The discoveries already made in this branch of science are truly wonderful, and they proceed upon the strictest rules of induction. It is shown that animals formerly existed on the globe, being unknown varieties of species still known; but it also appears that species existed, and even genera, wholly unknown for the last five thousand years. These peopled the earth, as it was, not before the general deluge, but before some convulsion long prior to that event had overwhelmed the countries then dry, and raised others from the bottom of the sea. In these curious inquiries, we are conversant not merely with the world before the flood, but with a world which, before the flood, was covered with water, and which, in far earlier ages, had been the habitation of birds, and beasts, and reptiles. We are carried, as it were, several worlds back, and we reach a period when all 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 expanding wings, armed at the tips with the claws of the leopard.

ralization of many particular facts; a reasoning the collar-bone, from his having cloven hoofs. Lifrom things known to things unknown; an infer-mited experience having already shown such conence of a new or unknown relation from other re- nections as facts, more extended experience will aslations formerly observed and known. If, to take suredly one day enable us to comprehend the reason Dr. Paley's example, we pass over a common and of the connection. strike the foot against a stone, we do not stop to ask who placed it there; but if we find that our foot has struck on a watch, we at once conclude that some mechanic made it, and that some one dropt it on the ground. Why do we draw this inference? Because all our former experience had told us that such machinery is the result of human skill and labor, and that it nowhere grows wild about, or is found in the earth. When we see that a certain effect, namely, distinct vision, is performed by an achromatic instrument, the eye, why do we infer that some one must have made it? Because we nowhere and at no time have had any experience of any one thing fashioning itself, and indeed cannot form to ourselves any distinct idea of what such a process as self-creation means; and further, because when we ourselves would produce a similar result, we have recourse to like means. Again, when we perceive the adaptation of natural objects and operations to a perceived end, and from thence infer design in the maker of these objects and superintender of these operations, why do we draw this conclusion? Because we know by experience that if we ourselves desired to accomplish a similar purpose, we should do so by the like adaptation; we know by experience that this is design in us, and that our proceedings are the result of such design; we know that if some of our works were seen by others, who neither were aware of our having made them, nor of the intention with which we made them, they would be right should they, from seeing and examining them, both infer that we had made them, and conjecture why we had made them. The same reasoning, by the help of experience, from what we know to what we cannot know, is manifestly the foundation of the inference, that the members of the body were fashioned for certain uses by a maker acquainted with their operations, and willing that those uses should be served.

Let us consider a branch of science which, if not wholly of modern introduction, has received of late years such vast additions that it may really be said to have its rise in our own times-I allude to the sublime speculations in Osteology prosecuted by Cuvier, Buckland, and others, in its connection with Zoological and Geological researches.

A comparative anatomist, of profound learning and marvellous sagacity, has presented to him what to common eyes would seem a piece of half-decayed bone, found in a wild, in a forest, or in a cave. By accurately examining its shape, particularly the form of its extremity or extremities (if both ends happen to be entire,) by close inspection of the texture of its surface, and by admeasurement of its proportions, he can with certainty discover the general form of the animal to which it belonged, its size as well as its shape, the economy of its viscera, and its general habits. Sometimes the investigation in such cases proceeds upon chains of reasoning where all the links are seen and understood; where the connection of the parts found, with other parts and with habitudes, is perceived, and the reason understood as that the animal had a trunk, because the neck was short compared with its height; or that it ruminated, because its teeth were imperfect for complete mastication. But, frequently, the inquiry is as certain in its results, although some links of the chain are concealed from our view, and the conclusion wears a more empirical aspect-as, gathering that the animal ruminated, from observing the print of a cloven hoof, or that he had horns, from his wanting certain teeth, or that he wanted

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 those 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 hyena's of the animal's habits that cracked the bones which fill some of the caves, in order to come at the marrow; but he has also satisfactorily shown that it inhabited the neighborhood, 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.

