of all things has ordained their acting in concert, during our short pilgrimage here on earth.

Ignorance in children, and stupidity in old people, arise from the insertion of an active and spiritual substance in matter not fitly disposed, and yet ordained to be its organ and instrument. The brain is too moist in children, and too dry in old people; consequently, unapt either for the reception or retention of the images transmitted from exterior objects; which images or representations are the materials for the soul to work on. The pencil cannot delineate well, if the canvas be unfit. 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 shine in their respective performances, the defect originates in the unaptness of the materials: it is the same case with the soul. This spiritual and immortal substance, seated in the head, as a pilot at the helm, who, besides his innate skill, wants the assistance of the sails and rudder, to steer the unwieldy vessel, or as a monarch in his palace, who has none but sickly and disordered subjects to command, the soul, I say, stands in need of the organs of the body, as so many ministers of sensation, towards the exertions of its faculties.

If I am confined to a chamber that has but one window, I cannot see through more than one. If there be more, I can see through all. The visual faculty, in both cases, is the same; and the difference consists in the removal of the obstacles. Thus, on the loss of an eye or limb, the soul is neither blind or lame; it is still the same, though its instrumentality be partly destroyed. But if the brain, whose inexplicable folds and spacious palaces are the repositories of the various images coming in through their respective avenues from exterior objects, be disordered and obstructed by drunkenness, apoplexy, &c. the passages become impracticable; the canvas becomes wrinkled and uneven, the glowing colours cannot spread, the size and attitude of the figures are confounded, and all the requisites of reasoning are wanting. Let the drunken man sleep, and the sick man recover, then the obstacles are removed, and reason will inform you, that the soul is still the same.

If the soul, then, under the inconveniences of the foregoing

circumstances of drunkenness, fever, &c. still retains a faculty or power of perceiving, reasoning, and judging, to be exerted when these obstacles are removed; how much more capable will it not be of those spiritual functions, after its separation from the mass of clay, when disentangled 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, Sir, must not a man be very sanguine in the cause of scepticism, and eager to work himself into incredulity, when he has recourse to infinite power, sooner than admit a spiritual soul? If God can add thought to matter, why deny, in a peremptory manner, the possibility of uniting spirit to body? Locke acknowledges the possibility of adding thought to matter, to the great comfort of our modern free-thinkers ; but still he acknowledges his soul to be spiritual and immortal.

No unhappy comfort can then arise to those whose greatest joy would consist in being a lump of animated earth, from Locke's opinion: for God can do several things which he will never perform. He never will animate a stone, or tree; and cover them with flesh, susceptible of passions, and willing to gratify them; give them the organs of speech, and thus introduce on the stage of life, a set of dogmatizing philosophers, who will glory in being the brothers of plants and mushrooms: as Bisas, the philosopher, said of the Athenians, who gloried in being originally sprung from the earth.

Sound logic does not allow to argue from possibility to fact; and, though every respect is due to Locke's authority, yet his possibility 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 same implicit obedience which the disciples of Pythagoras paid their master, for several great mathematicians and metaphysicians consider, as very possible, systems which Locke rejects, as contradictions.

We cannot account for the operations of the soul, 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 structure, 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 less can we account for our mental operations, from the properties of matter. Lucretius and his followers may employ their plastic powers in forming a soul 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, separate from the rest, can think; but that, from their mixture and collision, thought results; which they attempt to prove by the example of the tree and the earth, neither of which produces fruit in a separate state.

But

it is obvious, that the tree contains in itself the seed of the fruit, which the earth stirs and developes; and, to give justness to the comparison, by the same rule, either the fire or air should contain in itself the origin of thought, which is an absurdity.

If you admit, that God can superadd thought to matter, this thought, then, must be a quality superior to matter, and, consequently, distinct 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 philosophical panegyric, that raises them to an equality with man, we like them for the service or diversion they afford us; but, less virtuous than our philosophers, we have not humility to wish to be on a level with them. Pity our pride and ignorance, great oracles, who revile the Christians and extol the cunning of the fox, the imitative powers of the ape, the architecture of the beaver, and the provident foresight of the

ant.

Since you believe them of the same nature with yourselves, why do you not arraign the cruelty of the magistrates, under whose eyes so many murders are daily committed on your brethren? For if man and the brute be of

the same nature, why should beasts be killed with impunity, whilst the assassin is doomed to the gibbet? The question may seem childish; yet your refined philosophy is humbly requested to give a solid answer. Your Catechism can illustrate the subject.

THE

FREE-THINKER'S CATECHISM:

Faithfully collected from some of the most celebrated Free-thinkers of this Age.

as a

A. He sprung out of the earth, spontaneously, as mushroom.

Q. The souls of men and brutes, are they of the same nature?

A. Yes.†

Q. What difference, then, is there between man and the brute?

A. Man is a more multiplied animal, with hands and flexible fingers. The paws and feet of other animals are covered, at the extremities, with a horny substance; or terminate in claws or talons.‡

Q. Our superiority over the brute creation, in arts, sciences, modesty, civilization, is, then, owing to our hands and fingers, not to any innate principle of reason?

A. Doubtless.

Q. But the apes, whose paws are much like ours, why have not they made the same progress?

* Voltaire on the population of America.

+ Servetus of Cork,

Helvetius, livre de l'Esprit, p. 233.

A. Apes live on fruits: and being, like children, in perpetual motion, they are not susceptible of that ennui, or of wearisomeness, to which we are liable.*

Q. Is there any virtue in worshipping God, in loving our father, in serving our country, or in relieving the distressed?

A. No.

Q. In what light, then, are we to consider virtue ?

A. Cry out with Brutus: O vertu tu ne'es qu'un vain nom! O virtue, thou art but an empty sound!'†

1

Lo, the refined system introduced by those great oracles of human wisdom. If the cannibals, who eat their aged parents, ever learn to read, they will find their justification in your Catechism.

Our philosophers are the great panegyrists of the instinct of animals, whilst they degrade the reason of man. The cause is obvious; in pointing out the brutes as rivals qualified to contend for superiority with us, they can argue with ease and satisfaction. All dies with the brutes: all dies ⚫ with man. Let us then live as they do; for our end will be the same.' But still this way of reasoning, how flattering soever to sensuality, cannot remove the perplexing doubt; for if the brute's soul be of the same nature with that of man, then there is no certainty that the soul of the brute dies. For, laying aside religion, which has decided the question, fear not those who can kill the body, but are • not able to kill the soul,' there is no demonstration that the soul of man dies, but every thing demonstrates the reverse. To argue, then, with any colour of reason, from the brute to the man, you must have a thorough conviction of two things: first, that the soul of the brute is of the same nature with the soul of man; secondly, that the soul of man dies. Neither can be demonstrated, and consequently the assistance which our two-footed philosophers expect from this league and confederacy, into which they would fain enter with apes and four-footed animals, for the destruction of our souls, is no more than a broken reed.

*Helvetius, livre de l'Esprit, p. 3. + Ibid. p. 397.