12 INTRODUCTION. 



expanding into the plant, and the egg vivifying into the 

 animal, are much more wonderful than any thing that 

 the one or the other can do, even in those species that 

 we admire the most, and are the most'disposed to en- 

 dow with reason and reflection ; and yet the requisite 

 heat and moisture fail not to cause the seed to germinate ; 

 and the egg which the parent commits to the elements, 

 and dies the while, comes as certainly to maturity as 

 that which is cherised in the matrix, or warmed by the 

 maternal breast. There is, therefore, no need of blend- 

 ing mind with matter, of gratuitously forcing instru- 

 ments upon the Almighty, which assuredly he does not 

 need ; thereby breaking the history of material nature 

 into disjointed sections ; and blending mind with these, 

 till the simplicity, the unchangeableness, the freedom 

 from the limitations of space and time, and the conse- 

 quent immortality, of that which thinks, be confounded 

 with the mutability of material things. 



Among the ignorant (and those who are very labo- 

 rious may yet be very ignorant) we may naturally ex- 

 pect to meet mere marvel-hunters, persons who, because 

 a certain animal is found to perform operations which 

 they did not expect, or of which they fancy that they, 

 more than others, are the finders, will needs attribute 

 powers which do not properly belong to animals, to 

 the performers of these operations, just in the same 

 manner and for the same reason that other ignorant 

 persons have attributed to human beings, powers which 

 were not human. Reason in mere matter is not a 

 more violent assumption than magic and witchcraft in 

 man ; but they who look at the whole system with the 



