Chap. XII.] Philosophy of the Human Mind. 20? 



contemplated through the medium of his maia 

 doctrine, than had ever before been given •. 



That class of philosophers who taught that the 

 soul is material were, until the eighteenth cen- 

 tury, generally ranked among infidels, and in most 

 instances really deserved this character. Hence a 

 materialist has been commonly considered as a de- 

 nomination tantamount to a charge of atheism it- 

 self, or at least of criminal indifference to religion. 

 The Christian world, accustomed to connect this 

 tenet with such heresies as those of Spinoza, 

 Hobbes, Collins, and others, of a similar character, 

 naturally concluded that a belief in immaterialism 

 necessarily flows from a belief in Christianity. 

 The last age is distinguished by the adoption of 

 this antichristian errour, by some who profess 

 to embrace the Christian faith. Among these the 

 most conspicuous and active is Dr. Priestley f, 

 who maintains that " man does not consist of two 

 substances essentially different from each other ; 

 but that the conscious and thinking principle, or 

 what we generally term the sonJ, is merely a pro- 

 perty resulting from a peculiar organ ical structure 

 of the brain." On this principle he attempts to 

 show that the idea of the natural innnortality of 

 the soul is wholly fallacious ; that the properties of 

 sensation and thought, and of course all the dis- 

 tinguishing characteristics of the thinking part of 

 our nature^, must be extinguished by the dissolu- 

 tion of the organised mass in which they exist ; 

 and tlierefore that the only reason which n\rn ii.ive 



•> See his Jnquirj/ ifito the Freedom of the Jl'ill, &:c. pas.ui). 

 t DisqmMfions concerning Matter and Spirit, and Con esponJcT,Cf 

 befu-een Price and Prjestle/, 



