MAN'S PLACE IN CREATION.

Colonist, Volume XII, Issue 1215, 31 August 1869, Page 7

MAN'S PLACE IN CREATION.

[first aeticle.] Colonial Literature is one of those native industries which we all wish to see flourish, but which protection cannot promote. A Colonial book or essay must just stand on its own merits. Bonuses and differential duties cannot avail it. People will read what they please and what pleases them. Probably the foreign article will be preferred even when no better than our own product. But we hold it none the less the duty of journalists to draw attention to contributions made to literature in our midst, and we shall accordingly devote some space to-day to a notice of the eloquent lecture recently delivered by Mr. Justice Richmond.* Before entering on the merits of the essay, which we shall endeavor to appraise at its just value, we may remark that it is a matter of sincere congratulation when a man so highly gifted as is the Judge, appears before the public and gives currency to his matured opinions in literature and science. Extricated from the clinging bird-lime of party politics, and at a safe remove of time and distance from the fuss and fume and jangle of parliamentary zealotry, he is able, and we are happy to see is willing, to give the public at large the benefit of keen and critical powers of mind, applied to questions as interesting and momentous to mankind (though of less cogent and direct urgency as regards individuals) as those which it falls to him to resolve in his official capacity. But should there still appear to lurk in his summing up of the evidence in the question at issue in this case, some vestiges of the oldaccustomed bias of an advocate for his chosen side, by which the bearings of the question may be more or less obscured, it will be our part to demur and to appeal; a duty, however, in discharging which, we should in vain strive to divest ourselves of fiome apprehension of being cast, when trying conclusions with so practised a champion.

But while we may not be able, at present at all events, to perceive the justness of all that the Judge has now advanced, let us say once for all that we are behind none in appreciation of the high tone and purpose of the lecture, and of its transparent and sparkling language, fresh drawn from " the well of English undefiled."

The lecture is devoted to the consideration of two subjects, closely related it is true, yet distinct —the Darwinian hypothesis as to the derivation of the human family, and the relations between mind and matter, la both cases the Judge frankly espouses the conservative side, and energetically repels the in-roada of naturalism and Materialism.

In the comments we are about to offer we must take for granted that our readers kve either heard or seen the lecture, or that they will refer to it, the limits of our space not admitting of extracts being given. Theiutroductory view of thecharacteristics of the sub-kingdoms of the animal world is exceedingly well given. The lecturer's professional training has here stood him in good stead, enabling him to gather into a condensed and lucid resume the diffuse descriptions of the great divisions of animal life, which swell the text-books on zoology. We venture, however, to supplement this | bird's-eye view of animal developement by one |toore conception which seems needful to | cement the whole : namely, that as j regards the cardinal vital endowments, the Itooat advanced organisations add to, without wholly relinquishing, the primitive means to the same ends; thus, as regards respiration even in man, along with the most perfect °xygenation of the blood by means of Jungs, there still remains in the skin Pie same power in a minor degree, a

, * Mann l'lacn in Creation.—A lecture delivered | to the Provincial Hall, Noleon, by C. W. Richmond, |°ne of the Judges of the Supremo Court of New ! Zealand. Nelson; tl. liounsell.