That this branch of scientific inquiry is singularly attractive all will allow. Nor will any one dispute that its cultivation demands great knowledge and skill. But this is not our chief purpose in referring to it. There can be as little doubt that the investigation, in the strictest sense of the term, forms a branch of physical science, and that this

The researches both of Cuvier and Buckland, far from impugning the testimony to the great fact of a deluge borne by the Mosaic writings, rather fortify it; and bring additional proofs of the fallacy which, for some time, had led philosophers to ascribe a very high antiquity to the world we now live in.

The extraordinary sagacity of Cuvier is, perhaps, in no instance more shown, nor the singular nature of the science better illustrated, than in the correction which it enabled him to give the speculation of President Jefferson upon the Megalonyxan animal which the President, from the size of a bone discovered, supposed to have existed, four times the size of an ox, and with the form and habits of the lion. Cuvier has irrefragably shown, by an acute and learned induction, that the animal was a sloth, living entirely upon vegetable food, but of enormous size, like a rhinoceros, and whose paws could tear up huge trees.

branch sprang legitimately from the grand root of lectual system is equally fruitful in proofs of an inthe whole-induction; in a word, that the process telligent cause, although these have occupied little of reasoning employed to investigate-the kind of of the philosopher's attention, and may, indeed, be evidence used to demonstrate its truths, is the mo- said never to have found a place among the specudern analysis or induction taught by Bacon and lations of the Natural Theologian. Nothing is practised by Newton. Now wherein, with refer- more remarkable than the care with which all the ence to its nature and foundations, does it vary from writers upon this subject, at least among the mothe inquiries and illustrations of Natural Theolo- derns, have confined themselves to the proofs afgy? When from examining a few bones, or it may forded by the visible and sensible works of nature, be a single fragment of a bone, we infer that, in the while the evidence furnished by the mind and its wilds where we found it, there lived and ranged, operations has been wholly neglected.* The cele some thousands of years ago, an animal wholly dif- brated book of Ray on the Wonders of the Creaferent from any we ever saw, and from any of tion seems to assume that the human soul has no which any account, any tradition, written or oral, separate existence-that it forms no part of the crehas reached us, nay, from any that ever was seen ated system. Derham has written upon Astro-theby any person, of whose existence we ever heard, ology and Physico-theology as if the heavens alone we assuredly are led to this remote conclusion, by proclaimed the glory of God, and the earth only a strict and rigorous process of reasoning; but, as showed forth his handiwork; for his only mention certainly, we come through that process to the of intellectual nature is in the single chapter of the knowledge and belief of things unseen, both of us Physico-theology on the soul, in which he is content and of all men-things respecting which we have with two observations: one, on the variety of man's not, and cannot have, a single particle of evidence, inclinations, and another, on his inventive powers either by sense or by testimony. Yet we harbor no-giving nothing which precisely proves design. doubt of the fact; we go farther, and not only im- Dr. Paley, whose work is chiefly taken from the plicitly believe the existence of this creature, for writings of Derham, deriving from them its whole which we are forced to invent a name, but clothe it plan and much of its substance, but clothing the with attributes, till, reasoning step by step, we come harsher statement of his original in an attractive at so accurate a notion of its form and habits, that and popular style,+ had so little of scientific habits, we can represent the one, and describe the other, so moderate a power of generalizing, that he never with unerring accuracy; picturing to ourselves how once mentions the mind, or any of the intellectual it looked, what it fed on, and how it continued its phenomena, nor ever appears to consider them as kind. forming a portion of the works or operations of naNow, the question is this: What perceivable dif- ture. Thus, all these authors view the revolutions ference is there between the kind of investigations of the heavenly bodies, the structure of animals, we have just been considering, and those of Natu- the organization of plants, and the various operaral Theology-except, indeed, that the latter are far tions of the material world which we see carried more sublime in themselves, and incomparably on around us, as indicating the existence of design, more interesting to us? Where is the logical pre- and leading to a knowledge of the Creator. But cision of the arrangement, which would draw a they pass over in silence, unaccountably enough, broad line of demarcation between the two specu- by far the most singular work of divine wisdom lations, giving to the one the name and the rank of and power-the mind itself. Is there any reason a science, and refusing it to the other, and affirm-whatever to draw this line; to narrow within these ing that the one rested upon induction, but not the circles the field of Natural Theology; to draw other? We have, it is true, no experience directly from the constitution and habits of matter alone of that Great Being's existence in whom we believe the proof that one Intelligent Cause formed and as our Creator; nor have we the testimony of any supports the universe? Ought we not rather to man relating such experience of his own. But so, consider the phenomena of the mind as more pecuneither we nor any witnesses in any age, have liarly adapted to help this inquiry, and as bearing ever seen those works of that Being, the lost ani- a nearer relation to the Great Intelligence which mals that once peopled the earth; and yet the lights created and which maintains the system? 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 handiwork, that there must exist some being of knowledge, skill, and power, superior to our own, and sufficient to create it?

