11 



than wind or breath, and in the same way the 

 Latin spiritus, or original of our spirit, from 

 spiro, to breathe, means merely " breath ; the 

 " same is the case with the Greek smv/xa, and 

 " this is the original sensible object out of 

 " which all the abstractions and fancies, all the 

 V verbal sophistry and metaphysical puzzles 

 " about spirit have proceeded/** 



If you had continued to observe the distinc- 

 tion between animal life and the thinking 

 faculty, in other parts of your work, I should 

 have quietly passed over this harmless mate- 

 rialism, however I might have questioned its 

 reality. But, when you proceed, in the subse- 

 quent parts of your Lectures, to warn your 

 pupils againstf cc metaphysical chimeras, and 

 " the intrusion of immaterial agencies ;" when 

 you denounce all belief in these agencies as the 

 J <c regions of imagination, and the poetic ground 



For these wondrous discoveries, Mr. L. is indebted to the 

 philological speculations of Mr. Tooke, who by the same de- 

 composition of words reduced right into no other than rectum. 

 (regitum) the past participle of the Latin verb regere ; so that 

 right) in this vocabulary, means nothing more than the thing 

 ordered : and just homjubcre, is exactly of a similar import. 

 By the same analysis, truth means nothing more than the thing 

 trowed; and instead, says this great philosopher, " of its 

 <c being a rare commodity on earth, there is nothing but truth 

 " in the world." Reader I If thou art grave, I would refer thee 

 for a .confutation of these etymological speculations to the Fifth 

 Essay of Dugald Stewart's Philosophical Essays ; if thou art 

 merry, to Dean Swift's account of the studies in the Academy 

 of Lagado, Gulliver's Travels, Part III. Chap. 5. 

 + P. 78 and 189. J P. 83. 



