradation in organized nature up to the human form, and the intimate connexion of an amply developed brain with the perfection of human intellect, and also between diseased cerebral structure and deranged mental power, are points freely admitted to the author of the Lectures, on the principles I have laid down. Indeed they are facts which it would be folly to deny. All that I wish, therefore, to maintain, is, that that which is "mysterious and incomprehensible," according to this writer, is the divine energy of the Deity operating in his own works. But whether it operates by the immediate agency of an immaterial principle, or some equally incomprehensible material structure,

quickened by his power-which perhaps may mean the same thing-does not appear to be of the least importance, either as it regards the agent or the object. For, I presume, it never can be demonstrated one way or the other; the essence of mind as well as of matter being unknown.

1 wish however to be guarded in expression, that although we admit the divine energy acting in and throughout the creation, it does not follow that every act of the lower animals should be considered as a divine act, pure from materiality, and of free unfettered divinity. For the power is in every case modified by the structure: otherwise we should not perceive such a variety in the works of the same divine artist, some creatures endowed with more and some with fewer capacities and powers. And it seems to have been ordained that that which is superior should sometimes be imprisoned by that which is inferior-the divine by the earthly-the mind by the body-the good by the evil tendencies. Why this should be the case, is a question with which we have nothing at present to do.

With respect also to what is ordained as a law of nature or of the Deity, I apprehend it can mean nothing more than his power. Hence, if he acts according to certain laws, he acts by his power. For his laws cannot be independent of his power.

It was the error of Stahl and some other reasoners of his school, that the rational soul, as it was called, was said to superintend every operation in the body

as well as the mind. But the simplest view of the animal economy will convince us that those things, which are done without animal consciousness, cannot be referred to the same identical motive power, which acts in cases of free animal volition.

Our volition is no more immediately concerned in our own secretion, assimilation, nutrition, absorption, &c. than if these functions belonged to another being. Therefore our own rational soul (admitting the expression) can have nothing to do with these functions; for they belong to the brute equally with ourselves. But our mind can determine and act according to certain laws, and display certain phenomena purely its own, i. e. arising from its own capacities and powers: In like manner can the brute, Therefore, two principles are at work simultaneously in each. The one, divine and omniscient, superintending vital actions in their very elementary motions, entrusted neither to man nor to brute, because requiring nothing short of divine power to execute them the other, limited in each, according to the measure granted by the Deity for certain specific ends, entrusted to the creature's own senses, appetites, and mental endowments, varying in every creature according to its organization, though derived originally from the same Almighty power.

Hence a portion of voluntarity, or spontaneity, or power of commencing voluntary motion, is given to animals, which they can exercise-not independently altogether of the divine will, but to a certain extent

as free agents in physical actions; just as the human mind has the power of free agency to a certain extent in moral actions.

It is clear, therefore, that there is a two-fold agency of mind in these cases: a pure, unlimited, intelligent, regulating impulse, independent of the creature; and a limited, uncertain, irregular, inefficient power of volition, according to the degree of mental energy varied infinitely in different creatures, dependent on the physical structure of each, and quiescent or active as the creature may determine. In animals this power of volition is exceedingly limited, and confined to a few actions, mostly animal, in some few, intelligent, or perhaps intellectual. In man it has a wider range, and not only embraces the animal and rational acts in which some of the brutes seem to take a part, but his moral actions likewise.

Now I have considered it remarkable, that the author of the Lectures, after professing his total ignorance, does not at once suggest, in connexion with his reasoning, that the mysterious and incomprehensible acts manifested in nature might be legitimately referred to an all-wise, omnipresent Creator: In the course of his investigation, it is clear that he observed innumerable instances of the most perfect adaptation between structure and uses, and the most obvious connexion between means and ends, implying design and intelligence of the highest order. I believe that in strict philosophical propriety there are better grounds for supposing, that, beyond the im

passable barrier which impedes human research, in all these matters, a wise and intelligent agent is at work, than the materialist can have for assuming that some incomprehensible condition of the elements or of the minute particles of matter, by their own selfmoving energy, causes the phenomena. There is obviously more reason for the former hypothesis, because the existence of such an all-wise power in the creation may be collaterally inferred. But it is impossible to conceive that any configuration of the particles of matter, without some intelligent artist, operating in and upon them, can do any thing at all.

It is very clear that the author of the Lectures intrenches himself behind that maxim of the schools, which is good in its place, that insists upon nothing being taken for granted which is not first proved; and that he indulges a sort of self-complacency for having imagined nothing beyond the evidence of the dissecting knife. If we ask for an explanation of what is meant by "elementary animal structures, endued with vital properties,"-on which he makes the phenomena of animal life wholly to depend, I suspect we shall know nothing more than if they had been called, the Atoms of Epicurus, or the Monads of Leibnitz.

I put it to the plainest understanding to decide whether the notion of a supreme power, who formed the structure of an animal, still continuing to direct the functions of the animal made by his own art, is not more simple, intelligible, and consistent with