Appendix. yg 



and can never attain to positive and certain knowledge, has been 

 profitable, and productive of valuable results. It has enabled 

 him to attain some ideas and knowledge of the mysteries of nature 

 and of God. But to pretend that such imperfect and obscure 

 knowledge is positive science, would be an absurdity. 



The forces of nature being the inherent properties of the 

 elements of matter, it seems impossible that any one ele- 

 ment should contain properties and forces inconsistent with each 

 other. Though the forces of nature are various, and many of 

 them conflicting and antagonistic, all antagonisms must come 

 from different elements, and not from antagnonistic forces in tiie 

 same elements. Though all action and effects must have causes, 

 to suppose that acts widely different in their nature, can be pro- 

 duced by the same causes, and those only, or that combinations 

 different in their nature can be composed of the same elements, 

 and those only, is to suppose what is palpably inconsistent, and 

 therefore impossible. To suppose that crystals and living organ- 

 isms can be produced by the same causes, and out of the same 

 elements, and those only, involves a gross inconsistency — the 

 one being nearly solid in their form and texture, and the other 

 permeated with canals and tubes, in which fluids circulate, to 

 nourish and maintain the organism. Life can never result from 

 any combination of elements of inanimate matter. 



The action of the animal economy and of mind cannot be 

 rationally accounted for, without supposing, that there are in ex- 

 istence elements, which neither the chemist nor the surgeon can 

 detect, and which the microscopist cannot see ; and hence, to 

 account for the wonderful powers of the human mind, we must 

 infer, from the action and phenomena of mind, that there is in 

 the brain of man , an intelligent spirit, distinct from the chemical 

 elements of which the material organization of the brain is com- 

 posed ; and to account for the origin, growth and maintenance of 

 living beings, and the action of the animal economy, we must 

 infer, from their manifestations and effects, that they have a vital 

 organizing element, endowed with properties and forces very dif- 

 ferent from those of inanimate matter, of which earths and 

 rocks, salts and crystals are composed. 



