was water, and slime, and mud, and the waste, without either man or plants, gave resting-place to enormous beasts, like lions and elephants, and river horses, while the water was tenanted by lizards, the size of a whale, sixty or seventy feet long, and by others with huge eyes, having shields of solid bone to protect them, and glaring from a neck ten feet in length, and the air was darkened by flying reptiles, covered with scales, opening the jaws of the crocodile, and expanded wings, armed at the tips with the claws of the leopard.

No less strange, and yet no less proceeding from induction, are the discoveries made respecting the former state of the earth; the manner in which these animals, whether of known or unknown tribes, occupied it; and the period when, or, at least, the way, in which they ceased to exist.

Professor Buckland has demonstrated the identity with the hyænas, of the animal's habits that cracked the bones which filled some of the caves, in order to come at the marrow; but he has also satisfac torily shown that it inhabited the neighbourhood, and must have been suddenly exterminated by drowning. His researches have been conducted by experiments, with living animals, as well as by observation upon the fossil remains.

Ibid, p. 45.

The existence of a God demonstrated in the works of the Creation.

We have no experience directly of that great Being's existence in whom we believe as our Creator; nor have we the testimony of any man relating such experience of his own. But so, neither we, nor any witnesses in any age, have ever seen those works of that being, the lost animals that once peopled the earth; and yet the lights of inductive science have conducted us to a full knowledge of their nature, as well as a perfect belief in their existence. Without any evidence from our senses, or from the testimony of eye-witnesses, we believe in the existence and qualities of those animals, because we infer by the induction of facts that they once lived, and were endowed with a certain nature. This is called a doctrine of inductive philosophy. Is it less a doctrine of the same philosophy, that the eye could not have been made without a knowledge of optics, and as it could not make itself, and as no human artist, though possessed of the knowledge, has the skill and power to fashion it by his handy work, that there must exist some Being of knowledge, skill, and power, superior to our own, and sufficient to create it ?

Ibid, p. 51.

Of the independent Existence of Mind.

The evidence for the existence of mind, is to the full as complete as that upon which we believe in the existence of matter. Indeed

it is more certain and more irrefragable. The consciousness of existence, the perpetual sense that we are thinking, and that we are performing the operation quite independently of all material objects, proves to us the existence of a Being different from our bodies, with a degree of evidence higher than any we can have for the existence of those bodies themselves, or of any other part of the material world.

It is certain,-proved, indeed, to demonstration,-that many of the perceptions of matter which we derive through the senses are deceitful and seem to indicate that which has no reality at all. Some inferences which we draw respecting it are confounded with direct sensation or perception; for example, the idea of motion; other ideas, as those of hardness and solidity, are equally the result of reasoning, and often mislead. Thus we never doubt, on the testimony of our senses, that the parts of matter touch-that different bodies come in contact with one another, and with our organs of sense; and yet nothing is more certain, than that there is some small distance between the bodies which we think we perceive to touch. Indeed it is barely possible that all the sensations and perceptions which we have of the material world, may be only ideas in our minds it is fairly possible, therefore, that matter should have no existence. But that mind,-that the sensient principle, that the thing, or the being which we call "1," and "We," and which thinks, feels, reasons,—should have no existence, is a contradiction in terms. Of the two existences, then, that of mind as independent of matter, is more certain than that of matter apart from mind.

Ibid, p. 57.

Influence of Habit on the Mind of the Orator.

The influence of habit upon the exercise of all our faculties, is valuable beyond expression. It is, indeed, the great means of our improvement, both intellectual and moral, and it furnishes us with a chief, almost the only, power we possess of making the different faculties of the mind obedient to the will.

Whoever has observed the extraordinary feats performed by calculators, orators, rhymers, musicians, nay, by artists of all descriptions, can want no further proof of the power that man derives from the contrivances by which habits are formed in all mental exertion. The performances of the Italian Improvisatori, or makers of poetry off hand, upon any presented subject, and in almost any kind of stanza, are generally cited as the most surprising efforts of this kind. But the power of extempore speaking is not less singular, though more frequently displayed, at least in this country.

A practical orator will declaim in measured and in various periods will weave his discourse into one texture-form parenthesis within parenthesis-excite the passions, or move to laughter— take a turn in his discourse from an accidental interruption, making it a topic of his rhetoric for five minutes to come, and pursuing in

like manner the new illustration to which it gives rise-mould his diction with a view to obtain or shun an epigrammatic point, or an alliteration, or a discord; and all this with so much assured reliance on his own powers, and with such perfect ease to himself, that he can plan the next sentence while he is pronouncing off-hand the one he is engaged with, adapting each to the others, and still look forward to the topic which is to follow and fit in the close of the one he is handling to be its introducer; nor shall any auditor be able to discover the least difference between all this and the portion of his speech which he has got by heart, or tell the transition from the one to the other.

Ibid, p. 46.

Wonderful Capacity of the Mind of Man.

View the intellectual world as a whole, and surely it is impossible to contemplate without amazement, the extraordinary spectacle which the mind of man displays, and the immense progress which it has been able to make in consequence of its structure, its capacity, and its propensities, such as we have just been describing them.

If the brightness of the heavenly bodies, the prodigious velocity of their motions, their vast distances and mighty bulk, fill the imagination with awe, there is the same wonders excited by the brilliancy of the intellectual powers-the inconceivable swiftness of thought-the boundless range which our fancy can take-the vast objects which our reason can embrace.

