Letters cannot be formed with nice and delicate strokes, if the pen be bad. It is neither the painter's nor writer's fault, if their skill does not Thine in their respective performances. The defect originates in the unaptness of the materials. It is the fame cafe with the foul. This fpiritual and immortal substance, seated in the head, as a pilot at the helm, who, befides his innate fkill, wants the affiftance of the fails and rudder to fteer the unwieldy veffel,-or as a monarch in his palace, who has none but fickly and difordered fubjects to command, the foul, I fay, ftands in need of the organs of the body, as fo many minifters of fenfation, towards the exertion of its faculties.

If I am confined to a chamber that has but one window, I cannot fee through more than one. If there be more, I can fee through all. The visual faculty, in both cases, is the fame: and the difference confifts in the removal of the obftacles. Thus, on the lofs of an eye or limb, the foul is neither blind nor lame it is fill the fame, though its inftrumentality be partly destroyed. But if the brain, whose inexplicable folds and fpacious palaces are the repofitories of the various images coming in through their respective avenues from exterior objects, be difordered and obftructed by drunkenness, apoplexy, &c. the paffages become impractica

ble;

ble; the canvas becomes wrinkled and uneven; the glowing colours cannot spread; the fize and attitude of the figures are confounded; and all the requifites of reafoning are wanting. Let the drunken man fleep, and the fick man recover, then the obftacles are removed; and reason will inform you, that the foul is ftill the fame.

If the foul, then, under the inconvenience of the foregoing circumstances of drunkenness, fever, &c. ftill retains a faculty or power of perceiving, reasoning, and judging, to be exerted when these obftacles are removed,-how much more capable will it not be of thofe fpiritual functions, after its feparation from the mass of clay, when, difentangled from its fetters, with its enlargement from the body, "it will return "to the God who gave it !"

But you inform us, that "God can do any "thing that does not imply a contradiction: and that, "by an infinite power, he can add "thought to matter."

"But," fir," must not a man be very fan"guine" in the cause of scepticism, and eager to work himself into incredulity, when he has recourse to infinite power, fooner than admit a spiritual foul? If God can add thought to matter, why deny, in a peremptory manner, F2

the

the poffibility of uniting spirit to body? Locke acknowledges the poflibility of adding thought to matter, by the intervention of infinite power, to the great comfort of our modern free-thinkers; but ftill he acknowledges his foul to be fpiritual and immortal.

No unhappy comfort can then arise to those whose greatest joy would confift in being a lump of animated earth, from Locke's opinion: for God can do feveral things which he will never perform. He never will animate a stone, or tree; and cover them with flesh, susceptible of paffions, and willing to gratify them; give them the organs of fpeech; and thus introduce on, the ftage of life, a fet of dogmatizing philofophers, who will glory in being the brothers of plants and mushrooms: as Bias, the philofopher, faid of the Athenians, who gloried in being originally fprung from the earth.

Sound logic does not allow to argue from poffibility to fact: and, though every respect is due to Locke's authority, yet his poffibility of thinking matter, and others of his hypotheses, are objected to, by the learned. Nor has he any room to complain, if the world does not pay him the fame implicit obedience which the difciples of Pythagoras paid their master : for feveral great mathematicians and metaphyficians

confider,

confider, as very poffible, fyftems which Locke rejects, as contradictions.

We cannot account for the operations of the foul, upon the principles of mechanism. We know that the motions of parts, and the artful manner of combining them, can produce nothing but an artful ftructure, and various modes of motion. Hence, all machines, however artfully their parts are put together, and however complicated their structure, though we conceive innumerable different motions variously combined, and running into one another, with an endless variety, yet never produce any thing but figure and motion. Much lefs can we account for our mental operations, from the properties of matter. Lucretius and his followers may employ their plaftic powers in forming a foul composed of particles of air, fire, vapour, and a fourth Something which that poet does not describe.

They will acknowledge, that none of those elementary particles, feparate from the reft, can think; but that, from their mixture and collifion, thought refults: which they attempt to prove by the example of the tree and the earth, neither of which produces fruit in a separate ftate. But it is obvious, that the tree contains in itself the feed of the fruit, which the earth ftirs and developes: and, to give juftness to the

com

comparison, by the fame rule, either the fire or air fhould contain in itself the origin of thought; which is an abfurdity.

If you admit, that God can fuperadd thought to matter, this thought, then, must be a quality fuperior to matter, and, confequently, diftinct from it. Then the contradiction is palpable : for it will follow, that it is matter and not matter at the same time.

As to the brutes, become of late the subjects of philofophical panegyric, that raises them to an equality with man, we like them for the fervice or diverfion they afford us: but, less virtuous than our philofophers, we have not humility to wish to be on a level with them. Pity our pride and ignorance, great oracles, who revile the Chriftians, and extol the cunning of the fox, the imitative powers of the ape, the architecture of the beaver, and the provident forefight of the ant.

Since you believe them of the fame nature with yourselves, why do not you arraign the cruelty of the magiftrates, under whose eyes fo many murders are daily committed on your brethren? For if man and the brute be of the fame nature, why should beafts be killed with impunity, whilft the affaffin is doomed to the gibbet? The queftion may feem childish yet your refined philosophy is humbly requested to

give