tions are most perfectly performed, are completely hid from inspection. No eye can penetrate the integuments of the head, and the tables of the skull, and the dura mater, and the pia mater, to obtain a view of the operations performed in the brain, while the thoughts run high, and the sentiments swell with emotion; and when external injury or disease removes these coverings, the mind does not then disport in all the vigour of its healthy action; besides, even when all these external obstacles to inspection are removed, still it is only the surface of the convolutions which is perceived, and the soul may be enthroned in the long fibres which extend from the surface to the medulla oblongata, or thought may be elaborated there, and still evade detection. It will be said, however, that death will solve the question, and allow the whole secrets of the soul to be disclosed; but, alas! when the pulse has ceased to beat, and the lungs have ceased to play, the brain presents nothing to our contemplation, but an inert mass, of a soft and fibrous texture, in which no thought can be discerned, and no sentiment can be perceived, and in which also no spirit or immaterial substance can be traced; so that from inspecting it imagination receives no food for conjecture as to the presence or absence of an immaterial guest when life and health animated its folds.

Observation, therefore, reveals as little in regard to the substance of the mind as does reflection on consciousness; and as no other modes of arriving at certain knowledge are open to man, the solution of the question appears to be placed completely beyond his reach. In short, to use an observation of Dr Spurzheim, nature has given man faculties fitted to observe phenomena as they at present exist, and the relations subsisting between them, but has denied to him powers fitted to discover, as a matter of direct perception, either the beginning or the end, or the essence of any thing under the sun; and we may amuse our imaginations with conjectures, but will never arrive at truth when we stray into these interdicted regions.

The solution of this question, therefore, is not only unim

portant, but it is impossible; and this leads us to observe, that no idea can be more erroneous than that which supposes the dignity and future destiny of man as an immortal being to depend, of necessity, on the substance of which he is made. The great Creator has formed man such as he exists, and endowed him with all his powers; and what intellect is so grovelling as to suppose that the Omnipotent cannot, if such be his will, restore consciousness to the scattered atoms of the human body, or call up from the dust, and invest with the splendours of a blessed immortality, a frame which His power first called into being, and which His arm sustains and preserves every moment while it lives? Matter and spirit are alike to Him; and equally plastic to His will; and we may rest assured, that be the thinking principle matter, or be it spirit, it is of that substance, and endowed with those attributes which most perfectly fit it to fulfil the destinies which await it by His eternal decrees. We agree, therefore, with Philostratus, that "the only genuine result "of metaphysical speculation is to convince us of our inabi"lity to penetrate, by the light of human science, beyond "the objects of our senses, in their various relations;" only we would to senses add "the understanding," as an additional source of legitimate information.

It may be asked, however, since all access is thus denied to the discovery of the substance of which the mind is made, whether all light is withheld by nature, independently of revelation, respecting the mortality or immortality of man? By no means. From contemplating the powers of the mind itself, and the relations which they bear to this world and to hereafter, we may draw conclusions possessing a high degree of probability concerning the object of man's creation. When we find phrenology demonstrating the existence in the human mind of a faculty of Veneration, which longs to know intimately a God whom it may worship; a faculty of Hope soaring beyond the boundaries of time, and expatiating in the fields of an eternity to come, as its dwelling place; a faculty of Conscientiousness, desiring to see virtue crowned with its just

reward; a faculty of Benevolence longing to contemplate happiness diffused as widely as space extends, and as endless in duration as eternity; and Intellectual Powers insatiable in their desires to discover and to contemplate the wonders of creation; in short, faculties all pointing to a future and a higher state of being, as the aim and the object of their existence, we may infer that this world is not the scene in which are to close for ever the destinies of man. Aside from revelation, it is from sources such as these, from the constitution of the mind itself, and its relations to objects present and to come, that its ultimate destiny must be inferred, by the understanding, although not as an object of sense; and if we regard these with an enlightened desire of arriving at sound conclusions, we shall find much presumptive evidence that man is destined for immortality.