SECTION III.

COMPARISON OF THE PSYCHOLOGICAL BRANCH OF NA

TURAL THEOLOGY WITH PSYCHOLOGY.

HITHERTO, Our argument has rested upon a comparison of the truths of Natural Theology with those of Physical Science. But the evidences of design presented by the universe are not merely those which the material world affords; the intel

There cannot be a doubt that this extraordinary omission had its origin in the doubts which men are prone to entertain of the mind's existence independent of matter. The eminent persons above named‡ were not materialists, that is to say, if you had asked them the question, they would have answered in the negative; they would have gone farther, and asserted their belief in the separate existence of the * Note II.

+ This observation in nowise diminishes the peculiar merit of the style, and also of the homely. but close and logical, manner in which the argu ment is put; nor does it deny the praise of bringing down the facts of former writers, and adapting them to the improved state of physical science-a merit the more remarkable, that Paley wrote his Natural Theology at the close of his life.

Some have thought, unjustly, that the language of Paley rather savors of materialism; but it may be doubted whether he was fully impressed with the evidence of mental existence. His limited and unexercised powers of abstract discussion, and the natural predilection for what he handled so well-a practical argument level to all comprehensionsappear not to have given him any taste for metaphysical speculations.

soul independent of the body. But they never felt | sciousness, which enables us to arrest and examine this as strongly as they were persuaded of the na- our own thoughts: it is even the subject of experitural world's existence. Their habits of thinking ment, by the power which we have, through the efled them to consider matter as the only certain ex-forts of abstraction and attention, of turning those istence as that which composed the universe- thoughts into courses not natural to them, not sponas alone forming the subject of our contemplations taneous, and watching the results.* Now the phe-as furnishing the only materials for our inquiries, nomena of mind, at the knowledge of which we arwhether respecting structure or habits and opera-rive by this inductive process, the only legitimate tions. They had no firm, definite, abiding, precise intellectual philosophy, afford as decisive proofs of idea of any other existence respecting which they design as do the phenomena of matter, and they furcould reason and speculate. They saw and they nish those proofs by the strict method of induction. felt external objects; they could examine the lenses In other words, we study the nature and operations of the eye, the valves of the veins and arteries, the of the mind, and gather from them evidences of deligaments and the sockets of the joints, the bones sign, by one and the same species of reasoning, the and the drum of the ear; but though they now and induction of facts. A few illustrations of these pothen made mention of the mind, and, when forced sitions may be useful, because this branch of the scito the point, would acknowledge a belief in it, they ence has, as we have seen, been unaccountably nenever were fully and intimately persuaded of its se- glected by philosophers and theologians. parate existence. They thought of it and of matter very differently; they gave its structure, and its habits, and its operations, no place in their inquiries; their contemplations never rested upon it with any steadiness, and, indeed, scarcely ever even glanced upon it at all. That this is a very great omission, proceeding, if not upon mere carelessness, upon a grievous fallacy, there can be no doubt whatever.

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 certainproved, 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 still 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 own minds; it is barely possible, therefore, that matter should have no existence. But that mind-that the sentient principle-that the thing or the being 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. In a subsequent branch of this discourse,* we shall have occasion to treat again of this question, when the constitution of the soul with reference to its future existence becomes the subject of discussion. At present we have only to keep steadily in view the undoubted fact, that mind is quite as much an integral part of the universe as

matter.

