THE NEWTONIAN PHILOSOPHY. 499 



matter, from which, according to certain general laws of matter and 

 motion, proceeds all this wonderful frame of things ; not only the ce- 

 leflial bodies, and their movements, but the organization and fuc- 

 ceflive generation of animals and plants ; and who maintains that all 

 this is not only originally produced, but is preferved and carried on 

 without the guidance of any Mind ; and who makes the brute-animals 

 to be no more than machines, and afcribes all the various operations of 

 their infl:in<5l to caufes merely material and mechanical. — Such a phi- 

 lofopher I hold to be very little better than a downright Atheift, differ- 

 ing only from the mere materialift in this, that he has recourfe to 

 Deity in order to account for the origin of motion, without which, e- 

 very fyftem of materialifm mud be eifentially defedive. Nor is it to 

 be wondered that, when Des Cartes had gone fo far, his fiiccefTors, the 

 prefent French philofophers, (hould go one ftep farther, and endeavour 

 to frame a world out of mere matter and mechanifm, without giving 

 the Deity even the trouble to begin the motion : And feme ot them, 

 we know, have gone fo far as to nnake a machine of the human mind, 

 as well as of the brute *. And, indeed, it appears to me impofTible, 

 that a man who believes that all the appetites and inclinations of the 

 brutes, fo wonderfully fuited to the prefervation of the individual, 

 and the continuance of the kind, all their operations, in confequence 

 of tho(e appetites and inclinations, and even their reafonings, (for that 

 they have a reafon of a certain kind, I have elfewhere fhown t]) to be 

 mere clock-work, can think oiherwife of the human mind. 



As to the phllofophy of Sir Ifaac Newton, it is not, as I have obfer- 

 ved J, univerfal, but is confined to the heavens, and the movements of 

 the celeflial bodies. He does not, therefore, meddle with the organi- 

 zation or generation of plants or animals ; nor do I belive he thought 

 that thcfe could be accounted for by matter and mechanifm. Neither 

 does he lay any thing of the minds of animals, and their operations, 

 except what 1 wilh he had not faid, that a fubtile Ipiritwas the caufe 



R r r 2 of 



* Abbe Pradc, riiomme machine. t P^ge lor. t Pjge 205. 



