lOl Philosophijof the Human Mind. [Chap. XII. 



viz; the elemental, the vegetable, the animal, and 

 the inicllectual; that of these the intellectual only 

 is immortal ; tliat the soul is not created for any 

 particular hody, but transmigrates from one to 

 another; that there are different orders of minds; 

 those which occupy earths and stones, and those 

 which reside in plants, and the inferior animals up 

 to man ; that gravitation is nothing more than the 

 activity of a soul residing in, and animating, masses 

 of earth ; and that it is more honourable to the 

 deity to consider him as operating in all the de- 

 partments of nature, by the instrumentality of in- 

 ferior minds, than to represent him as acting on 

 matter immediately. Whether the souls of men 

 transmio-rate to the bodies of brutes he is doubt- 

 ful ; but that the souls of vegetables and inferior 

 animals each transmigrate from one to another of 

 their own species, and perhaps from a lower to a 

 higher, arid vice-versa, he thinks there is abundant 

 reason to believe. 



So far as lord Monboddo agrees with the Aris- 

 totelian philosophy, he talks with a semblance of 

 reason, and may be read with patience. But the 

 extraordinary consequences which he draws from 

 this ancient system of pncumatology, the caprici- 

 ous use which he snakes of it, and his visionary and 

 fantastic additions to it, render his work as singu- 

 lar a mass of good sense and absurdity, erudition 

 and ridiculous credulity, as any age ever produc- 

 ed *. Mr. James Harris, in liis Hermes, and in 



•<■ Sec /jucknt Mefapln/sict, 5 vols, 4to. From the lingular opi- 

 nions which abound in this learned and extensive work, the fol- 

 lowing selection is oltered to the reader as a specimen. That the 



oura/'^ oiitarg i.s a man not civilised 3 that men originally had 