It follows that the constitution and functions of the mind are as much the subjects of inductive reasoning and investigation, as the structure and actions of matter. The mind equally with matter is the proper subject of observation, by means of con

Sec. V. and Note IV..

First. The structure of the mind, in every way in which we can regard it, affords evidences of the most skilful contrivance. All that adapts it so admirably to the operations which it performs, all its faculties, are plainly means working to an end.Among the most remarkable of these is the power of reasoning, or first comparing ideas and drawing conclusions from the comparison, and then comparing together those conclusions or judgments. In this process, the great instrument is attention, as indeed it is the most important of all the mental faculties. It is the power by which the mind fixes itself upon a subject, and its operations are facilitated by many contrivances of nature, without which the effort would be painful, if not impossible-voluntary attention being the most difficult of all acts of the understanding.

Observe, then, in the second place, the helps which are provided for the exertion of this faculty. Curiosity, or the thirst of knowledge, is one of the chief of these. This desire renders any new idea the source of attraction, and makes the mind almost involuntarily, and with gratification rather than pain, bend and apply itself to whatever has the quality of novelty to rouse it. But association gives additional facilities of the same kind, and makes us attend with satisfaction to ideas which formerly were present and familiar, and the revival of which gives pleasure oftentimes as sensible as that of novelty, though of an opposite kind. Then, again, habit, in this, as in all other operations of our faculties, has the most powerful influence, and enables us to undergo intellectual labor with ease and comfort.

Thirdly. Consider the phenomena of memory.— This important faculty, without which no intellectual progress whatever could be made, is singularly adapted to its uses. tion is in proportion to the attention which has been The tenacity of our recollecexercised upon the several objects of contemplation at the time they were submitted to the mind.— Hence it follows, that by exerting a more vigorous attention, by detaining ideas for some time under our view, as it were, while they pass through the mind or before it, we cause them to make a deeper impression upon the memory, and are thus enabled to recollect those things the longest which we most desire to keep in mind. Hence, too, whatever facilitates attention, whatever excites it, as we sometimes say, helps the memory; so that we recollect those things the longest which were most striking at the time. But those things are, generally speaking, most striking, and most excite the attention, which are in themselves most important. In proportion, therefore, as any thing is most useful, or for

* An instance will occur in the Fifth Section of this Part, in which experiments upon the course of our thoughts in sleep are described.

any reason most desirable to be remembered, it is most easily stored up in our memory.

We may observe, however, in the fourth place, that readiness of memory is almost as useful as tenacity-quickness of bringing out as power of retention. Habit enables us to tax our recollection with surprising facility and certainty; as any one must be aware who has remarked the extraordinary feats performed by boys trained to learn things by heart, and especially to recollect numbers in calculating. From the same force of habit we derive the important power of forming artificial or conventional associations between ideas-of tacking, as it were, one to the other, in order to have them more under our control; and hence the relation between arbitrary signs and the things signified, and the whole use of language, whether ordinary or algebraical: hence, too, the formation of what is called artificial memory, and of all the other helps to recollection. But a help is provided for quickness of memory, independent of any habit or training, in what may be termed the natural association of ideas, whereby one thing suggests another from various relations of likeness, contrast, contiguity, and so forth. The same association of ideas is of constant use in the exercise of the inventive faculty, which mainly depends upon it, and which is the great instrument not only in works of imagination, but in conducting all processes of original investigation by pure reasoning.

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.

