ON ANCIENT AND MODERN SKEPTICS. 417 



leaves us just as ignorant as ever, of the power by vi^hich it perceives the 

 qualities of external objects. The difficulty was felt by many of the ad- 

 vocates for the associate system, especially by Priestley and Darwin ; and 

 it was no sooner felt than it was courageously attacked, and in their opinion 

 completely overcome. Nothing was clearer to them than that Dr. Hartley 

 had overloaded his system witli machmery : that no such thing as a mind 

 was wanting distinct from the brain or sensory itself : that ideas, to adopt 

 the language of Darwin, are the actual contractions, motions, or configura- 

 tions of the fibres which constitute the immediate organ of sense, and con- 

 sequently material things ;* or, to adopt the language of Priestley, that 

 ideas are just as divisible as the archetypes or external objects that produce 

 them ; and, consequently, like other parts of the material frame, may be 

 dissected, dried, pickled, and packed up, like herrings for home-consump- 

 tion or exportation, according as the foreign or domestic market may have 

 the largest demand for them. And consequently, also, that the brain or 

 sensory, or the train of material ideas that issue from it, is the soul itself ; 

 not a fine-spun flimsy immaterial soul or principle of thought, like that of 

 Berkeley or even of Hume, existing, unconnectedly in the vast solitude of 

 universal space, but a solid, substantial, alderman-like soul, a real spirit of 

 animation, fond of good cheer and good company ; that enters into all the 

 pursuits of the body while alive, and partakes of one common fate in its 

 dissolution. 



If there be too much crassitude in this modification of materialism, as has 

 generally been supposed, even by materialists themselves^ there is at least 

 something tangible in it : something that we can grasp and cope with, and 

 fix and understand ; which is more, I fear, than can be said of those subtler 

 and more complicated modifications of the same substrate, which have 

 somewhat more lately been brought forward in France to supply its place, 

 and which represents the human fabric as a duad, or even a triad of unities, 

 instead of a mixed or Siimple unity ; as a combinationj of a corruptible life 

 within a corruptible life two or three deep, each possessing its own separate 

 faculties or manifestations, but covered with a common outside. 



This remark more especially applies to the philosophers of the French 

 school; and particularly to the system ofDumas,| as modified by Bichat; 

 under which more finished form man is declared to consist of a pair of lives, 

 each distinct and co-existent, under the names of an organic and an animal 

 life ; with two distinct assortments af sensibilities, an unconscious and a 

 conscious. Each of these lives is limited to a separate set of organs, runs 

 its race in parallel steps with the other ; commencing coetaneously and 

 perishing at the same moment. § This work appeared at the close of the 

 past century ; was read and admired by most physiologists ; credited by 

 many, and became the popular production of the day. Within ten or 

 twelve years, however, it ran its course, and was as generally either rejected 

 or forgotten even in France ; and M. Richerand first, and M. Magendie 

 since, have thought themselves called upon to modify Bichat, in order to 

 render him more palatable, as Bichat had already modified Dumas. Under 

 the last series of remodelling, which is that of M. Magendis, we have cer- 

 tainly an improvement, though the machinery is quite as complex. Instead 

 of two distinct lives M. Magendie presents us with two distinct sets or 



♦ Zoon. vol. i. p. 11, edit. 3. t Stud, of Med. vol. iv. p. 41—45. edit. S, 



1 Prineipes de Physiologie, torn. iv. 8vo. Par. 1800—3. 

 § Recherches sur la vie et la Mort, &c. 



53 



