REVELATION AND REASON. 7 



and explain by certain known or supposed laws of motion, and here 

 we end. And this mode of making Natural Theology declare the 

 power and wisdom of God as a mechanical contriver, has led to a 

 human conception of the Supreme, or, at all events, to comparisons 

 with mere humanity, which we think are repugnant to a proper esti- 

 mation of the Godhead. We could quote numberless passages from 

 the writings of many eminent men of a very recent date, who, in rea- 

 soning upon data drawn from the material world, speak exactly as if 

 they were analyzing the work of an equal. This is an error, and one 

 of no light consequence. Lord Brougham, the nature of whose work 

 to some extent removed him from this ground of error, has not how- 

 ever wholly escaped it, in the following summing up of his argument 

 drawn from psychological phenomena : 



*' The facts relating to the velocity of mental operations to the 

 exercise of attention to its connexion with memory to the helps 

 derived from curiosity and from habit to the desires, feelings, and 

 passions, and to the adjoining provinces of reason and instinct; are 

 all discovered by consciousness or by observation ; and we can make 

 experiments upon the subjects, by varying the circumstances in 

 which the mental powers are exercised by ourselves and others, and 

 marking the result. The facts thus collected and compared together, 

 we are enabled to generalize, and thus to show that certain effects 

 are produced by an agency calculated to produce them. Aware 

 that if we desired to produce them, and had the power to employ 

 this agency, we should resort to it for accomplishing our purpose, we 

 infer both that some being exists, capable of creating the agency, 

 and that he employs it for this end. The process of reasoning is 

 not like, but identical with, that by which we infer the existence of 

 design in others, with whom we have daily intercourse. The kind 

 of evidence is not like, but identical with, that by which we conduct 

 all the investigations of intellectual and of natural science. 



" Such is the process of reasoning, by which we infer the existence 

 of design in the natural and moral world. To this abstract argument, 

 an addition of great importance remains to be made : the whole 

 reasoning proceeds necessarily upon the assumption that there exists 

 a being or thing separate from, and independent of, matter, and con- 

 scious of its own existence, which we call mind. For the argument 

 is: ' had I to accomplish this purpose, I should have used some 

 such means ; ' or, ' had I used these means, I should have thought 

 I was accomplishing some such purpose.' Perceiving the adapta- 