Sixth. The feelings and the passions with which we are moved or agitated are devised for purposes apparent enough, and to effect which their adaptation is undeniable. That of love tends to the continuance of the species; the affections, to the rearing of the young; and the former are fitted to the difference of sex, as the latter are to that of age. Gene rally there are feelings of sympathy excited by distress and by weakness, and these beget attachment towards their objects, and a disposition to relieve them or to support. Both individuals and societies at large gain by the effects thence arising of union and connection, and mutual help. So hope, of which the seeds are indigenous in all bosoms, and which springs up like certain plants in the soil as often as it is allowed to repose, encourages all our labors, and sustains us in every vicissitude of fortune, as well as under all the toils of our being. Fear, again, is the teacher of caution, prudence, circumspection, and preserves us from danger. Even anger, gene rally so painful, is not without its use; for it stimu lates to defence, and it oftentimes assuages the pain given to our more tender feelings by the harshness of ingratitude, or injustice, or treachery of those upon whom our claims were the strongest, and whose cruelty or whose baseness would enter like Fifthly. The effect of habit upon our whole in- steel into the soul, were no reaction excited to deadtellectual system deserves to be further considered, en and to protect it. Contempt, or even pity, is calthough we have already adverted to it. It is a law culated to exercise the same healing influence.⚫ of our nature that any exertion becomes more easy Then, to go no further, curiosity is implanted in all the more frequently it is repeated. This might have minds to a greater or a less degree; it is proporbeen otherwise; it might have been just the contra- tioned to the novelty of objects, and consequently to ry, so that each successive operation should have our ignorance, and its immediate effects are to fix been more difficult; and it is needless to dwell up- our attention, to stimulate our apprehensive powers, on the slowness of our progress, as well as the pain- by deepening the impressions of all ideas on our fulness of all our exertions, say, rather, the impos- minds, to give the memory a hold over them; to sibility of our making any advances in learning, make all intellectual exertion easy, and convert into which must have been the result of such an intellect- a pleasure the toil that would otherwise be a pain. ual conformation. But the influence of habit upon Can any thing be more perfectly contrived as an inthe exercise of all our faculties is valuable beyond strument of instruction, and an instrument precisely expression. It is indeed the great means of our im-adapted to the want of knowledge, by being more provement both intellectual and moral, and it fur-powerful in proportion to the ignorance in which we nishes us with the 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 exertions. The performances of the Italian Improvvisatori, or makers of poetry off-handed upon any presented subject, and in almost any kind of stanza, are generally cited as the most surprising efforts in this kind. But the power of extempore speaking is not less singular, though more frequently displayed, at least in this country. A practised 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 the topic of his rhetoric for five minutes to come, and pursuing in like manner the new illustrations to which it gives rise-mould his diction with a view to attain or to shun an epi-able that all this might have been differently argrammatic 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 shall even plan the next sentence while he is pronouncing off-hand the one he is engaged with, adapting each to the other, and shall 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 | iv. 44.

are? Hence it is the great means by which, above all in early infancy, we are taught every thing most necessary for our physical as well as moral existence. In riper years it smooths the way for further acquirements to most men; to some, in whom it is strongest, it opens the paths of science; but in all, without any exception, it prevails at the beginning of life so powerfully as to make them learn the faculties of their own bodies, and the general properties of those around them-an amount of knowledge which, for its extent and its practical usefulness, very far exceeds, though the most ignorant possess it, whatever additions the greatest philosophers are enabled to build upon it in the longest course of the most successful investigations.

Nor is it the curiosity natural to us all that alone tends to the acquirement of knowledge; the desire of communicating it is a strong propensity of our nature, and conduces to the same important end. There is a positive pleasure as well in teaching others what they knew not before, as in learning what we did not know ourselves; and it is undeni

ranged without a material alteration of our intellect

*“Atque illi (Crantor et Panatius) quidem etiam utiliter a natura dicebant permotiones istas animis nostris datas, metum cavendi causa; misericordiam egritudinemque clementiæ; ipsam iracundiam fortitudinis quasi cotem esse dicebant."-Acad. Quæst.

ual and moral constitution in other respects. The | dark chamber, without the use of a single material propensity might have been, like the perverted de- object. The instrument of Newton's most sublime sires of the miser, to retain what we know without speculations, the calculus which he invented, and communication, as it might have been made painful the astonishing systems reared by its means, which instead of pleasurable to acquire new ideas, by no-have given immortality to the names of Euler, Lavelty being rendered repulsive, and not agreeable. grange, Laplace, all are the creatures of pure abThe stagnation of our faculties, the suspension of stract thought, and all might, by possibility, have mental exertion, the obscuration of the intellectual existed in their present magnificence and splendor, world, would have followed as certainly as univer- without owing to material agency any help whatsal darkness would veil the universe on the extinc- ever, except such as might be necessary for their tion of the sun. 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?