of a being whom the author calls Nature, without Like all materialists, but far more grossly and either defining what that is, or how he arrived at a dogmatically than almost any other, the author beknowledge of its existence. He has also assumed an-gins by assuming that Matter exists, that we can other existence, that of matter, or the material world; and then he asserts, what is absolutely contrary to every day's experience, and to the first rudiments of science, that we know, and can know, nothing but what our senses tell us. It is a sufficient answer to ask, how we know any thing of mathematical truth? And in case a cavil should arise upon geometrical science (though it would be but a cavil) we shall speak only of analytical; and then it is certain that the whole science of numbers, from the rules of ele-bodies; for our bodies themselves give us the same mentary arithmetic up to the highest branches of the modern calculus, could by possibility have been discovered by a person who had never in his life been out of a dark room-who had never touched any body but his own; nay, whose limbs had all his life been so fixed, that he had never exercised even upon his own body the sense of touch: indeed, we might even go so far as to say, who had never heard a sound uttered; for the primitive ideas of number might by possibility have suggested themselves to his mind, and been made the grounds of all further calculations. What becomes now of all our knowledge depending on the senses? But we need not go to so extreme a case as the one just put; there would be an end of the position we are dealing with, if a person so circumstanced could have discovered any one analytical or common arithmetical truth. Enough, indeed, is known to every one, how moderately soever imbued with mathematical learning, to satisfy him how little the intimations received from the senses have, or can have, to do with the whole science of number and quantity. That those intimations of the senses are themselves not at all of a material nature, we shall presently see.

have no doubt whatever of this, and that any other existence is a thing to be proved. Now, what is this matter? Whence do we derive any knowledge of it? How do we assure ourselves of its existence? What evidence at all have we respecting either its being or its qualities? We feel, or taste, or smell something; that is, we have certain sensations, which make us conclude that something exists be yond ourselves. It will not do to say beyond our sensations. What we feel is something beyond, or out of, or external to, or other than and apart from ourselves; that is, from our minds. Our sensations give us the intimations of such existences. But what are our sensations? The feelings or thoughts of our minds. Then what we do is this: From certain ideas in our minds, produced no doubt by, and connected with our bodily senses, but independent of, and separate from them, we draw certain conclusions by reasoning, and those conclusions are in favor of the existence of something other than our sensations and our reasonings, and other than that which experiences the sensations and makes the reasonings-passive in the one case, active in the other. That something is what we call Mind. But plainly, whatever it is, we owe to it the knowledge that matter exists: for that knowledge is gained by means of a sensation or feeling, followed by a process of reasoning; it is gained by the mind having first suffered something, and then done something, and, therefore, to say there is no such thing as Maiter, would be a much less absurd inference than to say there is no such thing as Mind. The very act of inferring, as we do by reasoning, that the object After many discussions and much eloquence, in which affects our senses exists apart from ourselves, the course of which various agents are introduced is wholly incapable of giving us any knowledge of besides Nature, as Necessity, Relation, and so forth, the object's existence, without, at the same time, without definition of their qualities or proof of their giving us a knowledge of our own; that is, of the existence, we come to the great demonstration that Mind's existence. An external implies necessarily no soul, no mind, nothing separate from the body an internal; that there may be any thing beyond or and from matter, exists, or indeed can exist: for without, there must needs be some other thing bethis book is not content with skepticism; it rests not yond or without which it is said to exist; that there even satisfied with disproof: it affects to show the may be a body which we feel abiding separate from impossibility of the doctrines which it combats; and us, namely, our own body, one part of which gives while perpetually complaining of dogmas, it is per- us sensations through another part-there must be haps the most dogmatical work that was ever writ-a we, an us—that is, a mind. If, as the Systeme de ten. The sixth and seventh chapters, but the seventh la Nature often contends, we have a right to call especially, treat of this fundamental doctrine-the spirit, or soul, or mind, a mere negation of the quacorner-stone of the whole building. The argument lities of matter, surely this might just as well be reis, in fact, a mere vague and unintelligible combi-torted by saying, that matter is only a negation of nation of words, as when the author concludes by the qualities of mind. But, in truth, the materialsaying, The result of the whole is, that "the soul, ists cannot stir one step without the aid of that mind far from being any thing distinguishable from the whose existence they deny. body, is only the body itself regarded relatively to some of its functions, or to some of the manners of acting or of being, whereof it is capable as long as it enjoys life" (n'est que ce corps lui meme envisage relativement a quelqu'unes de ses fonctions ou a quelques façons d'etre et d'agir dont il est susceptible tant qu'il jouit de la vie.) Or when he describes those faculties which are vulgarly called intellectual, as modes or manners of being and of acting, which result from the organization of the body(les facultes que l'on nomme intellectuelles ne sont que des modes ou des façons d'etre et d'agir resultant de l'organization de notre corps.)-Part i. chap. viii.

