autem, qualecunque tandem sit, id ipsum est, quod Numinis aut Dei voce significatur.-H. Grotius De Ver. Rel. Chris.

"Every thing," says Locke, "that has a beginning must have a cause,—it is a true principle of reason, or a proposition certainly true; which we come to know by contemplating our ideas, and perceiving that the idea of beginning to be is necessarily connected with the idea of some operation, and the idea of operation, with the idea of something operating, which we call a cause; and so the beginning to be, is perceived to agree with the idea of a cause, as is expressed in the proposition; and thus it comes to be a certain proposition; and so may be called a principle of reason, as every true proposition is ́to him that perceives the certainty of it."—Locke's first Letter to the Bishop of Worcester.

From these passages we can easily suppose how the great Locke would have answered the doctrines of modern sceptics respecting matter, and also their notions of the organization of matter as the cause of life. But the dogmas of M. Bichat, Sir T. C. Morgan, and Mr. Lawrence, have lately been very ably exposed.

"Of these three gentlemen," say the Edinburgh Monthly Reviewers,* " M. Bichat is the only one who has intelligibly communicated his notions upon the subjeet. If Mr. Lawrence understands the doctrine, he has been very unhappy in his reasonings upon it. But as for Sir T. C. Morgan, it will be quite plain to any one who will be so bold as to examine his writings, that he has adopted the doctrine without understanding it in any tolerable degree."

* Number 13;-Article: Remarks on Scepticism, by Rennell.

"After confounding life and organization," continue the Reviewers, "these gentlemen very naturally proceed to confound matter and mind, body and soul. Mr. Lawrence very plainly declares himself satisfied that the brain is not merely the instrument by which the mind carries on its operations, but that it is of itself capable of thought; and is, in fact, that which is called mind or soul. To this ridiculous conclusion they have arrived from mere confusion of terms and definitions, and from totally neglecting to consider those distinctions between mind and matter, with which every ordinary man is familiar."

"Mr. Rennell first exposes the mistakes on the subject of life into which M. Bichat has fallen. M. Bichat does not admit of any such thing as intellectual life. He has described life as of two kinds, organic and animal. Organic life is that which, he says, is common to animals and vegetables; and the passions, he says, are among the functions of organic life. After quoting the passage in which those opinions are expressed, Mr. Rennell says:*-— Thus, then, according to M. Bichat, a cabbage and a man, having the functions of organic life in common, and the passions being among those functions, it follows, that jealousy, anger, revenge, and love, are the common affections of the man and the cabbage. It will be seen, at a glance, that the fallacy consists in omitting to distinguish those passions, such jealousy, anger, &c. which have their origin and gratification entirely in the mind, from those of sensuality, &c. which require the instrumentality of outward organs.'-"In another place," say the Edinburgh Monthly

as

*Remarks on Scepticism, &c. page 58.

Reviewers, "M. Bichat attempts to shew, that the passions are the result of our material organization, and that, therefore, they cannot be softened, nor their sphere contracted, because they are not under the influence of the will. And yet the very man who entertains this opinion, has asserted, that education may bestow such perfection on the judgment and reflection as to make them more powerful than the passions. Mr. Rennell having extracted both these passages, makes the following excellent observations :"-Edinburgh Monthly Review, No. 13.

The very exercise of this superior power of judg ́ment and reflection must ultimately, depend upon the will, as every man's self-experience will inform him: and if the impulse of the passions is thus subdued, it can only be by restraint, and where there is restraint, the sphere must be virtually contracted. As far, therefore, as the theory of M. Bichat is intelligible, it contains within itself a gross contradiction.'

To such paltry sophistry, and such palpable absurdities, are men of the highest professional eminence reduced, when they would annihilate that first, that noblest gift of God to man-THE IMMORTAL SOUL.'—Remarks on Scepticism, page 59.

The Creator, having fashioned man after his own image, and proclaimed the exalted purpose of his existence, hath wisely ordained that a state of total inactivity shall not be conducive to happiness, or even temporary satisfaction.

The true philosopher is persuaded that the body is mortal and that the soul is immortal;* that, taken ab

* Since the Author of our being has planted no wandering passion in us, no desire which has not its object, futurity is the proper object of the

stractedly, the one is pure, and the other is impure, that the earthly part of man is grovelling, that it is a machine, a mere engine to the reasoning part of him, interested in no one thing but appetite, present enjoyment, and self-preservation: and these it pursues as the greatest possible good!—while the other, qualified with memory and reflection, reason and judgment, affection, love, and hope, contemplates, with joy, the design and use of its present existence; it feels that this lower world is not to be its resting place; that it is destined for some nobler end. Man, therefore, is endowed with intellectual susceptibility, that he may mark the changes of his nature and the vicissitudes of human life; that he may dignify his manners with rectitude of conduct, and so fit the soul for future emancipation.

The principal or leading faculties of the soul are, perhaps, better displayed by some of the Christian Fathers,* than by either Aristotle or Cicero. In treating of the passions, Aristotle considered only the outward circumstances of them; and the remarks of Cicero, in discoursing of the power and nature of the mind, evidently shew, that with the passions he blended the appetites; for, in his Offices, wrath, lust, fear, and pleasure, have been indiscriminately called by him passions.

While the memory, the understanding, and the will,

passion so constantly exercised about it; and this restlessness in the present, this assigning ourselves over to farther stages of duration, this successive grasping at somewhat still to come, appears to me a kind of instinct or natural symptom, which the mind of man has of its own immortality.-Addison.

* Now when I turn my eyes inward, says St. Bernard, I discover three distinct faculties in my soul, whereby I am qualified to remember, and contemplate, and desire God-these are the memory, the understanding, and the will: et seq.-Vide chap. 1, St. Bernard's Book of the Soul.

are to be regarded as three distinct faculties, by which we remember, contemplate, and desire, we must be sensible, that these powers cannot be separated from one another, and that, consequently, there can be no absolute division in the soul itself; for it is the whole soul which exercises these faculties, the whole soul which wills or imagines, understands or remembers.

But writers on metaphysical science have not given very accurate definitions of the passions. Independently of their admission of the divine and separate principle of life, they are not more philosophic in their notions respecting the passions than those who have transcribed the doctrines of materialism as promulgated by writers of the French school of infidelity.

Excepting one or two, all the volumes with which we are acquainted do not, in this particular, seem to exemplify any order or principle. In the middle of the last century, the lecturer of oratory on the foundation of Erasmus Smith, Esq. in Dublin, seemed to enter fully into these ideas, when he endeavoured to unravel perplexities which modern metaphysicians had then thrown upon the performances of the ancients; and if I am not insufficiently read in the present subject, Dr. Lawson was the first of the modern Professors of Rhetoric, who endeavoured to systematize the passions for the use of students in oratory. But while this tribute of attention is offered to the memory of the Lecturer of Trinity College exclusively, we must not enter into the ideas implied in the apology of the Doctor at the conclusion of the tenth lecture, expressly intimating not only that rhetoricians had defined the passions imperfectly, but that moralists had fallen into similar negligences: that his ideas on the subject were completely new, and, therefore,

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