their foundations, and to keep their places; rivers were seen to be confined to their channels, and impelled along their descending courses; and oceans to repose in their deep and mysterious caverns, and to be hemmed in with bars of sand and rock-bound shores; but the power which wrought these wonders was unperceived. At length the amazing discovery was made, that the earth and all the planets were pursuing their ceaseless courses around a common center. Newton generalized these facts, referred them to a common quality in material beings, and established the truth of his theory by demonstrating its applicability to explain the motions of the earth, and the other heavenly bodies in their orbits. It was then inferred that gravitation was one of the general properties of bodies. This inference, however, was a step beyond what the facts of the material world, and the demonstrations of Philosophy, had established; and subsequent investigations have obliged men to call it in question. The fram-ework of the material world consists of ponderable bodies. Its mountains and oceans, its continents and islands, and its minerals, earths, liquids, and gases, are of this description. Its light, electricity, and caloric, may possess the same property in some degree, and under certain modifications and restrictions, but in their leading phenomena they obey other laws, some of which seem hardly consistent with this. On a strict examination, therefore, we are authorized to respect the classification of bodies adopted by all latter Chemists, as ponderable and imponderable, another name for gravitating and not gravitating.

The essential properties of gravitating bodies, are extension, figure, mutual attractions, and repulsions, embracing gravitation and mobility. Earths, minerals, solids, liquids, and aeriform fluids, are of this description. The essential properties of non-gravitating bodies, are extension, mobility, and mutual attractions, and repulsions, not including gravitation. All known bodies have some perceptible extension, and occupy some space to the exclusion of other bodies. On this property depends their limited size and figure. Beyond this limited extension all gravitating bodies, have indefinitely extended spheres of gravitation, in which the sum of all their gravitating forces is the same for all distances from their centers, making them in respect to par ticular limited bodies inversely as the squares of the distances of their centers. On this property is based a

conception of gravitating bodies having an indefinitely great concurring extension, considered as subjects of gravition.

§338. The resolution of material objects, both gravitating and non-gravitating, into atoms, is a legitimate, and, to some extent, necessary deduction of reason. We have then, as the elements of the material world, an immense number of beings, which fill indefinitely small spheres, as the subjects of one class of powers, and indefinitely large spheres as the subjects of other classes of powers. These beings are divided in respect to known powers of gravitation, into two co-ordinate classes, gravitating beings, and non-gravitating beings. Gravitating beings fill indefinitely small spheres as subjects of mutual resistances; indefinitely large sphere's as subjects of gravitation; and intermediate indefinitely small ones, as subjects of cohesion and chemical affinity. Non-gravitating beings possess similar powers both of attraction and repulsion, to those of gravitating beings, both in respect to each other, and to gravitating beings; but under peculiar restrictions and modifications, which adapt them to their peculiar offices.

§ 339. We thus arrive at subjects, which, taken in the aggregate, constitute the material world, and which are the chemical and mechanical elements of all material things. These subjects in their last analysis, and in the ultimate conclusions which we are capable of forming respecting them, are very different from the general apprehensions of men. Of them as elements, the material world consists; and on their properties and powers depend all its combinations and varieties of objects. These elements are beings of a nature scarcely less subtle and refined, than that of minds, and possess a sublimity and dignity of character, and an extent of powers which fill us with wonder and amaze

ment.

The resolution of matter into forces, is an error which has been committed by some of the German and French schools of modern metaphysics, and consists in resolving effects into effects, instead of tracing them to adequate causes. The power of producing effects may be correctly generalized under the title of forces; but forces require agents, by which they are exercised and to which they belong; and every exercise of force is an effect which must have a

cause.

CHAPTER XXV.

REASONING FROM EFFECTS TO CAUSES IN THE DISCOVERY AND INVESTIGATION OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD.

$340. The material world is the first world of our knowledge. We learn the existence of our bodies, and of other bodies around us, before we entertain the idea of the existence of minds as a separate and different class of beings; or form any conceptions of a spiritual world. But, having learned the existence of bodies, and having resolved them into their elements, and ascertained the essential properties and powers of those elements, we cannot stop here, but are compelled to prosecute a series of observations and generalizations, with a view to determine the precise nature of mental phenomena and to trace them to their causes.

