462 Additional Notes. 



association, they are expended and destroyed. According to 

 any laws of matter with which we are acquainted, they can 

 only be connected by means of repeated simultaneous action; 

 but in their first action, according to this theorist, they expire, 

 and their places are supplied by new particles, which, like 

 them, can only act once and fly ofF. The fibres, indeed, re- 

 main, amidst this continual flux of the vital fluid; but with- 

 out it they possess no other qualities than those of inanimate 

 matter. 



Once more ; Dr. Darwin allows that stimuli sometimes 

 exist in contact with Sensorial Power, without producing cor- 

 responding effects. He accounts for this fact by supposing 

 that, from the inconvenience of obeying certain irritations, 

 we learn to suffer the stimulating material to accumulate till 

 it disagreeably affects us, and that the subsequent action is then 

 in consequence of this disagreeable sensation. But this is in- 

 consistent with his other doctrines. Sensations cannot in this 

 manner produce contractions, if we adhere to his theory of 

 the origin of ideas. What does he mean by saying, we suffer 

 the stimulating material to accumulate ? The sensorial power 

 exists in contact with the requisite stimulus : Is there a third 

 principle, a presiding mind, in his creed, which regulates 

 their action? 



These are a few of the inconsistencies with which this ce- 

 lebrated work abounds. In no respect, perhaps, does the 

 author display more loose thinking, and more glaring incon- 

 sistency, than in the manner in which he speaks of Sensorial 

 Power. Though he expressly represents the faculties of the 

 sensorium as different states of the same vital fluid, or spirit, 

 and though this doctrine forms the ground-work of his reason- 

 ing ; yet he sometimes speaks as if these faculties were dif- 

 ferent substances. Sensorial power is, with him, at one time 

 solid and impenetrable, and at another spiritual and penetrable. 

 And though he expressly ridicules the idea of an immaterial 

 sentient principle in the mind, yet he frequently speaks in a 

 manner which is altogether unintelligible without supposing 

 some such principle, which is different from the external sti- 

 mulus, the animal fibre, and the sensorial , power, and which 

 regulates their reciprocal actions. 



4. This theory is insufficient to account for the phenomena 

 which it is intended to explain; and it is opposed to facts. 



The author supposes that the spirit of animation exists in 

 four distinct states, to which he gives four names, as already 

 mentioned. Now, this spirit, as has been repeatedly before 



