since it is not organization which confers sentiment, but the soul itself that experiences it in the use of the senses, according to association and its innate properties. Thus with the very same order of organs, one man loves what another hates, not because the one is better formed for hating than the other, but because their mental habits are opposed in consequence of different associations. For the same reason, a man may avoid to-day that he eagerly sought yesterday, not because his organs are altered, but because some fact or fancy has modified his impressions—he has the same brain, but different knowledge.

The rational soul is never practicably divisible into three parts, animal, moral, and intellectual, for all our conscious, voluntary acts involve all these divisions. Man submits to impulse or resists it, according to the character of his knowledge and moral conviction. Unless mad, drunk, or idiotic, he always acts as a moral agent, being influenced by circumstances, just as they may comport with his necessities, and with his acquired ideas of right and wrong.

I am earnestly desirous that my observations on phrenology may not be misunderstood. No doubt its sober study is calculated greatly to advance the interests of man. All I wish to show in opposition to some of its professors, is, that though we think with brain in this world, the brain itself neither thinks, feels, nor wills. It is quite futile to refer to prearranged and coordinate relations between external objects and the organism of the brain, without supposing the existence of a power which is not derived from the brain, but which acts through it, not always and merely in proportion to the size of the organ and the state of its blood, but also according to convictions of truth, and by the operation of agencies beyond the reach of our senses, and whose influence, therefore, we can not esti

mate. Let the anatomist, the phrenologist, and the divine proceed in peace together. This, all Christians will desire to do; but those who are not such will find contention rather likely to engender additional strife than to enlarge true knowledge. Why should we quarrel? We shall see more alike by-and-by; and that the more speedily the more patient we are with each other. The pursuit of truth can not properly divide her followers, but the more closely we adhere to her, the more nearly we shall approach each other; for all the departments of truth belong to the same system, and, had we faith in the Lord of life, nature, and mind, as all Christians profess to have, we should expect to find that the different radii of knowledge center together in one light. If any word of mine intercepts the smallest ray of that light from any understanding, may that word be blotted out forever.

CHAPTER III.

LIFE, IRRITABILITY, AND SENSIBILITY.

TRUE philosophy, like a beautiful island arising by slow degrees from the profundity of a vast ocean, continues to enlarge to our sight, and its ultimate extent is unimaginable, since its bounds can only be infinite and eternal-it is founded in the mind of the Almighty. When we attempt to penetrate the mystery of creation, by inquiring into the causes in operation by which the wondrous existences of this diversified world are evolved, we seem to look into darkness, and our endeavors to see excite in our imaginations a false light, which deceives and confounds us. There are deep recesses in the temple of nature, which the feeble flame kindled by man upon her altars serves rather to indicate than to illumine. The shekinah of its builder and Lord must return ere that temple shall be filled with appropriate light, and be revealed in all its magnificent beauty. At present, we behold but a little of the superficies here and there; and all we can discern only suggests the vastness of the design, the perfection of the finish, the wisdom of the details; and although we discover enough to fill our souls with awe and adoration at the manifest evidences of divine skill and benevolence, the impressions of the Almighty's hand are like hieroglyphics, the meaning of which we may not yet interpret. These thoughts are rather poetical than scientific; but poetry and science are more nearly connected than we generally suppose, since the confines of the latter are surrounded

with mystery, some conception of which the mind naturally endeavors to express, and therefore imagination, as becomes her office, beguiles us with fancies and fictions when reason fails to enjoy facts. Life, irritability, sensibility-these words may well suggest ideas of Lord Byron rather than of John Hunter. They are the names of qualities which we do not understand, and, like the term gravitation, as employed by Newton, express the complex notion connected with certain phenomena which we refer to occult causes, since we know not how otherwise to explain or even to express them.

The nomenclature of science is but a mode of masking ignorance; and we need not wonder at this, since all human knowledge terminates in abstractions, as if to intimate that this life is to furnish us with objects which we must wait for the next life more fully to discover. Nevertheless, facts are before us, and it is for us to treasure them, as they must form the commodity of our minds, the wealth of our reason; and the facts which force us to adopt the words life, irritability, and sensibility, to express what is common to them, are of great interest, beauty, and importance, and therefore our attention to a few of them will be abundantly rewarded.

The living body is endowed with power to reduce the elements congenial to its nature into its own substance. But the very existence of this animated structure required that some agency should have been at work anterior to those combinations and arrangements which we call organization. As far as we can discover, this preexisting agency is life. This can not be a chemical property, nor the result of chemical affinities, since elementary action is opposed to it, but it is a power which modifies the laws of matter to form specific organisms. All living beings are the offspring of other living beings; and all we know of life is, that it subjects dead matter to new influences, and causes it to assume

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new forms, to promote growth and to resist decay. We see that, as Coleridge says, "every rank of creatures, as it ascends in the scale of creation, leaves death behind and below it." The greatest tenacity of organic life does not, however, belong to the highest order of creatures, for we find that reptiles possess it in the greatest degree. It is said, that even some animalculæ enjoy a life which is destroyed with vastly more difficulty than that of more complicated beings. Thus the vibrio tritici, which causes the ear-cockle in wheat, may, it is said, be kept for many months in a dry and apparently dead state, and yet, on being moistened, it will revive.

We shall understand the term life the better if we reflect a little on the difference between a living and a dead body. First, we observe that living bodies need aliment, and convert it into their own substance, and next we see that they are subject to certain laws which regulate their action and rest. The reader should refer to works on physiology for explanation of the processes of assimilation and growth; but I will here illustrate what is meant by action and rest. The leaves and branches of a sensitive plant shrink from the touch, but on being too frequently approached this delicacy departs. Like an ill placed mind, it seems to lose its modesty amid rude associates. Poetical comparisons, however, contain only metaphoric truth. The habit of exposure blunts the fine feelings of the soul as well as the sensibility of the body, but the sensitive plant requires only rest to restore the contractile power which resides in the joints of its leaves and leaf-stems, in order to be as sensitive as ever. The same thing happens with regard to different parts of our bodies; for example, the heart, which acts under the stimulus of the blood, and then pauses, and then again contracts; and this is repeated more than a hundred thousand times a-day. If the heart be removed from the body, it will contract and