But there is still more to be remarked throughout the Treatise, an inconceivable forgetfulness of the evidence on which each party in the controversy most relies, a constant assumption of the thing in question, and even an involuntary assumption of that very separate and spiritual existence which it is the author's object to disprove.

Then what are those qualities of matter they are always speaking about? What but the effects, or the power of causing those effects produced by matter upon the mind through the senses? A remarkable instance, and a very instructive one, of the impossibility of a materialist arguing legitimately, strictly, or consistently, is to be found in the pas sage of this book, where the argument is as it were summed up against the existence of mind: "La matiere seule peut agir, sur nos sens sans lesquels il nous est impossible que rien se fasse connoire de nous." Here the author, in order to deny the possibility of mind, or any thing else than matter having an existence, uses, in two lines, expressions six times over, all drawn from the assumption of a something existing separate from and independent of matter. Our-senses-which-us-known-by-us-all these are words absolutely without meaning if there is nothing but matter in existence; and these are expressions conveying the ideas of which this fundamental proposition wholly consists. But that the

author refers to Bishop Berkeley, as well as Mr. | in its whole and in each part separately; the comLocke, it might have been supposed that he had bination never produces any effect that is not strictnever been made aware of the controversy upon the ly of a material kind; the motions and the registraexistence of matter. Indeed, the manner in which tion of time resulting from them are all as purely he mentions the speculations of Berkeley, is quite mechanical as the form of each part, and each part sufficient to show his ignorance of the nature of the has in it every quality and incident in kind which question, and reminds us forcibly of the remark the whole possesses. The difference in the case of made by D'Alembert, that whoever had not at Mind is, that we have something wholly of a new times doubted the existence of matter, might be as- and peculiar kind, and in no respect resembling or sured he had not any genius for metaphysical in- belonging to the same class with any of the exerquiries. Would any one believe it possible, that an tions or operations of the material parts, the combiauthor who could dogmatically deny the possibility nation of which is alleged by the materialist to have of mind existing in any form apart from matter, given it birth. should be so little competent to discuss questions like this, as to speak in these terms of Berkeley? “Que disons nous d'un Berkeley qui s'efforce de nous prouver que tout dans ce monde n'est qu'une illusion chimerique; que l'univers entier n'existe que dans nous-memes, et dans notre imagination," &c. "Pour justifier des opinions si monstrueuses," &c.

