be given to any other matter but that which is built up in compounds of three and four substances united These facts, I think, ought to mark distinctly the separation between the spirit of electricity and that of life.

in one.

There is another circumstance in connection with the spirit of life which is very remarkable, as shewing that this spirit is one sui generis. I would allude now to the apparently latent state in which the spirit of life is retained in the seeds of vegetables, whose delicate structures rapidly perish when this spirit is removed. A bulbous root taken from the hand of an Egyptian mummy, where it had been retained above two thousand years, on being planted in the earth grew rapidly.* And the celebrated mummy wheat, some of which I have now before me, having been reared from seed taken from an Egyptian mummy, must have been even older than this. There are seeds that have been dug up from depths of three hundred and sixty feet, that give the greatest reason to believe they have remained there since the Deluge, and which, when placed in favourable circumstances, began to vegetate.+ Bakewell states that in examining the remains of one of the large extinct herbivorous animals, from the peat bogs of America, some of the seeds, still retaining their shape and character, were found in part of the stomach of

* Journal of Roy. Inst. No. I.
Jesse's Gleanings in Nat. Hist.
Elements of Geology.

the animal, so as to give the assurance that they were alive; and that, moreover, they were the same kind of seeds as those of the plants growing upon the surface of the ground. This animal was destroyed by the Deluge, so that these seeds must have retained their vitality above four thousand years. It is the union of this spirit for so long a period of time with the corruptible and delicate material, the union of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen, as we see them joined to form vegetable structure of the seed, without that structure yielding to decomposition, which it would more readily do than any others when the vital spirit is removed from it, that excites our astonishment that a spirit so delicate should be so long retained. Yet its specific and real presence cannot be denied, as, at the expiration of these long periods of time, if placed in a position favourable to germination, it proceeds to build up the ternary structures of vegetable bodies, which the spirit of electricity cannot accomplish.

From these and other facts it is imposible to argue that all immateriality is identical in kind, although its several sorts have such a mutual dependence upon, and connexion with, one another, as to make their separate existences, their exact number, and their relative power, questions of great intricacy.

CHAPTER VII.

THE SPIRIT OF LIFE AND THE PHENOMENA DEPENDING UPON ITS UNION WITH THE SPIRITS OF HEAT AND ELECTRICITY IN LIVING BODIES GENERALLY, AND WITH THE HIGHER SPIRITS IN MAN MORE PARTICULARLY.

I HAVE been speaking, in the last two chapters, amongst other points, of the difference that is to be observed in the unions and combinations of material bodies which have been exclusively constructed and adapted for the display of the higher spiritual substances, causing the phenomena of life and mind. It is necessary, however that a more extended notice should be taken of the phenomena resulting from these elaborate unions. For as we have seen the three spirits in operation subordinately to each other, in the building up of the vegetable and animal structures, and this subordinate and concurrent action has been marked with an apparent blending of power that made all necessary to produce the effect; so, in the introduction of yet higher spirits, is the operation of those spirits greatly subject to the organization through which they are manifested.

In animal life, ideas and thoughts, the result of mixed sensations, or of a more varicd display of the abstract power of sensation, are superadded by means

of a cerebral apparatus to simple sensation which alone takes place in vegetable life. So that the distinction between the sensation of vegetable life and that which forms the basis of the mental operations of animals is apparently one of degree. And the slow and gradual increase of mental power we see always accompanying a corresponding advancement and development of the material organic instrument, will hereafter be referred to as evidence to prove that mind, as we hold it to be the display of phenomena in connexion with the organic structure of the brain, is not caused by a spirit distinct from that which is the cause of life, but is only a graduated mode of action, resulting from the application of the spirit of life to created cerebral matter after that matter has been first brought together by the same spirit in the quaternary union of the cerebral globules. This process, though of a higher order, on account of the higher spirit embarked, is allied to those phenomena I have endeavoured to show are caused by the action of the spirits of heat and electricity upon created inorganic matter that has first been united by the aid of these spirits in the original creation.

I shall not hesitate, in conformity with the plan I have pursued in this work, to draw my deductions, in endeavouring to unfold so difficult a subject, not merely from the writings of metaphysical philosophy nor from physiology only, but also from revelation. For it cannot be any longer concealed that great errors, together with the most irreconcileable inferences, have been drawn from the presumed idea that the phenomena of

life and mind are attributable to the presence of the soul; or, as I designate that immaterial substance or existence in man, the immortal spirit of man.

In taking this course, I have the opportunity afforded me of dealing with the subject on a more extended scale, of placing it in union with that knowledge which is above reason, and so of examining the subject by the comparison of facts drawn from three very different

sources.

Laws of the Spirit of Life in its Union with Matter.

Mental philosophy has had its theory of animal spirits, the doctrine first propounded by Descartes, and subsequently adopted by the school of Locke. It has had its "animists," or those who considered the soul to be the fundamental cause of life, a doctrine put forth by Stahl*, and sustained with much argument and fierce discussion by his followers. It has had its iatro-mathematicians, Borelli† and Perrault, who sought to show that the laws of life were analogous to, or rather the same as, those manifested in inorganic bodies. It has had its theory of vibrations suggested by Sir Isaac Newton, and carried out in the writings of many able philosophers. It has had its phrenologists, its material and immaterial advocates. But it is not my intention to discuss these and many other theories, or to attempt to controvert them by any direct arguments

*Theoria Medica Vera, printed in 1708.

† De Motu Animalium, 4to., reprinted in 1686 at Leyden.