THE SYNTHETICAL METHOD. 477 



why this medullary matter should be an operative cause 

 rather than an operative instrument, no one can tell, par- 

 ticularly when it is more consonant with what we positively 

 know of matter, that it should be an instrument. 



That inevitable conclusion, however, of materialists, 

 which is in direct opposition to the conviction of the com- 

 monest understanding, is the divisibility of the sentient 

 principle, or, in other words, the doctrine that it is the in- 

 stincts of a person which compose all that he can call his 

 being. To say the truth, this denial of the unity of the 

 sentient principle, is not only in perfect harmony with ma- 

 terialism, but even absolutely required by it; for matter, to 

 which our perception is said to belong, being demonstrably 

 divisible ad infinitum, it follows that, instead of each of us 

 being one sentient being, we are each an infinite number! 



And this amusing conclusion must be equally arrived at 

 by those who, conscientiously founding their belief upon a 

 particular interpretation of certain texts of scripture, adopt 

 the above notion of the materiality of the soul, but suppose 

 that with the particular species man, it is to be revived 

 after dissolution by death to future immortality. They 

 assume, like the former, that matter is neither impenetrable 

 nor inert, and consequently different from what we have 

 every reason from experiment to believe it to be. They 

 assume, moreover, that after the dissolution of the body by 

 death, the material particles which composed it remain es- 

 sentially distinct, and are never assimilated by other bodies ; 

 for if they are, there ceases to be any identity, and the re- 

 surrection of the material soul as a distinct being from other 

 souls, and independent of them, becomes physically im- 

 possible. Even if we grant the second body to be identically 

 the same with that which died, another singular conse- 



