6 REPLY TO THE CHARGES 



even ibc sliadow of a proof that the contraction of a muscle 

 or the sensation of a nerve depended in any degree on 

 electrical principles ; or that reflection, judgment, memory, 

 arise out of changes similar in their causes or order to 

 those we call chemical. On the other hand, I see the ani- 

 mal functions inseparable from the animal organs ; — first 

 shewing themselves, when they are first developed ; — 

 coming to perfection as they are perfected ; — modified by 

 their various affections; — decaying as they decay 3 — and 

 finally ceasing when they are destroyed. 



Examine the mind, the grand prerogative of man. Where 

 is the mind of the foetus ? where that of the child just born ? 

 Do we not see it actually built up before our eyes by the 

 actions of the five external senses, and of the gradually de- 

 veloped internal faculties ? Do we not trace it advancing 

 by a slow progress through infancy and childliood, to the 

 perfect expansion of its f^iculties in the adult ; — annihilated 

 for a time by a blov/ on the head, or the shedding of a little 

 blood in apoplexy ; — decaying as the body declines in old 

 age; — and finally reduced to an amount hardly perceptible, 

 when the body, worn out by the mere exercise of the organs, 

 reaches, by the simple operation of natural decay, that state 

 of decrepitude most aptly termed second childhood ? 



Where, then, shall we find proofs of the mind's inde- 

 pendence on the bodily structure ? of that mind, which, 

 like the corporeal frame, is infantile in the child, manly in 

 the adult, sick and debilitated in disease, phrensied or me- 

 lancholy in the madman, enfeebled in the decline of life, 

 doting in decrepitude, and annihilated by death ? 



Take away from the mind of man, or from that of any 

 other animal, the operations of the five external senses, 

 and the functions of the brain, and what will be left behind ? 

 That life then, or the assemblage of all the functions, is 

 immediately dependent on organization, appears to me, 

 physiologically speaking, as clear as that the presence of 

 the sun above the horizon causes the light of day ; and to 

 suppose that we could have light without that luminary, 

 would not be more unreasonable than to conceive that life 



