AND IMMATERIALISM. 



329 



warmth be derived from the body of the hen, of a dunghill, an oven, or the 

 sun. But though we know the organ, what mforraation does this give us of 

 the thing itself ? In what respect is intelligence connected with the brain 1 

 Does it result from its mere peculiarity of structure, secreted, like the blood, 

 but of a finer and more attenuate crasis, or is it a something superadded to 

 the organ 1 Is it matter in its most active, elaborate, and etherealized form, 

 or is it something more than matter of any kind ] and, if so, how has this 

 superadded essence been communicated ? 



To this point we can proceed safely, and see our way before us : but sha 

 dows, clouds, and darkness rest on all beyond, while the gulf on which we 

 sail is unfathomable to the plummet of mortals. 



It is something more than matter, observes one class of philosophers, for 

 matter itself is essentially unintelligent, and is utterly incapable of thought. 

 But this is to speak with more confidence than we are warranted; and unbe- 

 comingly to limit the power of the Creator. It has already appeared that we 

 know nothing of the essential properties of matter. If it be capable of gra- 

 vitation, of elective attractions, of life, of instinct, of sensation, there does 

 not seem to be any absurdity in supposing it may be capable of thought : and 

 if all these powers or endowments result from something more than matter, 

 then is the visible world as much an immaterial as a material system. 



On the other hand, it is as strongly contended by an opposite class of phi- 

 losophers, and the same train of arguments has been continued, almost 

 without variation, from the days of Epicurus, that the principle of thought or 

 the human mind must be material ; for otherwise the frame of man, we are 

 told, will be made to consist of two distinct and adverse essences, possessing 

 no common property or harmony of action. But this is to speak with as 

 unbecoming a confidence as in the former case. The great visible frame of 

 the world seems to point out to us in every part of it a co-existence either of 

 different essences or of different natures — of matter and a something which 

 is not matter ; or of common matter and matter possessed of properties that 

 it does not discover in its common form. Yet all these, so far from being 

 adverse to each other, subsist in the strictest union, and evince the com- 

 pletest harmony of action. And hence the soul, or intelligent principle, 

 though combined with matter, though directly operating from a material 

 organ, may be a something distinct from matter, and more than matter, even 

 in its most active, ethereal, and spiritualized forms : though, whatever be its 

 actual essence, it undoubtedly makes the nearest approach to it under such a 

 modification. 



In reality, under some such kind of ethereal or shadowy make, under some 

 such refined or spiritualized and evanescent texture, it seems in almost all 

 ages and nations to have been handed down by universal tradition, and con- 

 templated by the great mass of the people, whatever may have been the 

 opinion of the philosophers, as soon as it has become separated from the body. 

 And the opinion derives some strength from the manner in whieh it is stated 

 to have been first formed in the Mosaic records, which intimate it to be a 

 kind of divine breath, vapour, or aura, or to have proceeded from such a sub- 

 stance ; for " God," we are told, " breathed into man's nostrils the breath op 

 LIFE (□"'••n nDtyj)^ an-d he became a living soul."* 



Opposed as the two hypotheses of materialism and of immaterialism are to 

 each other, in the sense in which they are commonly understood, it is curi- 

 ous to observe how directly and equally they tend to one common result, 

 with respect to a point upon which they are conceived to differ diametrically; 

 I mean an assimilation of the human soul to that of brutes. 



The materialist, who traces the origin of sensation and thought from a 

 mere modification of common matter, refers the perception and reflection of 

 brutes to the very principle which produces them in man ; and believing that 

 this modification is equally, in both instances, destroyed by death, maintains 

 that " as the one dieth, so dieth the other ; so that a man hath no pre-emi- 



Gen. ii. 7. 