That we should be able to resolve the elements into their mere simple constituents-to analyze the subtle light which fills all space -to penetrate from that remote particle of the universe, of which we occupy a speck, into regions infinitely remote-ascertain the weight of bodies at the surface of the most distant worlds-investigate the laws that govern their motions, or mould their forms—and calculate to a second of time the periods of their re-appearance during the revolution of centuries,-all this is in the last degree amazing, and affords much more food for the admiration than any of the phenomena of the material creation.

Then what shall we say of that incredible power of generalization which has enabled some even to anticipate by ages the discovery of truths the furthest removed above ordinary comprehension, and the most savouring of improbability and fiction not merely a Clairant conjecturing the existence of a seventh planet, and the position of its orbit, but a Newton learnedly and sagaciously inferring, from the refraction of light, the inflammable quality of the diamond, the composition of apparently the simplest of the ele ments, and the opposite nature of the two ingredients unknown for a century after, of which it is composed. Yet there is something more marvellous still in the processes of thought, by which such prodigies have been performed, and in the force of the mind itself, when it acts wholly without external aid, borrowing nothing whatever from matter, and relying on its own powers alone.

The most abstruse investigations of the mathematician are conducted without any regard to sensible objects; and the helps he derives in his reasonings from material things at all, are absolutely insignificant, compared with the portion of his work which is altogether of an abstract kind. The aid of figures and letters being only to facilitate and abridge his labour, and not at all essential to his progress. Nay, strictly speaking, there are no truths in the range of the pure mathematics which might not, by possibility, have been discovered, and sytematized by one deprived of sight and touch, or immured in a dark chamber, without the use of a single material object.

The instrument of Newton's most sublime speculation, the calculus which he invented, and the astonishing systems reared by its means, which have given immortality to the names of Eulen, Lagrange, Laplace, are the creatures of pure abstract thought, and all might, by possibility, have existed in their present magnificence and splendour, without owing to material agency any help whatever, except such as might be necessary for their recording and communication. These are surely the greatest of all the wonders of nature, when justly considered, although they speak to the understanding and not to the sense. Shall we, then, deny that the eye could be made without skill in optics, and yet admit that the mind could be fashioned and endowed without the most exquisite of all skill, or could proceed from any but an intellect of infinite power?

The Immateriality of the Mind.

Ibid, p. 71.

We may first of all observe that if a particular combination of matter gives birth to what we call mind, this is an operation altogether peculiar and unexampled. We have no other instances of it; we know of no case in which the combination of certain elements produces something quite different, not only from each of the simple ingredients, but also different from the whole compound. We can, by mixing an acid and an alkali, form a third body, having the qualities of neither, and possessing qualities of its own different from the properties of each; but here the third body consists of the other two in combination. These are not two things, two different existences, the neutral salt composed of the acid and the alkali, and another thing different from that neutral salt, and engendered for the first time by that salt coming into existence. So when, by chiselling, "the marble softened into life grows warm, we have the marble new moulded, and endowed with the power of agreeably affecting our senses, our memory, and our fancy; but it is all the while the marble; there is the beautiful and expressive marble instead of the omorphous mass, and we have not, besides the marble, a new existence created by the form, which has been given to that stone. But the materialists have to maintain that, by matter being arranged in a particular way, there is produced both the organised body and something

different from it, and having not one of its properties-neither dimensions, nor weight, colours or form. They have to maintain that the chemist who mixed the aquafortis and potash, produced both nitre and something quite different from all the three, and which began to exist the instant the nitre was crystallized; and that the sculptor who fashioned the Apollo, not only made the marble into a human figure, but called into being something different from the marble and the statue, and which exists at the same time with both and without one property of either. If, therefore, their theory is true, it must be admitted to rest upon nothing which experience has ever taught us: it supposes operations to be performed and relations to exist of which we see nothing that bears the least resemblance in any thing we know.

But 2dly, the doctrine of the materialists in every form which it assumes is contradicted by the most plain and certain deductions of experience. The evidence which we have of the existence of mind is complete in itself, and wholly independent of the qualities or the existence of matter. It is not only as strong and conclusive as the evidence which makes us believe in the existence of matter, but more strong and more conclusive; the steps to the demonstration are fewer, the truth to which they conduct the reason is less remote from the axiom-the intuitive or self-evident position whence the demonstration springs. We believe that matter exists, because it makes a certain impression upon our senses, that is, because it produces a certain change, or a certain effect; and we argue, and argue justly, that this effect must have a cause, though the proof is by no means so clear that this cause is something external to ourselves. But we know of the existence of mind by our consciousness of, or reflection on what passes within us, and our own existence as sentient and thinking beings, implies the existence of mind, which has sense and thought.

To know, therefore, that we are, and that we think, implies a knowledge of the soul's existence. But this knowledge is altogether independent of matter, and the subject of it bears no resemblance whatever to matter, in any one of its qualities, or habits, or modes of action. Nay, we only know the existence of matter through the operations of mind; and were we in doubt of the existence of either, it would be far more reasonable to doubt that matter exists than that mind exists.

That all around us should only be the creatures of our fancy, no one can affirm to be possible. But that our mind-that which remembers-compares-imagines-in a word, that which thinksthat of the existence of which we are perpetually conscious-that which cannot but exist, if we exist that which can make its operations the subjects of its own thoughts: that this should have no existence, is both impossible, and, indeed, a contradiction in terms. We have, therefore, evidence of the shortest kind-induction of facts the most precise and unerring-to justify the conclusion that the mind exists, and is different from, and independent of matter altogether.

Ibid, p. 107.