once formed, its existence may be independent of that primaty, or 

 previous disease which produced it. In such a case the only present 

 condition of spiritual disease may be that dependent upon a material 

 occasional cause, which being removed the existing spiritual disease 

 ceases; as when by the operations of surgery (lo advert to palpable 

 instances) the material effects of previous diseased actions, as they 

 are called, are removed, febrile or other consecutive constitutional 

 disease, engaging properties of the spirit and maintained by such 

 occasional material causes, ceases. 



8. But most remedies operate by latent causation, or by succes- 

 ive causation. The operation of remedies may in this way acknow- 

 ledge a complication equal to that which has been described of 

 disease. The relation of remedies may be directly with unknown 

 material occasional causes, or indirectly with such causes; or, in a 

 few instances, directly with the state of primary disease; or, more 

 frequently, indirectly with the state of primary disease; or with 

 secondary assimilating disease, directly or indirectly; of directly, or 

 indirectly with secondary occasional disease. 



9. Those diseases are the most numerous in which no cause, as 

 of the material occasional kind, can be assigned. We are not justi- 

 fied, in these instances, in inferring the existence of such cause by 

 general analogy, or merely for the reason that diseases are some- 

 limes known to be maintained by the material occasional causes, 

 since disease must originate independently of such causes in every 

 instance, and since the instances in which such causes are ascertaina- 

 ble are comparatively few. When, therefore, a cause of this sort 

 can neither be known sensibly, nor assigned in agreement with any 

 particular analogies, we are justified in concluding only that the 

 modified phenomena which depend upon spiritual agency are pro- 

 duced by a state of disease which consists of a modification of the 

 healthy state of the spirit. Conformably with this rule, we should 

 infer all diseases of function, which are not dependent upon the 

 material occasional cause?, to consist in a modification of the pro- 

 perties of the spirit. 



10. As all diseases of the spirit are maintained by assimilation, 

 it remains that we should consider the agency of remedies, with re- 

 spect to that process by which disease is maintained. 



11. A relation subsists between the spirit and certain external 

 causes, the result of which is, that the state of the former may be 

 modified or changed by the agency of the latter. 



12. Tlie properties of the external causes are related with the 

 ipirit either directly or indirectly: directly, as when effects are pro- 

 duced exclusively by the combination of the properties of external 

 causes with those of the spirit; indirectly, as when the state of the 

 ipirit is changed by the operation of external causes upon the 

 alliances of the spirit, as upon the fluids or the organized substances. 

 These are possible modes of the operation of external causes upon 

 the spirit. It is in no case possible to demonstrate when the 

 primary relation of externals is with the spirit, and when with it* 



