90 DOCTRINE OF MATERIALISM. 



in theory, but in practice also. Instead of 

 grasping, and adopting the doctrine of the Ma- 

 terialists, in its native dress, and ascribing to 

 the Almighty Power of matter, the essential 

 and original attributes of life ; it is to the resi- 

 duary and ultimate effects only, which matter 

 evolves, whence life originates, and to which it 

 is referred : instead of making life an origin, 

 and a principle, Dr. BROWN, supposed it to 

 consist in a forced state ; that it is an effect 

 only instead of a cause : he makes life to begin 

 at its end ; to consist in what he calls excite- 

 ment ; and that this excitement, or life, is the 

 effect of which the exciting powers, acting on 

 the excitability, are the cause. 



If this relationship actually subsisted, be- 

 tween the exciting powers, and the excitabi- 

 lity; if the result of both, were the true cause 

 of life, life would then, indeed, be, what he 

 foolishly affirms it would be, a forced, not an 

 original state; an effect, not a cause ; an end, 

 not a beginning ; instead of animated beings, 

 being, by necessity, forced to die, they might, 

 by the power of excitation, be forced to live ; 

 so that, by the proper application of his stimuli, 

 he might perpetuate life for ever and ever. 

 Life might be changed and varied, exhausted, 

 augmented, and renewed to a high, or to a low 

 state, back again from a high to a low one, in 

 proportion as he chose to infuse into the system 