The first part having laid the foundation by disproving the existence of Mind, the second part of the "Systeme" proceeds to raise upon it the conclusion that the Deity's existence is impossible. This part is much more declamatory than the former, though often displaying great powers of eloquence, and reminding us of the more striking parts of Rousseau's early writings, especially his paradoxes against knowledge, perhaps in a more choice style, and with coloring more subdued. But reasoning it contains absolutely none, with the exception of the fourth chapter, where Dr. S. Clarke's argument a priori is dissected and refuted-a task, unfortunatedone in an illegitimate manner. We cannot, however, fail to observe, that while the author proposes to go through the arguments of the various philosophers who have maintained the existence of a Deity; and while he does remark on Descartes, Malebranche, Newton and Clarke, (in a chapter which forms by far the most argumentative part of his book,) he never approaches those who have treated the question by the argument a posteriori. In one place (chap. vii.) he refers to Final Causes, but this passage only relates to the subject of man's superiority and the arguments of the optimists, and does not at all touch upon the evidences of design derived from the structure of the universe-the great foundation of Natural Theology. It is impossible to suppose the author ignorant of the argument a posteriori, for he in one place refers to Derham by name.— The omission of all reference to the most important branch of the subject is one of the things that most bring the good faith of this writer into question.

The truth is, that we believe in the existence of matter, because we cannot help it. The inferences of our reason from our sensations impel us to this conclusion, and the steps are few and short by which we reach it. But the steps are fewer and shorter, and of the self-same nature, which lead us to be-ly, not very difficult to accomplish, though it is here lieve in the existence of mind; for of that we have the evidence within ourselves, and wholly independent of our senses. Nor can we ever draw the inference in any one instance of the existence of matter, without at the same time exhibiting a proof of the existence of mind; for we are, by the supposition, reasoning, inferring, drawing a conclusion, forming a belief; therefore, there exists somebody, or something, to reason, to infer, to conclude, to believe; that is, we-not any fraction of matter, but a reasoning, inferring, believing being; in other words, a mind. In this sense the celebrated argument of Descartes-cogito, ergo sum-had a correct and a profound meaning. If, then, skepticism can have any place in our system, assuredly it relates to the existence of matter far more than of mind; yet the Systeme de la Nature is entirely founded upon the existence of matter being a self-evident truth, admitting of no proof, and standing in need of none.

The purpose of this note having been to show how the atheistical argument grounded on materialism fails when examined in its connection with the evidences of the Mind's independent existence, to pursue further the Second Part of the work is unnecessary. But a few remarks are added to show how exactly the same assumption of the things to be proved prevails here which we observed in the First Part.

We have combated the main body of the argument which runs through the whole book, and passed over some of the gross errors, apparently proceeding from ignorance of physical science, in which it abounds. Of these the most notable, no doubt, is that which Voltaire, in his Essai sur le Systeme de la Nature, considers (ch. i.) as the foundation of the whole theory-the absurd passage respecting the formation of eels. Certain it is, that in the second chapter of part i. the experiment of moistening flour, and thereby producing live microscopic insects, is referred to as a proof that "inanimate matter can pass into life," "which," adds the book, "is itself but the union of notions." No one indeed can accuse Voltaire of taking an unfair advantage when he relies on this piece of extraordinary ignorance; but it is not altogether just to re-creature living easy and happy, without pain and present the whole book as resting on this blunder.

As for the kind of comparisons or analogies by which, like all materialists, this writer tries to illustrate his hypothesis, and by which many materialists really are deceived-the mechanism of a watch, for example, consisting of parts each separately incapable of producing any result, but altogether forming a moving instrument that measures the efflux of time-nothing, surely, can be more puerile than the attempt to draw from thence an argument in favor of the confused, and, when examined closely, unintelligible position that Mind is a modification of Matter, or the result of a collocation of material particles. For the watch is material, doubtless, both

The first proposition, and supported at great length, is that all the ideas which man has formed of a First Cause have resulted from the evils of his lot, and that but for human suffering a Deity would never have been thought of. "Inquiry and speculation," says the author, "is itself an evil; and no

without wants, would ever give himself the trouble and annoyance of arguing on a First Cause. But fear and evil, especially pain and death-the terrors of earthquake, eclipse, tempest-the horrors of death

drove the mind to seek out the source of all these! dangers, and to appease or disarm its supposed wrath; and thus the sky was peopled with gods and spirits."

