powers, corresponding with that of the general organization, and according to the unique phenomena of mind and instinct. But, as we shall soon see, it is not even imagined that the soul, or

theme is one of the grandest that can occupy human thought,--no less than the Creation of the Universe." "We are also influenced by the abstract desire to place before our readers matter for their contemplation, which cannot fail at once to elevate, to gratify, and to enrich the mind."

Of La Place's nebular hypothesis, the Reviewer says,

"So far from admitting the atheistical tendency which the timid religionists have attributed to the nebular hypothesis, we consider it the grandest contribution which Science has yet made to Religion," &c.

The reader, therefore, will have no difficulty in understanding the "conventional" nature of certain phrases in the following remarks by the Reviewer.

"That the Creator formed man out of the dust of the earth, we have scriptural authority for believing, and we must confess our own predilection for the idea, that, at a period however remotely antecedent, the Creator endowed certain forms of inorganic matter with the PROPERTIES REQUISITE TO ENABLE THEM TO COMBINE, AT THE FITTING SEASON, INTO THE HUMAN ORGANISM, Over that which would lead us to regard the great-grandfather of our common progenitor as a chimpanzee or an orang-outang."

The "Vestiges of Creation" is thus quoted by the Reviewer,— We have seen powerful evidence that the construction of this globe and its associates, and, inferentially, that of all the other globes of space, was the result, not of any immediate or personal exertion of the Deity, but of Natural Laws which are expressions of his will. What is to hinder our supposing that the Organic Creation is also a result of Natural Laws which are, in like

manner, an expression of his will?" (Vestiges, &c.)-Upon

instinct, have any true existence, like the properties of life, in the elements of matter; but that their manifestations are mere physical results of certain changes which take place among the ele

the foregoing extract, which is a part of a more extended one of the same nature, the Reviewer remarks, that,

"The complete accordance of these views with those some time ago propounded by ourselves (vol. 5, p. 342), must be evident, we think, to our readers. To the objection which some timid religionists may urge against them, that they are inconsistent with the Mosaic Record, we simply reply with our Author, that we do not think it right to adduce that Record either in support of, or in objection to, any scientific hypothesis, based upon the phenomena of nature," &c.—Brit. and For. Med. Rev., pp. 155, 158, 167, 180.

The Reviewer assumes, of course, that all the misapprehensions and perversions of "the phenomena of nature" are paramount to any thing declared in the Mosaic Record.

There can be no better proof of the design to substitute physical agencies for a Creative Being, in the philosophy involved in the foregoing quotations, than the introduction of causes which are wholly superfluous; since no reason can be assigned for supposing that the Almighty did not create the original beings by a direct act, while, also, there is no part of organic nature that does not irresistibly enforce this conclusion. A single fact, predicated of physical laws, proves it; for all that is known of the affinities between inorganic substances is to result in inorganic compounds, and farther, also, that their chemical influences are destructive of life and of organization.

It will be readily seen that the first of the foregoing arguments is equally applicable to the formation of the systems of the Universe.- -(See Note at end of this Essay.)

ments after their organization. It is universally conceded, in respect to all things else which manifest a series of enduring phenomena, that the sequences are the results, at least, of properties impressed upon the various material objects, which are the immediate causes of the phenomena. But even this attribute is not allowed to the brain in its co-ordinate function of intellection, but all the unique manifestations of mind and of instinct are placed by the materialists upon the same physical ground as they interpret the common organic functions and their results. In other words, the phenomena of mind and of instinct are ascribed. to exactly the same physical changes in which the organic functions of the brain and of all other parts are supposed to consist.

Perhaps I should leave this part of my subject incomplete, did I not state that there is a section of this large school who start, in their philosophy of the spontaneous origin of living beings, with matter in an organic state. The eminent, and I may say able physiologist, Tiedemann, belongs to this section. He lays down their modification of the doctrine in the following manner, in his Physiology of Man."

"The most probable hypothesis is," says Tiedemann, "that the substance of organic bodies ex

isted primitively in water, as matter of a particular kind, and that it was there endowed with the plastic faculty; that is to say, with the power of acquiring, by degrees, different simple forms of living bodies, with the concurrence of the general influence of light, heat, and perhaps of electricity, and of then passing from the simple forms to others more complicated; varying in proportion to the modification occurring in the external influences, until the point when each species acquired duration by the power of reproduction."*

* The metamorphoses of insects, frogs, &c., and the slight variation of influences to which they are progressively liable in the varying exigencies of life, are assumed as a foundation for the hypothesis to which this note refers. But it proceeds upon a neglect of the established and immutable laws of organization, and a partial view of the manifestations of those laws as witnessed in different species of animals. The metamorphoses, &c., are as much the exact result of determinate laws, engrafted upon an original constitution of life, as the development of the human ovum, or of the seed of a plant, nor are they in any respect more fluctuating or less circumscribed. In all the cases the metamorphoses and other developments of structure, and modifications of life, take place in one uniform way, according to the species of animal or plant. All the special conditions, or potential whole, necessary to the progressive changes from the ovum through the larva and pupa to the fly, and in all analogous instances, are as perfect in the germ of the mutable tribes as in the ova of the highest order of animals, or in the seed of plants; nor can there be a departure from a precise and uniform succession of developments in any of

But whence came the organic matter? This question was anticipated by Tiedemann; for he says," Although we cannot here answer the question, whence came the water and the organic matter which it contained, yet this hypothesis is the one which accords best with the facts with which Geology has lately been enriched."

This difficulty evidently crowded itself upon the mind of our distinguished Philosopher, as he recurs to it again, and in nearly the same language. But as the statement is so varied as to show you how things are now-a-days rejected which man cannot imitate, or demonstrate by

the species, respectively, and, therefore, no transmutation of species, or even an introduction of varieties. In respect to the variable physical agencies required by animals subject to metamorphoses, according to their several stages, the principle is implanted in the ovum itself, and equally so as in that of man, by which his development is started by one kind of vital stimulus, and is farther conducted through fatal life by another kind, while other kinds obtain after independent life begins. It is a metamorphosis in all.

The same law of limitation applies equally to the speculations which are now going on among some amateur physiologists, and by which a spontaneity of being is inculcated upon the popular mind through the analogies in the organization of animals according to their respective ranks in the scale of animated existence; particularly the young of some species and the adults of other species next below, and through which it may be inferred that they have successively run into each other, according to the doctrine set forth in the text above.