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1876 .] Notices of Books . 
accommodated to the reception of life according to its own pecu- 
liar character, whenever it is excited by appropriate circum- 
stances. Experience attests the truth of these remarks. For 
we know that the same effedts are produced on animals by the 
warmth or heat of a room as by the heat of the sun, and when 
the season is neither spring nor summer. We may therefore 
say that the soul of animals resides in their blood, because it is 
always actuated by a cause extrinsic to itself. Not so the soul 
of man. He indeed is likewise moved, yet he is not governed 
by external causes. The affedtions of the external world pass 
a posteriori in some measure into the sphere of intelligence, yet 
in the man himself they are determined into act by a foregone 
will arising from an appropriate principle and cause. Thus we 
men are stirred to adtion by a fire kindled in the very sphere of 
the (intellectual) mind, even in mid-winter. As the philosopher 
(Aristotle) says : — ‘ Whatever a secondary cause can do, a prior 
cause can also do in a higher and more noble manner. The first 
cause assists the second in its operations, and secondary causes 
are illuminated by the light of the first.’ O ! then, how obscured 
— how deeply buried in the grave of the body are the minds of 
those who judge of themselves by the brutes, and of their own 
souls by the souls of brutes, reasoning from likeness of adtions, 
likeness of senses, and likeness of brain so far as the eye alone 
discloses the brain ; and do not see beyond the likeness, nor how 
far we stand apart from them ; fit subjedts, indeed, for ridicule, 
did they not rather deserve our pity.” 
Now this magnificent passage may perhaps be rhetoric, though 
plain-spoken persons would probably consider it mere “ padding.” 
But it is assuredly not Science. It is what no earnest worker in 
Science could ever have written. The more closely we study it 
the less we feel disposed to expedt anything of value from its 
author. In further exemplification of the same view we may 
refer to another passage on “ the apparent resemblance and 
absolute difference between the brain of man and that of brute 
animals,” and to a dissertation on the “ essential distinction 
between man and brutes.” Swedenborg — like his disciple and 
interpreter Mr. Gorman, and indeed like most men who study 
Nature in books, or in their own imaginings, instead of in things 
— was a profound believer in the absolute distinction and im- 
mense interval between man and “ brutes.” Our author accord- 
ingly does his poor best to be witty at the expense of Dr. Huxley. 
Says he — “ The self-confident advocates of the ‘ brute ’ view of 
man’s nature and origin cannot reasonably be offended if they 
are taken more or less at their word in this matter, albeit in a 
sense widely different from that intended by some who indulge 
their humour for writing 4 Lay Sermons ’ for the enlightenment 
and edification of British working-men.” The advocates of the 
dodtrine of Evolution have more important duties in hand than 
feeling offended at Mr. Gorman’s “takes” or mistakes. But we 
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