Now, that the fears and the ignorance of men have been the fruitful source of polytheism, no one doubts; but it is wholly false to assert that genuine and philosophical religion could have had no other origin. To affirm that, but for their sufferings and fears, men never would have encountered the pain

upon which our belief is challenged. The testimo- | ny of witnesses is adduced to prove a Miracle, or deviation from the ordinary laws of nature; but, says Mr. Hume, it is more likely that the witnesses should be deceived or should deceive, than that the laws of nature should be broken; and at all events we believe testimony only because it is a law of nature that men should tell the truth. This may very possibly be true; doubtless it is, generally speaking, so likely to be true, that the belief of a miracle is, and ought to be, most difficult to bring about; but at least, it is not like the belief in the Real Presence: it does not at one and the same time assume the accuracy of the indications given by our senses, and set that accuracy at nought;-it does not at once desire us implicitly to trust, and entirely to disregard the evidence of testimony, as the doctrine of Transubstantiation calls upon us at once to trust and disregard the evidence of our senses.

There are two answers, however, to which the doctrine proposed by Mr. Hume is exposed, and either appears sufficient to shake it.

Secondly-This leads us to the next objection to which Mr. Hume's argument is liable, and which we have in part anticipated while illustrating the first. He requires us to withhold our belief in circumstances which would force every man of common understanding to lend his assent, and to act upon the supposition of the story told being true. For suppose either such numbers of various witnesses as we have spoken of; or, what is perhaps stronger, suppose a miracle reported to us, first by a number of relators, and then by three or four of the very soundest judges and most incorruptibly honest men we know-men noted for their difficult belief of wonders, and, above all, steady unbelievers in Miracles. without any bias in favor of religion, but rather accustomed to doubt, if not disbelieve-most people First Our belief in the uniformity of the laws of would lend an easy belief to any Miracle thus vouchnature rests not altogether upon our own experience. ed. But let us add this circumstance, that a friend We believe no man ever was raised from the dead on his death-bed had been attended by us, and that --not merely because we ourselves never saw it, for we had told him a fact known only to ourselvesindeed that would be a very limited ground of de- something that we had secretly done the very moduction; and our belief was fixed on the subject ment before we told it to the dying man, and which long before we had any considerable experience-to no other being we had ever revealed and that fixed chiefly by authority—that is, by deference to the credible witnesses we are supposing inform us other men's experience. We found our confident that the deceased appeared to them, conversed with belief in this negative position partly, perhaps chiefly, them, remained with them a day or two, accompaupon the testimony of others; and at all events, our nying them, and to avouch the fact of his re-appearbelief that in times before our own the same posi-ance on this earth, communicated to them the secret tion held good, must of necessity be drawn from our of which we had made him the sole depository the trusting the relations of other men-that is, it de- moment before his death;-according to Mr. Hume pends upon the evidence of testimony. If, then, the we are bound rather to believe, not only that those existence of the law of nature is proved, in great credible witnesses deceive us, or that those sound part at least, by such evidence, can we wholly re- and unprejudiced men were themselves deceived, ject the like evidence when it comes to prove an ex- and fancied things without real existence, but furception to the rule-a deviation from the law?ther, that they all hit by chance upon the discovery The more numerous are the cases of the law being of a real secret, known only to ourselves and the kept the more rare those of its being broken-the dead man. Mr. Hume's argument requires us to more scrupulous certainly ought we to be in admit- believe this as the lesser improbability of the twoting the proofs of the breach. But that testimony as less unlikely than the rising of one from the dead; is capable of making good the proof there seems no and yet every one must feel convinced, that were he doubt. In truth, the degree of excellence and of placed in the situation we have been figuring, he strength to which testimony may rise seems almost would not only lend his belief to the relation, but, if indefinite. There is hardly any cogency which it the relators accompanied it with a special warning is not capable by possible supposition of attaining. from the deceased person to avoid a certain contemThe endless multiplication of witnesses-the un-plated act, he would, acting upon the belief of their bounded variety of their habits of thinking, their story, take the warning, and avoid doing the forbidprejudices, their interests-afford the means of conceiving the force of their testimony augmented ad infinitum, because these circumstances afford the means of diminishing indefinitely the chances of their being all mistaken, all misled, or all combining to deceive us. Let any man try to calculate the chances of a thousand persons who come from different quarters, and never saw each other before, and who all vary in their habits, stations, opinions, interests-being mistaken or combining to deceive us, when they give the same account of an event as having happened before their eyes-these chances are many hundreds of thousands to one. And yet we can conceive them multiplied indefinitely; for one hundred thousand such witnesses may all in like manner bear the same testimony; and they may all tell us their story within twenty-four hours after the transaction, and in the next parish. And yet, according to Mr. Hume's argument, we are bound to disbelieve them all, because they speak to a thing contrary to our own experience, and to the accounts which other witnesses had formerly given us of the laws of nature, and which our forefathers had handed down to us as derived from witnesses who lived in the old time before them. It is unne