property on which many animals low down in the scale exclusively depend; again, while the blood is propelled vigorously all over the body of advanced animals by the special apparatus of heart, arteries and veins, many parts, such as the lens of the eye, are still left to obtain their nourishment by attracting ifc without the help of blood-vessels just as in the lowest creatures; and even as respects the nervous system, the lordly head of creation must not claim total separation from the humble Eadiafces. In many of them, as the lecturer tells us, each divison of the animal has a ganglion of nervous matter of its own, making it almost independent of the rest, so that as he pleasantly describes them, they have an " ultraprovincial constitution." This is true; but it is also true that the human body, to draw, out the political simile, has not an ultracentralised constitution, in which everything is regulated at and administered from the capital; but rather one which, like that of New Zealand, combines the two principles; for the heart, the lungs, the digestive j organs, and others have independent nervous centres of their own by which the performance of their " provincial" functions is managed with scarcely any control from head-quarters at the brain, on which, again devolves the unencumbered office of seeking the welfare and directing the movements of the body as a whole. So that in his perfection, as well as in the precursory stages of his being, (alluded to on page 9 of the pamphlet) man retains distinct traces of affinity with the primary organisms. In dealing with the Darwinian hypothesis, we are glad to see that Judge Itichmoud :ias not resorted to the " short and easy method," in vogue among the theological critics, who are wont to shut the door on facts and arguments by a curt reference to Genesis. Blind to the single and august object of the sacred volume —to teach men highest truth in homeliest language, language which embodies divine thought in human form —they persist in fastening on it a wholly different and extraneous function, that of interpreting nature; they claim for it, what it does not claim for itself, that it shall supersede or over-ride that other revelation of the divine which lies open to us in the works of Q-od. In vain it is recorded in the history of science, that well-nigh every startling discovery in the realm of nature has been at first loudly opposed by selfconstituted champions of religion, and as regularly after acontest, tacitly succumbed to by them; the same mental infirmity is ever repeating the same mistake at every fresh turn in the development of thought. It would almost seem as if a like incapacity pertained to this school of critics as was said to attach to the doomed family of the Bourbons : for after each return of discorafiturewhich they draw down upon themselves, it may still be said of them, " they have learned nothing and forgotten nothing."

Let; no one so far mistake our meaning as to infer from these remarks auy hostility to religion. It is, on the contrary, just because we believe in it and reverence it, that we regret to see religion exposed to gratuitous indignity, and would gladly have ifc saved from those zealous but injudicious friends who have often placed it in a false position, and so weakly distrusted its innate strength as to encumber it with defences which have repeatedly proved untenable. But religious ideas, rightly applied, have immensely promoted the advance of science. Por instance, physiology, the science which searches out the uses of organs in plants and animals, made no progress worth speaking of until it was studied in the light of the religious idea of beneficent design; and it is a very remarkable fact that although there have been physiologists who were also atheists, they have then only succeeded in making discoveries when, laying aside for the nonce their professed scepticism, they have used faith in the adaptation of means to ends as a clue through the labyrinths of nature.

The Judge enters more cursorily into the consideration of Mr. Darwin's much-can-vassed idoa as to the derivation of man from a quadrumanous animal than we expected him to do; for the introductory sketch of progressive development in the animal series appeared intended to lead up to an argument on this very question. The disfavor with which he views the Darwinian hypothesis, however, comes out clearly enough in several expressions. We do not propose to go more closely into the question than he has done, contenting ourselves with two remarks. The estimate of distance between man and the apes as respects the brain, seems to have proceeded too much on mere size and conformation, the important element of quality being left out; the proportion too of ths brain, devoted, according to phrenologists, to the performance of intellectual and moral efforts, is in man very large, in monkeys small, while the labter have the region of the propensities fuller than man has. We do not, however, see anything imposible or revolting in the hypothesis ; nothing impossible, for anyone who has witnessed the sad spectacle of a human being sinking, in a few months or years, below the level of the brutes in intellect and habits, will be able to conceive that as far as the brain is concerned, an animal species might make a corresponding ascent in the course of a thousand generations ; and noting revolting, because we have already been familiarised with the idea that the first man was made from dust or clay, a lower thing than an animal; and again, because of ascertained facts as to the embryonic development of human beings. Just as any man who has himself risen from the dregs of the people could not feel hurt were it shown that one of his forefathers was of low degree, bo it seems out of place for anyone to feel offended dignity as a man when the Darwinian theory is broached, if he but bear in mind the undeniable and literal fact that not so many years ago, he, himself, was organised through successive changes like a worm, a fish, and a reptile.

Passing on to the argument of the lecture against materialism, we enter on the most difficult and delicate part of our task, for, while entirely at one with the writer in repudiating the notion that mind is the product of organised matter, we are unable

altogether, to adopt the line of argument which he has chosen. In examining it we shall endeavor to express ourselves as clearly as may be possible on a subject so obscure, begging only of the candid reader not to strain any expressions used beyond the obvious sense in which they are employed.

