332 Jn Essay on Dreaming, including 



tunate observations ; and, bv the same rational process of inquiry 

 wbich guided bis illustrious contemporaries Herschel aiid Davy 

 to sucli brilliant and stable discoveries, he and his celebrated co- 

 adjutor have established in the brain the probable — I will not 

 sav, the certain, existence, until other philosophers have verified 

 their results, as other philosoiihers have verified those of Davy and 

 Herschel — they have established, I repeat, the probable existence 

 of upwards of thirty material organs of the mind, each of which 

 is endowed with its own peculiar dei>ire, memory, and imagina- 

 tion. Admitting, therefore, the mere hypothetical existence of 

 such organs, we try their verity by the indisputable test of some 

 well-known phenomena; for instance, the phaenomena of dream- 

 ing : and if it apjiears from incontrovertible reasons, that the va- 

 rious circumstances attendant on our dreams are utterly inexpli- 

 cable on any other principles current at present than those of the 

 organic theory, those principles have the strongest claims to be 

 regarded as true. These two kindred hypotheses of dreaming and 

 sleep afford each other a reciprocal support j and I shall be but 

 too much honoured, if the philosophic authors of the oiie do not 

 consider the other unworthy of such an alliance. 



I flattered myself that I had answered every argument by which 

 my essay could be assailed ; but I understand that another ob- 

 jection has been advanced against it, which ought earlier or never 

 to have made its appearance — the charge of materialism. It is 

 necessary to ascertain the meaning of this word, which has so 

 often, and for the most disingenuous purposes, been used without 

 any. It. has a threefold signification, and in two of its senses it 

 conveys a manifest imputation of culpable absurdity or perverse- 

 ness, fatal to virtue and subversive of society. In its third sense, 

 whether it be guilty or innocent, I am not called upon here to 

 discuss ; for in none of its meanings, and I shall examine them 

 all, is it imputable to my essay. 



In its first and most reprehensible sense, materialism infers that 

 the universe created itself — that the creation is without a Creator 

 — that the mighty fabrick, evincing design in all that is minute 

 as well as all that is magnificent, rose into being undesigned by 

 infinite intelligence, unbidden by infinite power. It is scarcely 

 possible to conceive, that opinions such as these can find an asy- 

 lum in any rational mind ; — even the last remnant of reason that 

 sticks to a maniac would intuitively reject them. It will not be 

 said that my essay countenances this doctrine, when every line 

 of it breathes with an effort to discover and display the hidden ar- 

 rangements of God, in what is to us the most curious of his works, 

 the mechanism of man ; and in the noblest part of that mecha- 

 nism, the instruments of the mind. 



In 



