20 



of nature, I do not think that the public will 

 be inclined to thank you for attempting to ridi- 

 cule their merits, or diminish their influence. 

 If you had contented yourself with merely recti- 

 fying their occasional errors, we should have felt 

 obliged to you for your superior means of infor- 

 mation ; but when even Haller* cannot escape 

 your sneers on this subject, it is plain, that you 

 mean to treat the whole body of these writers 

 with derision and contempt. 



" To talk of life as independent of an animal 

 " body, to speak of a function without refe- 

 fc rence to an appropriate organ/' you say, 

 " is physiologically absurd, &c. -What should 

 c we think of abstracting elasticity, cohesion, 

 " gravity, and bestowing on them a separate 

 <c existence from the bodies in which these pro- 

 " perties are seen ?" Since you have so roundly 

 put this question, let it be as roundly answered. 

 We should think much more highly of the man 

 who viewed them as existing apart, than he 

 who confounded them together. The co- ex- 

 istence of things will not prove their identity. 

 Even, if it should be allowed, that these were 

 the necessary and inseparable properties of 

 matter, it would not show that these properties 

 were to be confounded with their subjects, f 



* P. 203. 



f Sir Isaac Newton expressly denies gravity to be a power 

 inherent and essential to matter, and consequently attraction 

 of cohesion, which is the same power acting at a smaller dis- 

 tance. See Newton's Letter to Bentley, Jan. 17, 1692-3. 



