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cation, or subtraction will be unavailing, and of no effect. But what we may, substantially and with truth, deny,-is this; that zero is a subject, which can undergo the process of being added, multiplied, or subtracted.

Substitute immateriality for zero, and the above reasoning, if at all applicable, will apply to the subject (I dare not say matter) more immediately before us.

Still, let me be understood. That beyond the precincts of what I have called perceivable matter, there may be—nay, that there is, and must be-created substance, I do not deny. Again, that beyond the precincts of matter, whether perceivable or not, there may be created substance, of a nature so different from matter, that when we become acquainted with its essence, we shall at once deny it to be material; and accompany this perception of what it is not, with a knowledge and assertion of what it is, and what powers and faculties it is capable of supporting,—this I do not controvert. That amongst substances of this class, may be found that wonderful and intelligent one, which constitutes human mind, I do not deny. I but seek to distinguish MAY BE from is, I but try to define and insist upon the limits between affirmation and negation; and as words should represent ideas, and ideas can but be the produce of Understanding, I call on men to confine their assertions within the sphere of their understanding. I but guard them against supposing that they inform us what a substance is, (or even that it is,) by explaining to us what it is not. I but protest against its being held, that we can even pronounce an imagined subject not to be another, until we know precisely what that other is. For example, that we cannot affirm that x (the unknown algebraic subject of inquiry) is not matter, so long as we are ignorant what matter is; and that in this ignorance we must remain involved, until we are able to trace the limits of material existence; and to say what is, and what is not, within that (to us yet unexplored and inexplorable)

boundary line. If we say that a flower is red, we imply a knowledge of the colour, red. In like manner, if we say that it is not blue, do we not thereby claim to be acquainted with the colour blue?-For blue substitute matter, in order that my reasoning may apply.

In sensation and reflection, originate our ideas; and the knowledge which they combine and associate, to form.

Ex

But is not sensation the grand source of reflection? clusively of Divine impressions and Revelation, may it not be the ultimate and primary source of human knowledge? supplying the crude materials, on which digestive Reflection has to act? The blood, the nervous fluid, the brain, these are all widely different from our-or our parents'—food; that daily bread, which we owe to the same paternal bounty, to which we are indebted for mind and body,-life and thought. But yet is it not of this daily bread, that the blood, ("which is the life," the nervous fluid, and that tool and instrument of thought the brain, were formed, and are repaired ?—Reflection! What is reflection, but a sort of spiritual rumination? And what but our senses, operated upon by matter, supply the mental cud? I think it was Me. de Maintenon who, when dying, said "how much I am about to learn !"* But we are not only impatient, but presumptuous. while yet alive, a book of knowledge, the very alphabet of which we have to learn from " The Great Teacher."+ Man not only "cannot see God, and live ;" but there is much which he cannot know, until he has ceased to live.-A part of this much-seems to be the essence of the human mind. With this, upon our death, we perhaps may become acquainted. But in the mean time, from Itself I learn, that I am not yet acquainted with it.

We affect to read,

* Que de choses,-or combien de choses,-je vais apprendre!
+ Death.

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C.

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W. C. Search presumes, that the publication in this small volume, of certain rhymes, (they do not deserve the name of poems,) written by its author, will put an end to the rumour, that this author is a judicial W. C. S.-Can it be supposed, that such sentiments as are to be found in Orange and Green,' Country,' the lines to the White Lily,' and those to the Lilies,' were deliberately expressed by one, of whom it has been said, that "his object," even when at the Bar, "had been "to halloo on, those who joined with him in the fiendish cry "of religious intolerance, and excitement of one class of religious professors against another? What could be worse, than "to prevent a reconciliation between different classes of Chris"tians?"One of whom it has been said, that "his perverse "and mischievous object was, to rouse the very worst passions "of the people. That he ought to be, not upon the bench, "but in the dock. That he never was admitted, by the person who thus drew his character, to be a man of "integrity, an impartial judge, a learned judge, a good lawyer, "a man of enlarged views, or who understood the law of "the land. That he prejudged every case; was a professed "partisan; and that any military officer, under the coercion "bill, would make a better judge."—It is true, that I cannot go the length of saying, that the Public do not entertain a widely different opinion of this judicial W. C. S.; or that the addresses to him did not give him a widely different character,

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* Quære, Whether the above sentence, and most of what follows, under inverted commas, have no tendency to halloo on some thousands, or hun. dred thousands, of the millions, of whose force and excitation we hear so much, against the character and life of a public man, so described; and the description coming from one whose influence with those millions is unbounded?

on an experience of thirty years. It is true, that this "intolerant hallooer" against Catholics, as soon as the relief bill passed, returned Catholics in four counties, out of the five of which the circuit consisted, the first in his list, to serve the office of Sheriff;-and it is also true, that the Judge, of whom the above not too complimentary description was given, is said, upon another occasion, and, as is commonly supposed, by the same person, to have "filled the bench, as it ought to be filled; "to be a truly learned judge; one of dignified impartiality ; "and this impartiality graced,” (c' est un peu fort,) “by almost “superhuman talent; his great mind being brilliant, precious, "inestimable, as the diamond."—If both those characters were true, I should say, that never was there so extraordinary a personage, as he to whom they appertained. But I am disposed to say, with little hesitation, that neither character is a just one. That one is much too high; the other quite unfounded, and too bad. I farther hope and think, that neither W. C. S. the Judge, nor W. C. S. the Rambler, is less than an honest, rational, well-intentioned man.-As to conjecturing that the W. C. S. in the title-pages, is not, with the aid of his friend P. P., the author of these Rambles, there is no limit, once we get into them, to surmises. There be those who will have it, that the writer of the Waterford critique, (noticed in p. 86, & seq. of Second Dialogue,) bears a name, or names, of which the initials are D. O. C.

D.

I have already noticed a criticism which appeared in an Irish journal, and which represented me as having borrowed largely from Butler's Analogy; a work of which I had not ever, nor yet have, read a line.-I find the Athenæum describing me as of the Burton School. I may not be able to tell precisely,

whether the article (which was of Irish parentage, or extraction,) meant the Judge, or the Anatomist.* With the former,

though my opinion of his knowledge and understanding must be high, my intercourse is so slight and rare, that ours may be said to approach to the very immateriality of acquaintance. Of the Anatomist, I have no more read the work, (though I believe it to be in my collection,) than I have that of the Analogist; and, in not reading it, am assured that I have lost or postponed some entertainment. The contributor to the Athenæum proceeds to describe me as "a quaint humourist." If this mean a priggish and queerly tempered oddity, my friends do not think me so, in the social intercourse of private life. Whether I appear so, in these Rambles, it will be for their readers to pronounce. At all events, I would rather be priggish, than profane; and prefer the unmerited character of a quaint humourist, to the earned one of a flippant Infidel, ostentatious of unbelief.

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From that famed well, my watery precepts glide,
Where Naiad Truth is stated to reside.

Laugh not, ye wild Reformists; those who view,
My streams with care, will see, reflected, you.

In I know not what century after the flood, (the reader can look into Blair's chronology,) a spirit of tumult and philosophy

* Of melancholy.

+ See page 45, of this Dialogue. The Rights of Waters form the allegory there promised.

This translation of the motto, stands exactly as it appeared in print, in 1792.

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