only be capable of performing half of its functions, which ought to be as extended as its intelligible interests, which are the well being of all the modes of sensitive life, both present and future, as parts of the great whole, and these interests are discovered or conceived by notions of analogy, drawn from the idea of the transmutation of matter. This idea, however, has no influence over the sect of experimentalists, who pretend that identity belongs to the mode and not to the matter; and that when the human mode loses the memory of its past being, its interest in good or evil ceases; whence it will follow, that man has only to seek personal good, by means of power, money, pleasure, and brutal egotism, to drop at least into annihilation. Such was the doctrine of the French revolu tionists; on the contrary, chemistry demonstrates to us, that general identity exists for the matter, and transient for the mode, which is only a form of the succession of matter and of power, and when this form is changed during life or ceases to exist at death, the loss of its organism and of its memory, is of little importance in relation to its interest in sensitive life. For as the matter only can have identity, its pains and pleasures will depend alone upon its sensations, without having relation to its past or ganization, or to the memory of its past state, which is entirely destroyed, although the matter be imperishable, and may be, at all times, the agent of its state of multiplied suffering, by the transmutation that matter makes from the mode to the earthly system, and from this to the universe, passing alternately from the composed to the decomposed state, and contrawise, even to eternity.

Moral truth comprehends the highest degree of universal good, peace, liberty, health, and the intellectual en. ergy of all sensitive life; in this frame, human reason will discover the most just and general relations of things, and to them conform its actions. Thus, intellectual energy harmonizes with the conduct of man, to produce the good of all Nature; as vegetable harmony produces fruit upon a plant, fossil harmony produces the effulgent gem, and the harmony of animal organization produces physi cal health and beauty.

This theoretic moral truth, may be conceived practica

ble to human perfectibility, by which quality, man may be distinguished from the other animals; that is, he has the capacity to improve indefinitely, not only his bodily health and strength; but also, to augment liberty, peace, happiness, and the energies of social life. This he can affect by means of education, instruction, example, and social institutions; as he makes steam-engines, and other machines, and instruments, to increase his physical energies in the arts and sciences.

The moral maxim, to effect the greatest Universal good, by the least of partial evil, is also a conceivable theoretic truth, that can be classed with the practical, like other moral truths, by means of experiments. Pleasure is better than pain, peace than war, liberty than coërcion; but since these opposites become alternately means and ends, the one of the other, they have no other rule than experience, or for want of that, analogy of the actual circumstances. Experience should decide on the circumstances, in which, war would be preferable to peace, and this would be when war becomes necessary to secure peace; also in what cases coërcion should become the means of preserving liberty; but as experiment is often dangerous, we then substitute for it an analogy of similar cases, decided by the majority of the council or legislators of a na

tion.

This species of moral, as distinguished from logical reasoning, leads to the inference, that practical truth is a judgment founded upon evidence, and is so submitted to continual experiment, on account of the mutability of the laws and the habitudes of the moral world, a subject of the greatest importance to the human race will give us an example, thus:

In exemplification, we may suppose that the Congress of the United States, should declare war against another nation, and that this declaration should be decided by the casting vote of a presiding officer. Here, the moral judg ment or mis-judgment of a single man, determines the fate of both countries. So in other public measures, the majority of opinions is made the rule for political truth, by which it is submitted to experiment, or decided from analogy. [But when the question is important, it should

afterwards be subjected to the popular vote; the majority of the whole People, and not of a paltry representation, should be the arbiter.]

As another instance, may be adduced the case of a tumultuous assemblage, attempting to break into a house, and the inhabitants resisting, killed a man. The coroner's jury may pronounce the act, murder; the court of trial may deem it, manslaughter; and a higher court of appeal may consider it a justifiable act of self defence. These different judgments of the courts, show the vacillating condition of practical truth. Harmony of judgment may depend on the amount of evidence that the juries possess, or on their strength and clearness of mind. The grand juries have only the evidence of one of the parties, the accuser; but when the cause is carried before the court, the witnesses of the two parties are examined, the pleadings of the advocates show all the relations of the subject, and the judges, make a recapitulation of the evidence, freed from the sophisms of the pleadings. Thus the moral judgment agrees with practical truth; by reason of the evidence on which the judgment of the juries is decided; and we find that ordinarily this judgment guides the enlightened part of the people. The unreflecting have little power over the moral judgment, except to establish it, by their numbers; their suffrages have no weight in comparison with the wise and good part of community; but they may be frequently led to sedition and anarchy by demagogues, whose technical minds possess as little reflection as those of the rabble that they attempt to excite.

