A MATERIAL WOldfe. 



31 



the great doctrines of a future state and the immortality of the soul. In our 

 own day we allow to it a very liberal extent of bold imagery and poetic 

 license, and with such allowance it may be perused without mischief; but a 

 few verses alone are sufficient to prove its evil bearing, if strictly and literally 

 nterpreted. The following distich, for examyjle, beautiful as it is in itself, 

 discloses the very quintescence of Spinosism :* — 



All are bill parls of one stupendous whole, . 

 Whose body nature is, and God the soul: 



and the general result drawn from the entire passage, which is too long to 

 be quoted, is no less so : — 



In spite of pride, in erring reason's spite, 

 One truth is clear, whatever is, is right. 



If every thing be right at present, there is no necessity for a day of correction 

 or retribution hereafter; and the chief argument afforded by nature in favour 

 of a future existence is swept away in a moment. Unite the propositions con- 

 tained in these two couplets, and illustrated through the whole poem, and it 

 follows that the universe is God, and God the universe ; that amid all the 

 moral evils of life, the sufferings of virtue, and the triumphs of vice, it is in 

 vain to expect any degree of compensation or adjustment in a future state; 

 every thing being but an individual part of one stupendous whole, which 

 could not possibly exist otlierwise; and that the only consolation which re- 

 mains for us under the pressure of pain or calamity is, that [(we are not at 

 ease, there are others tliat are so — that if our own country is devoured by 

 war, or desolated by pestilence, there are countries remote from us that know 

 nothing of such afflictions — that the general good is superior to the general 

 evili and made to flow from it, and, consequently, that whatever is, is right — 



If plagues and earlhquakes break not Heaven's design, 

 Why then a Borgia or a Catiline? 



The THIRD HYPOTHESIS to which I have referred, is that of the idealists, or 

 those who maintain that there is no such thing as a material or external 

 world; that the existence of man consists of notliing more than impressions 

 and ideas, 'T of pure incorporeal spirit, which surveys everything in the 

 same unsubstantial manner as the visions of a dream. Some of the tenets 

 of Malbranche appear to have a tendency to this theory ; but it has been 

 chiefly developed in modern times by Bishop Berkeley and Mr. Hume. Their 

 premises are indeed somewhat different, but their conclusion is the same; 

 excepting that the argument is pressed much farther by the latter than was 

 ever intended by the former, and leads to more dangerous consequences. In 

 Germany, Professor Kant has allowed a part of this tenet, as well as parts 

 of various other tenets,t to enter into his system, or that which he chooses 

 to distinguish by the name of the Transcendental Philosophy, and which not 

 long since bade fair to obtain a universal sway over the Continent, though 

 for some years it has appeared to be considerably declining in its reputation. 

 It was my intention to have traced the origin of the ideal liypothesis, and to 

 have pointed out its sophisms, but our time will not allow me ; and it is the 

 less necessary, as I shall have an opportunity, on a future occasion, of re- 

 verting to all these various conjectures and examining them at full length.:|: 



But why, after all, is it necessary to support the proposition, that "nothing 

 can spring from nothing?" Why nvdy not something spring from nothing, 

 when the proposition is applied to Omnipotence 1^ I may be answered, per- 

 haps, because it is a self-contradiction, an impossibility, an absurdity. This, 

 however, is only to argue in a circle ; for why is it a self-contradiction, or an 

 impossibility ? " It is impossible," said M. Leibnitz, " for a thing to be 



* See the author's Prolfgomena to his translation of the Nature of Things, p. cxxvL 

 t Degeraiido, Hisioire Coinpaiie des Syst^iuesde Philosophic, toin. ii. 17. 

 I Series iil. Le'-t. v. 



j See die author'a Prolegomena, et supra, p. Ixxviii. 



