DOCTRINE OF MATERIALISM. 91 



his diffusible, or fusible stimuli, brandy or 

 water heat or cold oxygen or azote plea- 

 sure or pain joy or grief. 



Nothing, but a perverted way of thinking, 

 could have led philosophers, such as these, to 

 ascribe to matter, independently and abstract- 

 edly from the energy and participation of life, 

 the power of organisation ; or, to have referred 

 to this organisation, the source of life, as its 

 cause. It is evident, indeed, that these gentle- 

 men move in an inverted order, and end where 

 they ought to begin ; they begin, by making 

 power to arise out of weakness ; symmetry 

 and order, from that which is naturally formless 

 and motionless ; and, finally, design and intel- 

 ligence, the attributes of things void of all con- 

 sciousness, and destitute of all sensation. In- 

 stead of making organisation the effect of life, 

 they make life to be the effect of organisation ; 

 instead of making the phenomena of organisa- 

 tion the end, they make it the primary and ef- 

 ficient cause, in which life virtually originates 

 and abides, the source of life, indeed, at its 

 termination. 



This silly hypothesis is at once refuted, by 

 the total impossibility which exists, of giving 

 a rational answer to this simple question ; to 

 the question which I have often had occasion 

 to put to many of our physiologists, who enter- 

 tain these opinions; What is the cause of 



