OiSI MATiilllALISM 



have been, that matter, itself of divine origin, gifted even at present,'ilnde^f 

 certain modifications, with instinct and sensation, and destined to become 

 immortal hereafter, is physically incapable, under some still more refined 

 and exalted and spiritualized modification, of exhibiting the attributes of 

 the soul ; of being, under such a constitution, endowed with immortality 

 from the first, and capacified for existing separately from the external and 

 grosser forms of the body — and that it is beyond the power of its owh 

 Creator to render it intelligent, or to give it even brutal perception, — ^the 

 argument must be loose and inconclusive ; it may plunge us, as it has 

 plunged thousands before us, into errors, but can never conduct us to de- 

 monstration : it may lead us, on the one hand, to the proud Brahminical^ 

 or Platonic behef, that the essence of the soul is the very essence of the 

 Deity, hereby rendered capable of division, and consequently a part of the 

 Beity himself ; or, on the other, to the gloomy regions of modern materi- 

 alism, and to the cheerless doctrine that it dies and dissolves in one com- 

 mon grave with the body.* 



There seems a strange propensity among mankind, and it may be traced 

 from a very early period of the world, to look upon matter with contempto 

 The source of this has never, that I know of, been pointed out ; but it will^ 

 probably, be found to have originated in the old philosophical doctrine we 

 had formerly occasion to advert to, that " nothing can spring from or be 

 decomposed into nothing ;*'t and consequently that matter must have 

 had a necessary and independent existence from all eternity ; and have been 

 an immutable pkinciple of evil running coeval with the immutable THim- 

 €IPLE OF GOOD ; who, in working upon it, had to contend with all its essen- 

 tial defects, and has made the best of it in his power. But the moment 

 we admit that matter is a creature of the Deity himself ; that he has pro- 

 duced it, in his essential benevolence, out of nothing, as an express medium 

 of life and happiness ; that, in its origin, he pronounced it, under every 

 modification, to be vehy good ; that the human body, though composed of 

 it, was at that time perfect and incorruptible, and will hereafter recover 

 the same attributes of perfection and incorruptibility when it shall again 

 rise up fresh from the grave, — contempt and despisal must give way to 

 reverence and gratitude. Nor less so when, with an eye of devotional or 

 even scientific feeling, we look abroad into the natural world under the 

 present state of things ; and behold in what an infinite multipUcity of shapes, 

 and forms, and textures, and modifications, this same degraded substrate 

 of matter is rendered the basis of beauty and energy, and vitality and enjoy- 

 ment ; equally striking in the little and the great ; in the blade of grass we 

 trample under foot, and in the glorious sun that rouses it from its winter- 

 sleep, and re-quickens it into verdure and fragrancy ; from the peopled 

 earth to the peopled heavens ; to the spheres on spheres, and systems on 

 systems, that above, below, and all around us, lulfil their harmonious 

 courses, and from age to age 



hi tnystijC dance, not witiiout soDg, i'esound 

 His praise who, ©ut of darkness, called up light. 



Had the real ordef of nature been attended to, instead of the loose sag- 



* See Locke, on the Hum. Unders. book iv. ch. iii. § 6. as also the author's Slud. of Med. 

 t"ol. iv. p. 37. 2d Edit. 1825. 



t In the words of Democritus, Mv6a> &k tov iu] ottos yivsoQat} j«>?^£ as to [irj ^Buptodau 

 t>ioa. I/aert. lib, ix. p. 44, 