It is common with courts of justice, in civil causes, to grant a new action, if there is additional evidence to be presented. This shows that moral opinion, requires the harmony of thought to approximate the most just and general relations of things, in exact proportion to the amount of evidence. Moral reasoning is produced by the highest exercise of all the faculties, for the discernment of the complicated relations of good and evil, in their full extent, whence we deduce the good from the evil, to obtain the greatest possible amount of good, and the least possible of evil; to attain moral truth it is also necessary to

submit opinion to experiment, by the decision of the plurality or majority.

Sensation is only an active faculty when it is united with perception; and consequently these two make but one, and the same faculty which we call perception, and which is the inceptive force of intellectual action, and the indispensable basis of thought. When we would rea son on any subject whatever, it is necessary first to analyze it, to discover what are the sensible objects, or the ideas that it comprises, that is, to discover what are the actions of sense which correspond to real things, or to the actual relations of existence.

It has been supposed that the faculty of perception, is always excited by objects which are perceived by the five external organs of impression, according to the ancient adage, that "Nihil est in intellectu, quod non prius erat in sensu." Nothing exists in the intellect, which was not first in the senses. It is true that the great organ, the brain, must receive all the objects which exist externally, by means of the five external organs; but its moral function which is the most important, depends not on these agents; it possesses intrinsic knowledge of itself and of Nature; the identity of interest, of essence and of power, in these two, the laws of the moral world by which this interest operates; and perfectibility of self advancement, the grand characteristic of man, are all independent of the organs of impression. We perceive in the brain only, the moral modes or the virtues of sympathy, probity, and wisdom; these virtues are all modifications of the brain itself; we can neither see, hear, nor taste them; and yet we can distinguish them from their opposite vices, as readily as we can distinguish heat from cold, sweet from bitter, or between the other actions, and relations of the organs of impression. And all the moral modifications of the law, as adultery, theft, falsehood, cruelty, &c. are as intelligible and as actual, as is a column of stone. then, any one should incline to doubt their existence, the penalties established by the law against their infraction, would convince him, by a demonstration as perceptible, as that which he would acquire of the existence of a stone pillar, by knocking his skull against it.

If

Thus the human Brain, the organ of perception, is shown to be a functionary quite as physical, as are the organs of impression; it is rescued from the darkness of mystery, superstition, and metaphysics; and as a coöperative instrument of the great organism of the Universe, it is capable of promoting the good of all sensitive life, through all ages.

We cannot have an idea either of infinity, or the limits of space, of duration or of matter; the mind then cannot be brought adequately to bear upon these subjects, for it is not capable of intelligence in cases where there is no object of perception. Its operations are as real and intelligible as are those of heat, light, and motion. All that we know of any of them, is the degree of their power, and the rules of their actions. It does not seem possible, nor even necessary to utility, to discover the elementary affinity that exists between them, that is, the mode of operation of the brain for thinking; of the nerves and of the muscles for sensation and motion; or of the matter when it is modified to produce heat, light, electricity, or motion. We have only to consider the power and object of these things, and so to guide them all, as to effect the universal good of matter when in a sentient state. By the laws of Nature, causes always suffice for their effects.

If the mind possessed only the capacity of knowing simple facts, or ideas of personal good, as experimentalists pretend, man ought to renounce the character of indefinite perfectibility, by which he is distinguished from other animals, and must ever remain in his present state, whether civilized, or savage, without making any pro gress towards humanization; that is, towards the state of Universal liberty, peace, friendship, and reason, by which he might unite his whole species in one common family. But it is the end of moral laws, identically with the phy sical laws of Nature, to procure the good of all sensitive life, whether present or future. To effect this object, the faculty of conception, by means of the telescope, Analogy, exhibits the material interest, which we possess in the transmutation of matter.

In the reveries of metaphysics and of supernatural