THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITS IN RELATION TO MATTER: SHEWING THE REAL EXISTENCE OF TWO VERY DISTINCT KINDS OF ENTITY WHICH UNITE TO FORM THE DIFFERENT BODIES THAT COMPOSE THE UNIVERSE, ORGANIC AND INORGANIC, BY WHICH THE PHENOMENA OF LIGHT, HEAT, ELECTRICITY, ARE RECONCILED AND EXPLAINED. BY C. M. BURNETT, M.D. "Remember that thou magnify His work which men behold. Every JOB, Xxxvi. 24, 25. LONDON: SAMUEL HIGHLEY, 32, FLEET STREET. 1850. "NEWTON was eminent above the philosophers of his time, in no one talent so much as in the power of mathematical dednction. When he had caught sight of the law of universal gravitation, he traced it to its consequences with a rapidity, a dexterity, a beauty of mathematical reasoning which no other person could approach; so that, on this account, if there had been no other, the establishment of the general law was possible to him alone. He still stands at the head of mathematicians as well as of philosophical discoverers. But it never appeared to him, as it may have appeared to some mathematicians who have employed themselves on his discoveries, that the general law was an ultimate and sufficient principle: that the point to which he had hung his chain of deductions was the highest point in the universe. LAGRANGE, a modern mathematician of transcendant genius, was in the habit of saying, in his aspirations after future fame, that NEWTON was fortunate in having had the system of the world for his problem, since its theory could be discovered once only. But NEWTON himself appears to have had no such persuasion that the problem he had solved was unique and final: he laboured to reduce gravity to some higher law, and the forces of other physical operations to an analogy with those of gravity, and declared that all these were but steps in our advance towards a first cause. Between us and this first cause-the source of the universe and its laws-we cannot doubt that there intervene many successive steps of possible discovery and generalization, not less wide and striking than the discovery of universal gravitation: but it is still more certain that no extent or success of physical investigation can carry us to any point which is not at an immeasurable distance from an adequate knowledge of Him." WHEWELL'S BRIDGEWATER TREATISE. PREFACE. I AM too well aware of the infirmities and shortcomings that are to be traced throughout the following pages, not to feel the utmost diffidence in submitting them to public opinion. A very cursory glance at them, however, will be sufficient to satisfy the reader that they have been put together not for the purpose of elucidating scientifically or systematically the different subjects here touched upon, but for the carrying out of the theory which is here for the first time propounded. The vast extent of scientific subjects embraced; the general, historical, biblical, and classical knowledge required to illustrate, as ought to have been done, many of the points that could not here be well passed over in silence, will, I trust, be a sufficient apology for |
