QUICKNESS OF THOUGHT. 173 



no recoil against this generation of an animalcule 

 by the wonderful chemistry of God ; our objection 

 to this doctrine is, that it is not proved."* 



As one example of the weakness of the opposi- 

 tion presented by the Edinburgh reviewer on this 

 ground, I may quote a passage in which he has 

 also aimed at convicting me of being enamoured 

 of resemblances, and allowing my senses to be 

 cheated by empty sounds. " Everj- one," says he, 

 " has heard of the quickness of thought, and who 

 has not heard of the velocity of the galvanic fluid ? 

 Therefore, the speed of thought may be reduced 

 to numbers, and a man may think at the rate of 

 192,000 miles a second ! We well know that the 

 author may shelter himself under the juggle of his 

 own words, and tell us that he speaks only of the 

 transmission of our will through the organs of the 

 body. Let him, then, write in more becoming 

 language." Now a man is surely entitled to be 

 judged by his own words, or all judgment might 

 as well cease. After showing that a galvanic 

 battery produces at least some of the effects of the 

 brain, and endeavouring to reconcile ordinary 

 thinkers to the idea of their partial identity by in- 

 sisting on the almost metaphysical character of 

 the imponderable agents, I said, in a foot-note, 

 * Blackwood's Magazize, April, 1 845. 