§ 341. Sensations, thoughts, affections, and acts of will, are a species of facts entirely different from those accounted for by the material world. Like the operations of matter, they are effects which must have causes, and those causes must be found in the material world, or beyond it. They imply exercises of power, and those exercises must have subjects to which they belong, as really as the exercises of material agency. But having discovered beings called atoms, which in the ultimate analysis of material objects, are the causes of all the phenomena of resistance and attraction, and all the other phenomena of the material world; it is our duty first to inquire, whether sensations, thoughts, affections, and acts of will, may not belong to these known agents? And whether the same beings which are the subjects of all the states and operations of matter, may not be the subjects of all intellectual states and operations? In determining this question, we observe first, that sensations and ideas do not belong to any of the known elements of bodies. The earths, minerals, metals, oxygen, hydrogen, caloric, and electricity, neither feel nor think. Their operations are entirely chemical and mechanical, and are modifications or effects of attraction or resistance. Animal and human bodies are composed of these unfeeling and unthinking atoms. Can mere organization give to the body, powers of feeling and thought, when these do not belong to one

If

of the elements which compose that body? It cannot. powers of sensation and thinking do not belong to atoms, in their individual capacity, they cannot be acquired by association. All that association can do, is to modify preexisting powers by the different powers of the associated elements. Did atoms feel, association might make them feel differently; did they think, it might make them think differently; but if they are not capable of feeling or thinking, mere association cannot give them these capabilities. Organization consists essentially in a combination of causes, and modifies powers by other powers; but it creates nothing. If the atoms of bodies, therefore, do not possess powers of feeling or thought; and if animal bodies consist of associated atoms, their powers of feeling and thought must belong to another cause, and that cause must be different from the body. Atoms do not possess these powers; therefore organized bodies do not possess them; therefore every man and every animal must have within his body, another being not material, which is the subject of sensations and ideas. We thus arrive, by a regular series of deductions, at the conclusion that every man and animal has a mind. These deductions are clear and certain, and proceed from certain premises; the conclusion, therefore, must be true.

Having discovered the existence of minds as a generic order of beings, different from material atoms, we proceed to investigate their powers and properties by observation, analysis, and consecutive reasoning. The primary powers by which human and animal minds are revealed, are those which are exercised in sensations, ideas, affections, and acts of will. Sensations occur throughout the entire body by means of nerves, which are devoted specifically to this purpose, and which from their office are called nerves of sensation. We infer from this fact, that the mind, which is the subject of sensations, must be co-extensive with the nervous system. For sensations being states of mind, their occurrence is not possible at any point or in any portion of space, where the mind is not present. But sensations occur in all parts of the body by means of nerves of sensation, and to a great extent, simultaneously. The mind, therefore, is omnipresent throughout the body, and has an extension of its substance, equal to that of the ceral and nevous systems.

§ 341. Considered as a subject of ideas, the mind is restricted to the brain; and while sensations occur in the hands and feet, ideas never occur there, nor anywhere else out of the brain. All thinking is done within the limits of the brain; and not only so; as the sensation power depends on the nerves, and cannot be duly exercised if the nerves are essentially impaired or destroyed; the thinking power depends on the brain, and cannot be duly exercised if that organ is essentially impaired or destroyed. Sensations, therefore, are conditioned on nerves of sensation, and thoughts on the brain. Nerves of sensation are instrumental causes which concur with the mind in producing sensations; and the brain is an instrumental cause, which concurs with the mind in producing both sensations and ideas. With the destruction of the brain, the sensation-producing power of the nerves is destroyed; and with the derangement of the brain, the sensation-producing power of the nerves is deranged. The same is true in regard to all the powers of thought. Hence a deranged condition of the brain produces derangement of the intellectual powers; and mental derangement admits of being relieved, by correcting the cerebral derangement on which it depends.

It used to be supposed by philosophers, that the mind was capable of going out of the body in thought, and that in thinking of external and remote objects, the mind exercised an omnipresence, so far as those objects were concerned; that in thinking of the moon, for example, the mind went to the moon; that in thinking of the sun, it went to the sun; and so of the stars, and all other external objects. The same idea appears also to prevail amid the mysticism of some of the modern German philosophers. But what is the fact? Does the mind go out of the body in thinking of external objects? Or is that which thinks entirely and exclusively within the brain? A thought is a state or action of the mind. Wherever that state or action is, there the mind is. When I think of the sun, is my thinking at the sun? Is there any action of my mind at the sun? Or is the whole action of thinking within the brain? When I think of a distance of 95,000000 of miles, does my mind perform any action along a line of 95,000,000 of miles? Not at all. The action of the mind in thinking of 95,000,000 of miles is all performed within the room in which I am sitting, and within a small portion of this room. On a careful observation it will appear