In various passages, bub most emphatically in -page 13, the essayist declares a belief in the tenet of free will in man to be an essential pre-requisite in any one who would feel the weight of his arguments, respecting the mental characteristic of humanity. Now, as the object of all controversy is to adduce reasons fitted to convince opponents—for they alone require convincing—it appears to militate seriously against the probable success of the argument that this tenet of free-will in man is not admitted by the philosophical school of Mill and Hume, nor by that large and talented section of the modern scientific school which is represented by Huxley and Darwin, men, beyond all others, whom, having strayed furthest it is most needful to seek out and convince.

"We have neither the inclination nor the ability to discuss the nature of the will, nor do we profess any opinion on the subject, but may observe that some of the best of our race have maintained an opinion opposite to that of the lecturer; that one cannot pay a higher tribute to a friend than to say he is incapable of wickedness, and that perhaps the noblest words that modern ages record are those uttered by Martin Luther, when, standing alone at the Diet, face to face with principalities and powers, urging and commanding him to retract the truth, he said, "I cannot, so help me G-od !"

The hypothesis that thought and feeling are identical with the brain and with its action, need not detain us, fov scarcely any positivist would be found to assert it; it is just as if one were to say that a musical sound was identical with the harp-string, or with its vibrations ; they are not identical, for the first is heard, the others ai'e seen.

The alternative materialistic idea that mental phenomena are the results of the activity of organised matter, will give us more trouble. The lecturer gets rid of the difficulty by refusing to entertain it; he does not engage the enemy, but denies their belligerent rights. He says (page 10.) "Of natural phenomena we know only this, that one event, improperly referred to as effect, invariably attends upon, or follows, some other event, improperly styled cause." In short, everything is referred to the immediate agency of the creator. I^ow, while viewing Him as theEirst Cause of all events, we must observe that such a belief does not exclude the recognition of secondary and derivative causes flowing in an orderly series from the great fountain of power and existence. The belief in a first cause, however well founded, remains a mere barren dogma, so far as knowledge is concerned, until we can ascertain in some measure through what secondary agencies it comes in contact with nature. Let us be allowed a familiar illustration. The Bank of England is said to have printed a few notes for half-a-million pounds a-piece, but cannot issue them. A person who might possess one, would no doubt be immensely rich ; but he might walk down Kegent-street without being able to purchase a single article, because no one could give change for the note ; or, to use another simile, while all public action in a monarchy is taken in the name of the Sovereign, the knowledge of that fact throws but little light on the actual ordering and working of the institutions of the realm, which, can only be gathered by reference to the series of subordinate agencies, each playing a distinct, delegated part in carrying out the monarch's behests. In like manner an abstract dogma is not available for human purposes; it must first become currency, and the work of science is to discover those concrete laws and forces intervening between the Creator and creation which are the medium of transmitting his power and executing his will.

But the conception of the First Cause being tlie only one, is not only too vague and insufficient for man's purposes, but appears to us to run counter to his nature. Mankind have an irresistible tendency to believe in physical causation. Everyone, even a metaphysician, acts in everyday life "with, perfect reliance on certain agencies, and reckons on their potency to produce the effects he desires. The great instincts of mankind do not deceive them. " Action is the truth of thought." What men act up to is what they really believe, however they may persuade themselves to the contrary in the abstract. We are reminded of a passage in the early history of geology. The discovery of numerous saltwater shells far inland, was regarded as a proof that the land had once been submerged under the sea, as now we know it was repeatedly ; but high authorities then ventured to say that the shells had been placed there by the Creator to deceive mankind! Shall we endeavor to believe that we too have been deceived all our lives aa to the existence of physical causation, and that through the Grod-given constitution of our minds ? That fire has no power to burn, nor frost to freeze, nor poison to destroy, but, that the burning, the freezing, the death, are simply "invariable concomitants, improperly styled effects?" Surely not; such a belief would paralyse human action, and petrify human thought.