*

Prophecy is classed by Mr. Hume under the same head with Miracle-every prophecy being, he says, a miracle. This is not, however, quite correct. A prophecy-that is the happening of an event which was foretold-may be proved even by the evidence of the senses of the whole world. Suppose it had one thousand years ago been foretold, that, on a certain day this year, one person of every family in the world should be seized with a particular distemper, it is evident that every family would be at once certain that the event had happened, and that it had been foretold. To future generations the fulfilment would no doubt come within the description of a miracle in all respects. The truth is, that the event happening which was foretold may be compared to the miracle; and Mr. Hume's argument will then be, not that there is any thing miraculous in the event itself, but only in its happening after it had been foretold. Bishop Sherlock wrote discourses on this subject, which Dr. Middleton answered: the former denying that prophecy was more exempt from the scope of the skeptical argument than miracles. On the whole, however, it does seem more exempt.

den deed. Mr. Hume's argument makes no exception. This is its scope; and whether he chooses to push it thus far or no, all Miracles are of necessity denied by it, without the least regard to the kind or the quantity of the proof on which they are rested; and the testimony which we have supposed, accompanied by the test or check we have supposed, would fall within the grasp of the argument just as much and as clearly as any other Miracle avouched by more ordinary combinations of evidence.

human body, of which the foot makes a part. Hai we never seen that body, or any other that walked on feet, the observation of the mark in the sand could have led to no other conclusion that that some body or thing had been there with a form the the mark. So, when we are to reason from the works of nature to their cause, we are entitled to conclude that a being exists whose power and st created them such as we behold them, and conse quently that this being is possessed of skill and povThe use of Mr. Hume's argument is this, and it ér sufficient to contrive and to execute those works is an important and a valuable one. It teaches us that is, those precise works, and no more. We to sift closely and rigorously the evidence for mira- have no right to infer that this being has the shi culous events. It bids us remember that the proba- or the power to contrive and create one single blade bilities are always, and must always be, incompara- of grass or grain of sand beyond what we see. I bly greater against than for the truth of these rela- follows, then, that the argument a posteriori caly tions, because it is always far more likely that the leads to the conclusion that a finite and not an inftestimony should be mistaken or false, than that the nitely or an indefinitely wise and powerful Being general laws of nature should be suspended. Fur-exists; and it further follows that we are left with ther than this the doctrine cannot in soundness of reason be carried. It does not go the length of proving that those general laws cannot, by the force of human testimony, be shown to have been, in a particular instance, and with a particular purpose, suspended.

