peculiar to animals. The moral acts are of course all referable to animal life.

Now wakefulness is not merely the state during which the organs of animal life are in activity, because some are active during sleep, and during wakefulness all are not active at the same time; but wakefulness may be called the state during which the will has the power of putting the organs of animal life in activity. Sleep is the repose of the organs of animal life, and if the repose extends to all the organs, sleep is complete, and there remains no idea, and no impression; but if any organ remain awake, sleep is accompanied by dreams. A dream then is an incomplete sleep, a state in which one or more organs of animal life are in activity, while the others are at rest. The effect of this partial action of certain organs, amid the general repose, is so strong, that the external senses seem to be actuated and give an external existence, and a reality to that which is only an internal impression. But there may be objected perhaps to this theory, that which ancient philosophy has maintained, viz. that the soul cannot remain for a moment inactive, and that sleep is still consistent with its essence of perpetual energy, because even then it continues in action, of which it loses the consciousness; a fact of which it would be difficult to gain a satisfactory assurance. During sleep the soul perhaps is not quiescent, but it is incapable of employing its faculties, because the organs which are the conditions material to their exercise are then in a state of repose. That which distinguishes sleep, accompanied by dreams, from the state of wakefulness, is, that in the former there no longer subsists the will to put in action the organs of animal life, which is always present in the latter. After sound sleep, the organs, which have been reposed, have a disposition to enter again into action, and to receive those impressions to which they were insensible by reason of their fatigue. Such is the passage from sleep to wakefulness. The phenomena of dreams it is impossible to conceive, if the brain be considered as one organ, and not as an assemblage of organs, each allied to a particular faculty, and capable of exercising an independent action, and of enjoying an independent repose.

On the same theory may be explained the nature of somnambulism. It is an incomplete sleep, in which many of the organs which preside over the functions of animal life are awake, and especially those which excite the voluntary muscles and the senses, whence arise not only impressions and ideas, but motions and actions. The organ of an external sense may be awake, as of hearing, when the sleep-walker will give correct answers to questions which are addressed to him; or the organ of sight, when he will be careful to avoid objects which present them

zelves in his way. But the perfect manner in which certain acts are then performed, will be less a matter of astonishment, when it is recollected that the vital energy, which in a state of wakefulness is participated by all the organs, is now concentrated upon that which is alone in action.

It has been said, that in dreams, the internal impression is in a manner personified and becomes an external existence. The same operation of the organs may take place during wakefulness, and it is that which constitutes a vision. A dream then only differs from a vision, inasmuch as the internal impression produced without the concurrence of the external senses, arises during sleep in the one case, and during wakefulness in the other. The impression is sometimes so strong, that many have maintained the reality of visionary images, which have appeared to their minds. Visions however commonly pass away like dreams, but sometimes they remain and constitute true mental alienation.

The same theory will explain why many have avowed a commerce with evil spirits, and why the impression under which they have laboured should have been strong enough to deceive themselves. Sorcerers are said to procure these fantastical illusions of the brain by means of certain external applications: extract of dulcamara is among the number of those narcotic unguents, which being rubbed upon the more delicate parts of the skin, and absorbed into the circulation, exerts its influence upon the nervous systein, and engenders within the brain a frightful train of the most dismal fantasies. Fancied inspirations are phenomena very analogous to visions. They too realise internal impressions; and it has often happened, that suicides, assassins, and incendiaries have become such from a persuasion that some spirit has instigated them to their crime."

Thus then all these phenomena, which can only find a solution in the theory of a plurality of organs within the brain, furnish so many proofs, in addition to those already brought forward, to confirm the truth of the proposition.

Hitherto we have been desirous of making our readers acquainted with the general principles of Drs. Gall and Spurzheim, and have confined ourselves in some measure to an abstract of the observations and reasonings, by which they maintain that the moral and intellectual faculties are innate, and that there is throughout the animal creation a gradual elevation of intelligence, according to the gradual elevation of organization; and that to man belongs the exclusive prerogative of reason, because he possesses parts of the brain which other animals have not. We have also given a general view of the opinion of our authors, that the brain consists of a plurality of organs. The particular

Kk 2

demon

demonstration of the organs, as it is found in " the Analysis of Dr. Gall's Lectures," and so much of the anatomy of our authors, as is necessary to the explanation of this part of their doctrine, is reserved for a future number.

ART. II. Elements of Political Science. By John Craig, Esq. 3 vols. 3 vols. 8vo. 11. 11s. 6d. Blackwood, Edinburgh;

Cadell and Davies, London.

