INTRODUCTION.

question. Can a man more easily provide a coat out of no cloth, than out of some? Or does he stock an empty wareroom, by boasting that it is amply stored with immaterial broad cloth; an article of superior quality, and which never can wear out?-Prove to me, I might say to him, that immaterial tissue is something different from no tissue, and I may contract with you for my clothing. But in the meantime, I exclaim with Lear,

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nothing can come of nothing; speak again."

If indeed I were told, that an extraordinary and admirable tissue had fallen, i̇' th' olden time, like meteoric stone, from heaven; that the substance, of which it was formed, was utterly unknown; but that, by infallible authority it had been proclaimed, that it could not be destroyed : that it produced, and seemed to generate from itself, successions of gems, spangles, and embroidery, which illuminated and adorned whatever they came near; and that with this weft (of what made, they could not tell,) none pro

duced from earthly looms, or merinos, could compare,-I might doubt for a while, the correctness of so wonderful a tale; until exact experience, or unquestionable authority, had vouched it but, in the mean time, what I deferred believing, I should perfectly understand; and would permit the narrator to give whatever name he pleased to the marvellous texture which he so extolled. To call it, for example, material, or immaterial; provided he considered the title thus given, as but conventional; and involving no definition of the essence named. Though, if the naming were left to me, I might call the substance athanasial; for there would be something equivocal in the title Athanasian.

METAPHYSIC RAMBLES.

DIALOGUE THE THIRD.

THAT substance, which is endowed with the power of thinking, you call mind?

I do; and Lord Brougham does the same. Do any animals, below the human grade, possess this power?

It must, I apprehend, be conceded that they do.

Then these have mind?

It follows that they have.

And this mentality must, in the alternative, be material, or immaterial?

Of course it must.

If we assume it to be material ?

B

Then we assign to matter the faculty of thinking.

If immaterial?

Then we imply that the brute soul is immortal.

Yes; if we subscribe to the doctrine of Lord Brougham, that of immaterial mind— immortality is an inseparably inherent attribute. Exactly so.

Does an oyster think?

Nay, I can scarcely tell whether it even feels. For the intellects of Tilburina were more or less unsettled, when she ventured to pronounce that "an oyster may be crossed in love;" and I have heard Naturalists declare, that be this testacious paramour ever so erotic, his passion could not be thwarted in such a way.*

But if the oyster thinks, it must have mind; and if mind must be immaterial, and immateriality must be immortal, this marine intelligence may think, if not say, with Cato, "I shall never die."

I can more easily swallow the oyster, than the hypothesis of its being immortal.

* Quippe quum sit Osgsov "sguaPgodirov.

Yet, you must swallow and digest the latter; or throw Lord Brougham up.-You smile.

I smile to think, that if the precious surviving portion of oysters were a pearl, its elysium might be the necklace of Maria.

Who, in that case, should change her name to Margaret, or Marguerite. In the mean time, and as a general and prudent rule, do not cast your pearls before a rabble that may rend

you.

You would have me then withdraw the union,* if not repeal it.

Its shells survive the oyster; and these have had power to accomplish the banishment of an Aristides.

But, as Aristotle says, that le feu brûle, sans savoir qu'il brûle, so these shells ostracise, without knowing that they do so.

Have spiders mind?

The poet furnishes me with an answer;‡ for

Methinks I hear, in accents low,

The sportive kind reply.

* Which in the days of Shakspeare, meant a pearl.

+ In Victor Cousin's Translation.

+ Gray.