out any evidence of his power (much less of his intention) to perpetuate our existence after death, as well as without any proof of the capacity of the soul to receive such a continuation of being after its se paration from the body. This is the sum of the very ingenious, subtle, and original argument of Mr. It is unnecessary to add, that the argument here Hume, affording a mighty contrast to the flimsy has only been conducted to one point, and upon one sophisms, the declamatory assertions, of the French ground-namely, to refute the doctrine that a mira- writers, and giving the Natural Theologian, i cle cannot be proved by any evidence of testimony. must be allowed, a good deal to answer. We have It is for those who maintain the truth of any revela-stated it as strongly as we could, in order to meet tion to show in what manner the evidence suffices it fully; and it appears capable of a satisfactory to prove the Miracles on which that revelation rests. answer. This treatise is not directed to that object; but in commenting upon Mr. Hume's celebrated argument, we have dealt with a fundamental objection to all Revelation, and one which, until removed, precludes the possibility of any such system being established.

of what design and contrivance are. They e cessarily bear reference to our own nature and the knowledge we have of our own minds, derived from our own consciousness and experience; and of this we have treated in the text, Sect. III. and IV. of Part I.

The whole argument a posteriori rests upon the assumption, that if we perceive arrangements made, by means of which certain effects are produced, and if seeing such arrangements among the works of men, we should at once conclude that they were de signed to produce those effects, we are entitled to II. The Essay upon Miracles being supposed by say that the arrangements which we see and which its author sufficient to dispose of Revelation, the Es- we know not to be the work of man, are the work say on Providence and a Future State appears to of an intelligent cause, contriving them for the par have been aimed as a blow equally fatal to Natural pose of producing the effects observed. In truth, Religion. Its merits are, however, of a very supe- such must needs be the assumption on which the a rior order. There is nothing of the sarcasm so un-gument rests, because we have no other knowledge becoming on subjects of this most serious kind, which disfigures the concluding portion of the former treatise. The tone is more philosophic, and the skeptical character is better sustained. There cannot, indeed, be said to prevail through it any thing of a dogmatical spirit, and certainly we here meet with none of that propensity to assume the thing in question, to insist upon propositions as proved which have only been annunciated, to supply by sounds the place of ideas, which we remark in the "Systeme de la Nature." On the contrary, the argument, wheher sound or not, is of a substantial nature; it is rested on very plausible grounds; and we may the raher conclude that it is not very easily answered, oecause, in fact, it has rarely, if ever, been encounered by writers on theological subjects. Nevertheess, it strikes at the root of all Natural Religion, and requires a careful consideration.

If we found anywhere a mechanism of any kind, a watch for instance, as Paley puts the case, we should at once conclude that some skilful and intelligent being had been there, and had left his works on the spot. We should conclude (indeed this is involved in the former inference) that he was capa ble of doing what we saw he had done, and that he had intended to produce a particular effect by the exercise of his skill; but we should also conclude that he who could do this could repeat the operation if he chose, and the probability would be that his skill had not been confined to the single exertion of it which we had observed. There is nothing peculiar

Mr. Hume does not deny that the reasoning from the appearances and operations of nature to the ex-in the nature of human workmanship or of the hu istence of an intelligent cause is logical and sound; man character to make us draw this conclusionat least he admits this for argument's sake. But he We arrive at it just as we arrive at the inference of takes this nice and subtle distinction. We are here, design and contrivance; we believe in them be he observes, dealing with an agent, an intelli- cause we are wholly unable to conceive such an gence, a being, wholly unlike all we elsewhere see adaptation without such an intention; and we are or hitherto have known; our inferences, therefore, equally unable to conceive that any being, or any must be confined strictly to the facts from whence intelligence, or any power, which had sufficed to they are drawn. When we see a foot-mark imprint- perform the operation we see, should be confined ed on the sand, we conclude that a man has walked that single exertion. We can conceive no reason there, and that his other foot had likewise left its whatever why the same power should not be capa print, which the waves have effaced. But this in-ble of repeating the operation. There is nothing ference is not drawn from the inspection of the foot peculiar-no limit-no sufficient reason, of an exalone; it comes from a previous knowledge of the clusive nature, why the same power should not be