IN no department of knowledge have mankind gained so much, since the beginning of the last century, as in that of political science; and in no branch of that science have they arrived at juster and more enlightened views than in that which is denominated Political Economy. This latter division of the subject, indeed, presents itself not as a lucid arrangement of obvious and practical maxims which, in a separate and unconnected forin, had in all former ages, regulated the proceedings of governments, and guided the intercourse of the commercial world, · -but, on the contrary, as a system of new doctrines and precepts which were, like a period comparatively recent, utterly unknown even in the most civilized nations of Europe. The Spaniards at the close of the sixteenth, and commencement of the seventeenth century, when the vast territories of America were first laid open to their avarice and superstition, displayed the grossest ignorance respecting almost every right and duty which belonged to them as governors: and their blind and selfish policy, accordingly, instead of rendering Spain more powerful or its new subjects more comfortable and enlightened, produced indolence and poverty at home, and misery the most unbounded and depopulating abroad. But the same ignorance of just and wise government which, at that epoch, prevailed with such marked effects in Spain, was conspicuous in the legislative enactments of all the other European countries, relative to trade, manufactures, and agriculture. It was prohibited, for example, to carry corn out of one district into another; and both in England and France, public roads were frequently broken up, to prevent intercourse between counties which stood mutually in want of the productions in which they respectively abounded. Exportation was denounced as the ruin of public wealth; and a free competition in capital and labour was viewed as the bane of national prosperity. Even in the early part of his present Majesty's reign, it was made unlawful, except in the case of a general mourning, for taylors in London and within five miles of it, to earn more than two

shillings

shillings and six pence halfpenny a day; and restrictions of a similar kind upon other branches of industry were very far from being uncommon. In fact, laws of the most frivolous and vexatious nature were multiplied every year to enforce other Jaws equally absurd and injudicious and legislators had nearly gone the length of fixing what should be the proportion of size between a man and his wife, and of stating how many children should proceed from every marriage. It was actually fixed by an act of parliament, how fine a man's coat should be, according to his income, and of how much wealth a youth' should be possessed, before he could be permitted to learn a particular trade. The lawgivers and the accoucheurs of those times acted upon the same principles, and seem to have entertained the same foolish and contracted notions relative to the provisions of nature, and the hazard of leaving man to himself. The former, when a child came into the world, laid it on a board, stretched the unhappy infant to its full length, swathed it up, from neck to heel, like an Egyptian mummy, and taught it to vegetate secundum artem: and the latter, having as many fears, as to the wild shootings of the mind, and forgetting that a man's interest is his best guide, and himself in most cases the best judge of that interest, hemmed him in, on all sides, by acts of parliament, and fixed by statute the price of his dinner and the weight of his silver buckles.

A more liberal and enlightened era arose with the eighteenth century, and towards the close of the bustling reign of Louis XIV, the French economists embodied the first system of rational speculation on government and national wealth. We shall by and bye have occasion to shew that QUESNAI and his followers entertained erroneous opinions respecting some of the fundamental doctrines of Political Science; but notwithstanding this, the liberality of their views, in that age of com pulsion and restraint, the new and important maxims which they inculcated in relation to the sources and materials of public opulence, and, above all, the encouragement which they procured for agriculture, in its most debased and neglected condition, justly entitled them to the gratitude of France, and of Europe. Nor were their countrymen blind to their merits or unwilling to acknowledge them; for the works of the economists were esteemed by several great writers as constituting a new epoch in the history of civil society. "There have been since the world began," says the Marquis de Mirabeau, "three grand inventions which have principally given stability to political societies, independent of many other inventions which have enriched and adorned them. The first is the invention of writing, which alone gives human nature the power of transmitting without

without alteration its laws, its contracts, its annals, and its discoveries. The second is the invention of money, which binds together all the relations of civilized societies. The third is the ECONOMICAL TABLE, the result of the other two, which completes them both by perfecting their object;-the great discovery of our age, but of which our posterity will reap the benefit."

In succession to the writings of the economists came the inestimable and immortal work of Smith, "The Wealth of Nations," a production which rivals the first efforts of human genius, and which astonishes us at once by the grandeur of its general doctrines, and by the faithful minuteness of its details. Dr. Smith stands in the same relation to political economy that Homer holds to poetry, and Newton to physical science; and later authors have done little more than develope at greater length some of his theorems, extended the range of their application, and collect a few more exceptions from his general rules than had occurred at the time he wrote.

We are aware that two or three authors of considerable reputation have called in question some of Smith's maxims, both as to the regulation of particular branches of trade, and also with respect to the standard of value and the productiveness of certain kinds of labour; nor are we so bigotted to his doctrines as to deny that there is ground for their criticisms, and that he has in a few cases generalized a little too freely. Upon the whole, however, a fair and candid comparison of the several parts of his great work, will, we are convinced, afford a most satisfactory proof that the errors which have been charged upon Dr. Smith arise chiefly from the ambiguities of language; while nothing is more obvious than that his opponents have frequently grounded their arguments upon a change in the meaning, if not a gross abuse, of technical terms and phrases. He adopted perhaps too indiscriminately the language of the economists, who had in fact constructed a nomenclature for political science: and the use of their words, in the discussion of topics wherein he essentially differs with them, is apt to mislead his reader, as it has occasionally obscured his reasoning. Those who have read a volume published by the Earl of Lauderdale, on the " Nature and Origin of Public Wealth," will have a clear conception of our meaning, when we ascribe to verbal inaccuracy, or rather to the unavoidable ambiguity of written language, the most plausible strictures which have been made on the "Wealth of Nations."

Before we enter upon the proper subject of this article we cannot help making one remark upon the great improvements which the present generation have attained to in the theory of government