458 Additional Notts. 



sensations of pleasure or pain. 3. The faculty of causing 

 contractions in consequence of volition. 4. The faculty 

 of causing contractions in consequence of the associations 

 of fibrous contractions with other fibrous contractions, 

 which precede or accompany them. These four faculties, 

 during their inactive state, are termed irritability, sensibility, 

 voluntarity, and associability ; . in their active state they are 

 termed irritation, seyisation, volition, and association. (See 

 chap. iv. of this work.) Upon these principles Dr. Darwin 

 accounts for all the phenomena of mind. Memory, accord- 

 ing to this author, embraces a class of ideas arising from vo- 

 lition and association. Imagination includes those ideas which 

 were originally excited by irritation, and become, in like 

 manner, more frequently causable by sensations of pleasure or 

 pain. Ideas of Abstraction and of Reflection are partial re- 

 petitions of former perceptions, by the repetition of a certain 

 stimulus. (See Zoonomia, vol. i. § 5, 6, 14, 15.) — It will 

 readily be perceived that this theory of mind has not only all 

 the exceptionable characteristics of that of Dr. Hartley, 

 but that it is liable to the additional charges of being more 

 complex and less consistent. 



As this theory makes an important part of a medical work, 

 which is highly popular, and has an extensive circulation in the 

 United States; and as there is reason to suppose that many 

 superficial thinkers have been seduced into the adoption of its 

 principles by the plausible aspect which it wears, the follow- 

 ing remarks are respectfully submitted to the reader, not as 

 containing a full refutation of the Darwinian doctrines, but 

 as suggesting some hints worthy of the consideration of those 

 who are disposed to embrace them. 



1 . Dr. Darwin sets out with a singular inconsistency. 

 He declares that, by the Spirit of Animation, or Sensorial 

 Power, he means only that animal life which mankind possess 

 in common with brutes, and, in some degree, even with ve- 

 getables ; and that he leaves the consideration of the immortal 

 part of us, which is the object of religion, to those who 

 treat of revelation. Yet he afterwards proceeds, in the same 

 work, to show how the Sensorial Power produces ideas of 

 memory, imagination, abstraction, &c. which have always 

 been considered as belonging to the rational and immortal 

 mind of man, by all who believe that such mind exists. Does 

 Dr. Darwin mean to express an opinion that man possesses 

 the noble powers of reasoning, judgment, imagination, ab- 