To sum up, it is our belief that we must not look to an abstract and nullifying philosophy for the means of turning men's minds away from materialistic leanings, but rather by finding entrance, if we may, into a broader field of thought, in which science shall be conciliated by a frank recognition of the reality of her agencies, the value and beauty of her laws; but where it shall also be brought home to her that matter with which she works does not hold the secret of existence, and is in no wise the parent of thought, but its plastic and docile instrument. To effect a conciliation between schools of thought which at present; scowl suspiciously at each other: to realise and set forth the substantial unity of revelation and science ; and to show how each is fitted to supply the deficiencies and satisfy the yearnings of the other, is a work in which many minds in

many countries must participate. "We may probably in a future issue throw out a few suggestions towards a consummation so greatly desired, in the hope that they may pVove an incitement to capable intellects to grapple with the task.

[second article.] In controversies, such as the one we have in hand, in which the contention is not so much about facts as about the interpretation to be placed upon them, it is usual to find thinkers whose minds have been cast in a literary mould ranging themselves on one side, those of scientific proclivities on the other,- and it is not difficult to see why it is so. The literary mind is perceptive, the scientific, receptive. The former prefers deductive processes of thought, the latter ' inductive. The one anticipates nature, the other interprets her. A mind purely literary is swift, eager, direct, and, if conscious of lofty powers and pure impulses, not unapt to view disdainfully, and to condemn without' compunction conclusions patiently built up on a scientific basis, should they appear to run counter to its preconceived ideas of truth and fitness. Lord Bacon denotes this where he says:—"Almost all scholars have this—when anything is presented to them, they will find in it that which they know, not learn from it that which they know not." The weakness of the other class of minds is of quite a different nature, and will fall presently to be considered.

In our first notice of Judge Eichmond's lecture, a good example of the literary method, we said roundly that while cordially wishing him Grod-speed in his assault on the fastnesses of materialism, we must decline to follow him over the metaphysical country, full, we apprehend, of pitfalls and precipitous places, and where moreover the enemy does not care to stray; but we would gladly do our utmost to support him by engaging the foe on a field where he cannot decline battle, the level grouud of common sense and experience. To attempt this in the measure of our ability shall be our task to-day.

Scientific men refer with complacent pride to the fact that while the history of Literature and Art is a chequered one, telling of the alternation of high perfection in one age with rapid declension in another, Science is essentially progressive, each law or generalisation, when once established, being an acquisition for all coining time, and furnishing a scaffolding on which the next higher one may be erected. But while science cannot go backward, it should not beforgotten that the only security for its continued advance is to be found in the maintenance of the same spirit of earnest and patient waiting on the higher teaching which has been the secret of its achievements. Some natural philosophers who value themselves on following the Baconian inductive philosophy appear to have forgotten that the moral which is embodied in it is that the Pagan pride which had fruitlessly striven to impose its self-evolved ideas upon nature must be forsaken, and admittance sought into the temple of truth through " no other means than the true and legitimate humiliation of the human spirit." f

JSTor is it less needful to take heed to such warnings as these : " I hold that true logic ought to enter the several provinces of science armed with a higher authority than belongs to the principles of those sciences themselves, and ought to call those putative principles to account until they are fully established." And again, with reference to a presumptuous and exclusive reliance on the senses: "My first admonition (which was also my prayer) is that men [should] confine the sense within the limits of duty in respect of things divine; for the sense is like the sun, which reveals the face of earth, but. seals and shuts up the face of heaven."

As all discoveries are verified conjectures, the Imagination is the prime mover in discovery ar.d must be nurtured and employed as well as the observing and logical faculties. The plan of nature is large, and so the mind needs breadth to take in its scope and meaning. One cannot see a thing distinctly if he stoops too close to it. A landscape is not complete, though every patch of ground be painted in, unless a bit of sky is also seen. We think it cannot be denied that the opulence of latter-day scientific research and the minute division of labor among men of science, have resulted in somewhat of complacent seli-sufficiency from the first cause, and narrowness of view from the second, conditions which, are not favorable to originality and true progress. Thus we see how it is that discoveries and inventions are often missed by those whose special vocation it is to make them, and fall to the lot of outsiders whose insight has not been dimmed by a disuse of the imaginationinduced by routine and narrow ways. Accordingly some of the greatest improvements in the great art of agriculture have occurred, not to the bucolic mind, but to persons coming fresh to the subject; the prime discovery in naval warfare of "breaking the enemy's line" was made, not by a seaman, but by a Scotch lawyer; of the remedial properties of water, not by a physician but a Grerman peasant. One of the most signal instances of this fact, and which comes near our subject, is that of vegetable morphology or the evolution of all the different organs of plants from the leaf. This discovery, which has revolutionised botany, was made neither by a botanist nor a horticulturist but bj a poet (G-oethe).