We are led to entertain these views, not only from believing them to be well-founded, but by perceiving the absurd embarrassments into which those persons have brought themselves and the cause of religion, who imagined that they could shew by fact and argument, that the substance of the mind is immaterial, and who founded on this supposed demonstration the chief philosophical reason for holding it to be immortal. Mr Rennell, while he admits that immateriality does not necessarily imply immortality, attempts to shew that the mind in this world manifests its powers independently of organization, and undertakes this task in defence of religion! But so far from being successful, he, and those who aid him, have been visited with the most signal failures in their endeavours. The plainest dictates of common sense stand opposed to such a notion as theirs. If the eye has been designed by the Creator to serve as the organ of vision, we may rest assured that no man, in a natural state, ever saw without such an apparatus; and, in like manner, if by the fiat of God, the brain has been made necessary to the mind as an organ by which it may carry on its daily intercourse with the world, we may safely infer that it can no more dispense with this instrument on particular occasions,

(when no miracle is present), and act directly as an immaterial substance on external matter, than it can see independently of optic nerves. If, then, it be sound philosophy to conclude, that as nature has rendered organs necessary to the mind in this life, no mental acts can be performed here without them, what are we to think of an attempt to prove that the mind does act in this life independently of organs, and to found on the issue of this attempt, the main philosophical argument in favour of its immortality? It must necessarily be sophistical and unsuccessful; and the enemies of religion, seeing the fallacy of the argument, proclaim the weakness of the cause which it was adduced to support, when, in fact, the cause was independent of its aid, which was offered only by an indiscreet ally. The propriety of these remarks will become apparent, by observing the result of Mr Rennell's attempt to prove the immateriality of the mind by facts and reasonings. This gentleman is writing in opposition to Mr Lawrence, Sir C. Morgan, and others, advocates of the doctrines of materialism; he displays great talent and sincere earnestness in his endeavours to refute them, and wherever his premises are sound he is successful; but when he enters upon the line of argument to shew that the mind sometimes acts in this world independently of organs, his whole conclusions are puerile and unsatisfactory.

To give the reader a clear idea of the real nature and value of his arguments, we may mention, that Mr Lawrence, whom Mr Rennell is combating, had said that " medullary "matter thinks;" or, in other words, that the brain is the mind. Now, according to the principles which have been laid down here, two answers to this assertion naturally suggest themselves: First, Mr Lawrence might have been called upon to prove his assertion, or shew by evidence, that, de facto, there is not and cannot be any principle, which we call mind, added to, or in connexion with the brain, which may really be the being which thinks, and which uses the brain only as an instrument for communicating with the material world. If he had been called upon to prove this

point, how could he have done so? Dissection, as we have said, does not shew that it is the brain which thinks, and reflection on consciousness does not reveal this fact either, and no other mode of proof remains. Philostratus, for Mr Lawrence, has answered, that he can shew an affection of the brain taking place in correspondence with every mental act, and that every disturbance of the organ affects the mental manifestations, and argues that, from the concomitance of these circumstances, he is entitled to conclude that the brain is the cause of the mental phenomena. His own words are, "to particular organisms we invariably see particular func"tions connected, during a certain progress which the ani"mal machine makes through growth, maturity, and decay, "to eventual dissolution. The vital energies, as well as "the intellectual, keep pace with the progress of the organic "machine, and are, to all appearance, destroyed with it. "As we have never become acquainted with either the liv"ing or the intelligent principle unconnected with organi"zation, so we have no philosophical reason to regard them "as separate existences. They may be properties of pecu"liarly constructed matter." This conclusion, however, does not necessarily follow. The notes of a violin cannot be produced without an instrument, and every note may be proved to be accompanied by a corresponding affection of the violin, but this does not prove that the instrument itself produces them. The musician cannot produce the note without the intervention of the violin, but he is altogether distinct from it. In like manner, it may be impossible for the mind to manifest a single feeling or thought without a corresponding affection of the brain, and still the mind may, like the musician, only use the brain as its medium of communication with the world. Philostratus's conclusion, therefore, does not necessarily follow from his premises; and by demonstrating that he cannot possibly possess any other, we shew that neither he nor any one can prove that, de facto, medullary matter thinks. He may infer this to be the case, but the inference is only a conjecture concerning a point which he is incapable

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