Additional Notes. AW 



to the rational and immortal mind of man, by all who believe 

 that such mind exists. Does Dr. Darwin mean to expr-ss an 

 opinion that man possesses the noble powers of reasoning, 

 judgment, imagination, abstraction, memory, reflection, &c., 

 in common with brutes ? or docs he suppose that the soul, the 

 immortal part, possesses intellectual powers of a ditfercnt kind ? 

 2. It may be observed that this theory embraces a general 

 doctrine, which is gratuitously assumed, and is altogether un- 

 philosophical. Its object is to reduce all the energies of intel- 

 lectual and animal life to the operation of an invisible fluid 

 secreted by the brain, and existing in every part of the body. 

 But does this fluid exist ? It is surely unphllosophical to take 

 for granted the existence of a substance, and then to proceed, 

 on the supposition, to a long train of inferences, the validity of 

 which must all rest on the flrst assumption. Besides, this sup- 

 posed fluid gives no real aid to the inquirer when admitted. 

 It explains nothing. The whole business of causation is as 

 much in the dark, after all this parade of developement, as ever. 

 Unwilling to confess himself ignorant of any thing, Dr. Dar- 

 win endeavours to amuse his own mind, and the minds of h?^ 

 readers, with contractions, fibrous motions, appetencies, and 

 other apologies for ignorance. But these words convey no di- 

 stinct ideas to the mindj they enable us to make no real pro- 

 gress in the Investigation of truth. In this writer's philoso- 

 phical works the poet too often appears with all his parade of 

 fictions. Suppositions are assumed for facts; conjecture is 

 brought in aid of hypothfsisj and from these materials, with 

 all the formality of legitimate deduction, a system is formed. 

 But when the good old rule of phllosophisiifg— " The causes 

 must be both true and sufficient to explain the phenomena"— 

 is rigidly applied, many of his most important postulates arc 

 found either utterly inadmissible, or to possess, if admitted, 

 only a fictitious value. The sensorial power of this ingenious 

 theorist, as applied to explain the phenomena of mind, too 

 much resembles the occvlt qnalUus, the phantasms and the 

 essential forms of the schoolmen, to be viewed respectfully by a 

 practical philosopher. 