But while the need for an open, teachable, and comprehensive intellect holds true in all scientific pursuits, it is especially required

f The passage is noble and touching: " For my own part at least, in obedience to the everlasting love of truth, I have committed myself to the uncertainties and difficulties and solitudes of the ways, and relying on the divine assistance, have upheld my mind against the shocks and embattled ranks of opinion, and against my own private and inward hesitations and scruples, and against the fogs and clouds of nature, and the phantoms flitting about on every side, in the hope of providing, at last for the present and future generations guidance more faithful and secure. Wherein, if I have made any progress, the way has been opened to me by no other means than the true and legitimate humiliation of the -human spirit."— jßacon } De Augmeutis.

in such as relate to man's nature, powers, and destiny, because these are the widest and deepest subjects with which science has to do. Man has needofaK his powers to investigate and understand so high and complex a subject as humanity; for ouly thus can he appreciate all the facts. It is conceivable (though historically untrue) that the properties of numbers, or the behaviour of atoms, or the structure of the planetary system might in any case be discerned without the use of our highest faculties, for they relate to unconscious matter or, quantity alone ; but when we have to do with man —granting for argument's sake that he also is mere matter—as this congeries of atoms has somehow become endowed with self-consciousness, with intelligence, with love and hate, with hope and fear, with volition and responsibility, with memory of a past and anticipation of a future, and as even materialists acknowledge that these are the highest manifestations hitherto known, ana are moreover facts as hard and real as color or weight, is it, we ask, conformable to common sense to ignore these living witnesses to the actual nature of man and to place a preferential reliance on the secondary, and so to speak, circumstantial evidence afforded by his body ? What would be thought of a natural philosopher who, undertaking the investigation of the science of sounds, were to refuse to take note of the laws of harmony ? We should certainly say that he had thus saved himself much trouble, but that whatever conclusions he might come to would be poor in reapect to the highest developments of the subject.

On these considerations then we found our first and second counts against materialists. These thinkers leave out the highest and most direct testimony in the matter to be investigated, and decline to avail themselves of the most appropriate faculties in the investigator. Ask a phrenological materialist why, prosessing the organs of Ideality and Veneration, he lays them on the shelf in an enquiry whicli involves them, as well as Causality and the knowing faculties, and he must either assert that they are useless and misleading (thus falling into the same mistake as the metaphysicians a 9 to fictitiou3ness in nature, referred to in our first notice) or else allow that his method of enquiry is partial and defective, and one which cannot be expected to have a satisfactory issue. Eejecting, however, these natural aids to reasoning, the materialists advance a three-fold argument for their opinion, which may be stated as follows ,— 1. That there is no direct evidence of mind, as it is not cognisable by any of the senses, and that therefore its existence as an entity is a gratuitous ussumption. 2. That the manifestation of so-called mental phenomena is invariably found associated with the existence and activity of organised structures called nervous and cerebral; that mental changes correspond with the simultaneous influence of physiological, moi'bid, violent, or other agencies plainly known to net upon the brain ; and that they cease to be manifested on the ces ation of physical life. From all which, ifc is contended, it may legitimately be concluded that the brain, in other words, matter organized, is the cause of thought and emotion.

3. That any difficulty that may be experienced in conceiving thai; insellect and feeling can be produced by arrangements of organised particles of matter is removed or mitigated by the consideration that it is well-known that by certain orderly arrangements of material substances, as in a galvanic battery or a musical instrument, results are obtained which are totally unlike the materials employed to produce them ; as unlike, it it is urged, as an idea or an emotion is to a particle of brain.

