THE SYNTHETICAL METHOD. 487 



mention. In this, as in the cases immediately preceding, 

 man is imagined to consist materially of one of the most 

 complicated pieces of mechanism which the animal king- 

 dom contains ; but his corporeal superiority and perfection 

 appear to consist in his nervous system, which is con- 

 ceived to be acted upon, during the life of organification, 

 by a conscious immaterial being endowed with a suffi- 

 cient degree of free agency to render it morally respon- 

 sible to its Creator. The medullary matter of such other 

 animals as possess the life of organification, is supposed 

 to be acted upon likewise by conscious immaterial beings; 

 but these are infinitely inferior to the soul of man, inas- 

 much as, their actions not being sufficiently free, they 

 are destitute of the powers of reflection, discharged from 

 responsibility, and therefore from the necessity of a future 

 state. The principle of necessity is carried to its utmost 

 limits in the annulose circle, as may be exemplified in the 

 laborious economy of Scarabmis Sneer. The principle of 

 liberty, on the contrary, predominates in the Vertebrata ; 

 and although no animals in this last circle, except man, 

 arc sufficiently free to be morally responsible, wc see the 

 whole contents of the group tending towards this point of 

 perfection. We have seen that nature appears to abhor 

 absolute division in the arrangement of organized matter, 

 and something of the same kind is observable here in cha- 

 racterizing spirit. Vestiges of instinct may be traced in 

 man ; and a will faintly dawns in those insects which 

 are most enslaved to their peculiar economy. 



But there are animals, as wc have seen, which possess 

 only that simple degree of material life, which allows 

 merely of their being propagated, like plants, by scission ; 

 and for the sake of uniformity wc were obliged to assume 



