the error of ascribing remote results to their nearest origins, but of referring dissimilar effects to the same immutable cause. This doctrine, like that of Pythagoras, travels in a continual circle of life and death, and the only two truths it admits are,-death, because it is certain and inevitable, and reproduction, because every thing that lives must die and under-die and undergo the process of decomposition, before its particles again acquire vitality, and enter into the formation of new compounds.

The whole history of humanity is to this system, one series of transformations,

"Nothing of it that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea change
Into something rare and strange."

To it, of all abodes, the grave is the most pregnant with vitality; every corse that is consigned to earth, confers life on myriads of other creatures who had not known that enjoyment if death had not occurred. But even though every atom on the surface of the earth may have been a portion of something once living, now inert-though humanity may not shuffle off its "mortal coil," without peopling the clay which covers it with its spoils, where is the spirit to be sought that animated man-in what unhal

lowed recepticle has the aura of intellect taken

up its abode?

"Thou apart,

Above, beyond, O tell me, mighty mind,

Where art thou! shall I dive into the deep,
Call to the sun, or ask the roaring winds,
Where art thou?"

In this dreary doctrine, trivial truths are curiously considered, and those of most importance wholly overlooked. It illustrates the horrors of death, and renders the hope of future life a repugnant feeling, a loathsome anticipation. Its lights are like the lamps in sepulchres, they gleam upon the dead, but they give no lustre to the living. That light of life, that god-like apprehension which renders man the monarch of created beings, is wholly lost sight of in the inquiry after the final disposition of the particles of which his body is composed.

Life and death have their analogies for this system, but the spirit of man and immortality have none! There is no link between humanity and heaven! The body is allowed to have its transformations, but the mind is not worthy of a transmigration, not even to be portioned among the worms which have their being in our forms.

By whatever name this vital principle is designated, animus or anima, aura or efflatus, spark or flame, etherial or celestial, perplexity at every step besets the doctrine of its extinction. And however speciously, and even sincerely, its entertainer may uphold it, still in secret there are, there must be, misgivings of its truth.

"And yet one doubt

Pursues him still, lest all he cannot die-
Lest that pure breath of life, the spirit of man,
Which God inspired, cannot together perish
With this corporeal clod; then in the grave,
Or in some dismal place, who knows

But he shall die a living death! O thought
Most horrible, if true!"

In a word, the error of this doctrine, like that of many others, is, in attributing obvious effects to their immediate instead of their remote and ultimate cause, and in tracing similitudes in dissimilar analogies.

CHAPTER V.

THE NERVOUS ENERGY.

THE nature of this vital fluid has been the enquiry of all ages, and up to the present time it must be admitted that nothing is known of its essence. Its effects, both in animal and vegetable life, have been found in some important respects to be analogous with those of an agent the most wonderful in nature, the most subtle of all fluids, the most powerful of all stimulants in its action on the life, whether of plants or animals-the electric fluid.

Although science, (with all the rapidity of its march,) has thrown little if any additional light on its phenomena for the last thirty years, yet a few facts have been noticed whose tendency is to show that there is a similitude between the phenomena of the nervous and the electric fluids.

Whenever the properties of the latter shall be better understood than they are at present, in all probability the principle of the nervous

energy will be more cognizable to the range (limited as it must necessarily always be) of human knowledge. A day, in all probability, will come, when the genius of some future Franklin will make that "fifth element," and most powerful of all, better known than it now is; and trace the analogies of the subtle spark which pervades all space, with that corporeal fire which fills the nerves with life, and heat, and communicates vitality and vigor, to every fibre of the heart and its remotest vessels. The nature of the nervous energy may then become better understood, and that invisible aura which fans the blood and invigorates the body, be known to us by something more than its effects.

"In this view," to use the words of one who applied electrical agency to the grandest discoveries of our time, "we do not look to distant ages, or amuse ourselves with brilliant, though delusive dreams, concerning infinite improbability or the annihilation of disease or Ideath. But we reason by analogy from simple facts. We consider only a state of human progression arising out of its present condition; we look for a time that we may reasonably expect, for a bright day of which we already behold the dawn!"