The second of these reasons is the most considerable, and we shall postpone its consideration till we have disposed of the other two.

A metaphysician of the Berkeleyan school would meet the denial of the existence of mind by denying the existence of matter, and thus a dead-lock would ensue; as in the case of the two mothers who came before Solomon, the assertion of the one has sis much weight as that of the other, unless the secret belief can be put to the proof; and here the resemblance ceases, for though the materialist certainly acts as if lie were conscious of being a spiritual being, the case cannot on that account be given in favor of the metaphysician, for he, with equal disbelief in his professed opinion, acts constantly as if matter had a very real existence. In short these two opinions are of equal worth, just because neither is worth anything. Both are phantoms which may trouble our dreams, but which, vanish when the daylight of common sense conies in. Our hourly experience, whatever its deficiences, does not carry a lie in its hand; it tells us that we have bodies and that we have minds also.

But we would further remind the materialists that this argument is faulty, inasmuch as all acknowledge that a plain inference from facts is an equally good ground of belief with the testimony of the senses themselves. Thus no one ha 3 ever seen oxygen, bydt'ogen, or azote, and yet no chemist doubts their existence; and though magnetism can neither be seen, heard, smelt, tasted, nor touched, it is known as a reality by its effects; and, therefore, those scrupulous materialists who avoid using the word " Mind" as carefully as the Hebrews did another word, are guilty of a similar affectation to that of a person who should refuse to say " Magnetism," but would prefer to talk of " the peculiar molecular polarity of iron under certain circumstances." I suppose that a materialist thus pressed would merge this first argument in the second, which we shall come to by-and-bye.

The reason we have marked 3 may be termed the apologetic or analogical argument for materialism, because*it aims at overcoming the repugnance we feel at classing mental phenomena with those of matter, which seem so very different, by alleging the analogy of artificial arrangements effecting changes as great.J We readily allow that analogy is a legitimate resort in argument, for we regard the Imagination as quite as valuable an instrument of research as the Eeason, and one which culls materials from a much wider range; but we think that science affords a ready means of showing that there is no analogy in this case. The argument would have been very difficult to meet thirty or even twenty years ago, but now it is easy. The greatest physical discovery made last century was that of the indestructibility of Matter, so absolute (in man's experience at all events,) that even where substances consume, they are not lost. The greatest discovery of this century again has been the indistructibility of Force. While it assumes many forms, appearing now as light, now as heat, or as electricity, galvanism, magnetism, chemical affinity, elasticity, or sound, it is proved to demonstration that there is always the same amount of force through all these changes. Now, place these two truths together: matter never undergoes a loss ; force never acquires a gain ; therefore, no mattrr becomes force. Conversely, force cannot become matter. Science, so much distrusted in certain quarters, has thus made a valuable contribution to Psychology, for it has attested the correctness of that intuitive feeling of the mind which affirms the total distinction between force, which acts, and matter, which is acted on. And this furnishes us with a legitimate reason for continuing to rely on that intuition when it tells us that neither matter nor force are the same as mind; for we feel that while the two former are essentially diverse between themselves, they yet agree in that neither have the slightest thing in common with intelligence.

We now take up the argument moat relied on by those who consider mind to be generated by tho brain in the same way as bile 19 secreted by the liver. We refer our readers back to our mode of putting it, given in a previous column, where we endeavored to express it i'airly and plainly, arid free from objection by our opponents. (Argument No. 2.) The connection between the manifestation of sensation, motion, (whethervoluntaryorinvoluntary)inßtinct,reason,aud moral emotions, and the existence of nervous matter in the shape of ganglions, spinal chord, brain and nerves proper, is very close and significant. That is agreed upon all hands. The question is : will it bear the meaning put upon it by the materialistic school of physiologists ? It is a difficult question. Wo wonder if meu have stumbled ; there is a " darkness that may be felt." We must lend each

J Tho argument convoyed in this paragraph and the next, has been independently arrived at by another writer, who states it concisely in a thoughtful letter (signed " S") in tho Examiner of the 21st inst.

other helping hands ; and first enquire in what direction we shall look for light.

Another department of thought was once as dark as this; and from the highest of all examples moving in that sphere we may learn that the most instructive truths lie close at hand and attach to common things. Thus, when the Great Teacher would throw light upon Q-od's thoughts and wishes about mankind he likened the Deity to a man acting in various capacities, as a king, a father, a sower, a shepherd ; and we hope we are on a safe track if we do the like in this other province ; in which case the enquiry becomes: what does man do when he acts on nature or on his fellow men ? Man as an artificer or an artist gives the simplest case. He either alters the form or the substance of some natural object, corresponding to the mechanical or to the chemical arts. And of these we will take the most instructive acts those in which man alters the form of substances.

In every case, we believe, four things may be noted: —l. He desires and designs the work, 2. He performs it. 3. The thing when made has acquired i\ fitness for some purpose for which it was not before adapted. 4. This change is not owing to any fresh properties acquired by the substance, bufc to a new form given to the article in accordance with the original design. All this is so plain as to require no remark except as to No. 4, which nec-is examples in illustration. A block of wood if turned into a cup, or into a ball, or carred'into an image has undergone no change as regards the particles, but an utter change as regards the mass. An artist holding a piece of chalk or charcoal in his hand will so distribute its particles, by a few masterly strokes, portraying, say, a beautiful head, as to cause pleasure and elicit admiration. The particles of the crayon have acquired no fresh properties—they owe their efficacy to the blackness which they always possessed, and yet through their means a mental effect has been produced. Catgut has 6urely no elements of harmony in it; it subserved [no such purpose in its original location; and yet one can so place it as to draw sweet music from it.

Does not all this show that even man can so control the material world as to draw out from it more than was in it, by impressing on it his own ideas ? Is it not then easy, natural, almost necessary to conclude that the Creator is adequate to so adapt and arrange matter as that without its acquiring any additional properties it shall do his behests in any department of His kingdom ? And as no one falls into admiration of the crayon on the catgut, but passes at once and rightly to the mind of the artist or musician, so all achievements of the human mind should according to this view be traced to and accumulate at the primal fountain.

We conclude therefore that as far us we arc warranted in reasoning from the familiarly known to the more obscure, the association of mental operations with the brain by no means warrants any such conclusion as that the latter produces thought, but rather the belief that the Creator ha* so organised the brain as to be the mere medium of the spirit. If it be objected that this implies the cessation of tho life of the mind with the departure of (ho breath, wo reply that the a alogy of ihe other two eivaU'd entities (matter and form), which modern science hns ."O closely scrutinised, suggests with a hitherto uimrilis;.d cogency that, nothing is destroyed, and tint the system of the world gives ample warrant for believing that an active agency, though it may slumber for tx time, never loses the capacity of reviving at a future ti:no.

Many other conclusions might be worked out fro;a pursuance of this method, which is just, ihnf. of natural theology, but our limits warn us to be brief. We will therefore only indicate a few ideas without expanding them.

The work, a mere passive evidence of the mind of the workman, can yet tell a good deal, and a.-i it could show nothing of him if ho worked at random, it follows that all that it reveals is consciously his. \gain if the work be of a high character, it will 3IIOW his character, and will be a more or less explicit revealing of himself. Accordingly we can see how it was that man, the highest work of God, should be said to have been made in His likeness.

There are, doubtless, many minds to whom it would be more agreeable to believe that, the Almighty had used no intermediate means to work out His will; but wj think that on reflection it will be perceived that it was a greater thing to accomplish vast designs by humble means than by auv other way. We conceive of the great scheme of Creation and Providence that its majesty lay in its conception and design, and that these are seen in strongest relief against tho poor and shifting short-sighted stratagems of our species when the Author is realised as so knowing " what is in man," and in all beneath Him, as securely work out his utmost purposes by means, poor it maj be in themselves, but acquiring dignity and grandeur from the use to which they are made to subserve and inevitably to fulfil. For it cannot have escaped any reader who has followed our line of thought, that the less we find it needful to assign to the creature the more remains to be attributed to the Creator, and that the true dignity of man is to bo more really found in his falling in as a willing adjunct to the replete design, than in any more restricted contentment. F. W. I.