influence which may have been exerted by education, and which has unquestionably served more prominently to develop and mark the distinctive features of the character. No process of studied and persevering amalgamation will ever annihilate these peculiarities, or confer upon the one the essential attributes of the other. There will always be in the male a greater aptitude for bold and original thought, for comprehensive analysis, for clear and connected reasoning, and for slowly but accurately formed judgment, wrought out from a mass of heterogeneous principles, however distorted by prejudice or clouded by passion; while in the female, there will ever be found a greater susceptibility for discovering the minuter shades of character, as well as the distant bearings of fact and opinion. The remoter associations will be almost instinctively and instantaneously seized: there will be a greater delicacy of tact and feeling, which will often lead its possessor to just and adequate conclusions, without the labour of a slow and lengthened process of argumentation: and there will be a more defined influence exerted by the dictates of the heart over the decisions of the understanding. Many exceptions to this general rule will be found; but even these only serve to confirm the difference between individuals, as well as between the several classes of society.

But if the mental manifestations be so totally dissimilar-if they may be communicated from generation to generation, not as the result of an

after process of education, but altogether anterior to it; if the mental capacity of children in the same family be radically different; if the character of each be marked by peculiarity of disposition; if, in some, there shall be observed a very obviously defective condition of the mental phenomena; and if these be materially influenced by the period of life, and by the accident of sex, surely we are irresistibly led to the conclusion that these circumstances are rather attributes of materiality; that it cannot be predicated of the immaterial principle, an emanation from the Divinity, that one is essentially different from another (and if so, where is moral responsibility;) that this difference is communicable; that it is energetic in one, and defective in another; that it possesses good and evil dispositions, as the original gift of the Creator; that it is susceptible of growth, maturity, and decadence; and finally, that it is marked by peculiarity of sex; but that these changes are impressed upon the immaterial principle, through the medium of its alliance with the body, and especially by its connexion with the brain.

239

CHAP. II.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED THE BRAIN IS THE ORGAN OF MIND-SINCE ITS MANIFESTATIONS ARE INFLUENCED BY CIRCUMSTANCES WHOSE PRIMARY AGENCY IS UNDOUBTEDLY MATERIAL-SINCE THEY ARE PERVERTED BY SLIGHT CAUSES OF NERVOUS IRRITATION, AND IN THEIR TURN ALSO PRODUCE A RECIPROCAL AGENCY UPON THE BODY-SINCE THEY ARE DEVELOPED BY EXERCISE SINCE THEY ARE INFLUENCED BY DISEASE-SINCE THERE IS A RELATION BETWEEN THE MANIFESTATIONS AND THE DEGREE OF PERFECTION OF THE ORGAN-SINCE THE LATTER IS SUBSERVIENT TO THE WILL-AND SINCE THIS IS ITS ONLY CONCEIVABLE USE IN THE ANIMAL ECONOMY-MODERN CRANIOLOGY, AND THE DOCTRINE OF THE PLURALITY OF THE BRAINULAR ORGANS.

4. THE manifestations of mind are farther influenced by circumstances, whose primary agency is undoubtedly material, and whose reflex operation is extended directly or indirectly to the immaterial principle, through the medium of its organ the brain. Such are the influence of temperature, the state of the digestive powers, the use or abuse of alcoholic stimuli, the employment of other articles of diet, &c. According to these varying circumstances, there will be a great difference in the same individual at different times, in his aptitude for thought and mental exertion. Every

one at all acquainted with literary pursuits, knows that there are hours of inspiration, when more may be effected in this short space, than in days of intense drudgery; and it is degrading to suppose that the mind can be thus liable to inaction, or goaded into energy. Besides this languor and activity may be traced to the morbid agency of physical causes on the one hand, and to their absence on the other. Thus excessive heat produces languor and incapacity for exertion; a very low temperature renders the faculties torpid; a moderate degree of cold braces them, and enables intellectual operations to be conducted for a much longer period without inducing fatigue.

It is matter of common observation, that after dinner is not the time for intellectual exertion: all find that the mental manifestations are conducted with difficulty, and imperfectly; and that if they are persisted in, they will very frequently produce indigestion, in consequence of robbing the stomach of that sensorial energy, which has been drained off for the maintenance of the operations of mind. And if from any circumstance, the stomach may have been first disordered, it is quite impossible to pursue any satisfactory trains of thought the attempt is unavailing, and must terminate in disappointment.

Witness again the rapid development of ideas under the influence of alcoholic stimuli; their disordered association, and want of coherence, when the stimulus has been carried beyond a certain extent; the subsequent destruction of the

powers of volition; and the apparent annihilation of the mental principle in the stupor of drunkenness. Witness also the reveries of the opiumeater, and the disordered fancies to which these individuals are subjected in their periodical loss. of excitement. And above all, witness the influence of certain articles of diet upon the manifestations of mind-of green tea for example, which may be selected as peculiarly exemplifying this influence, on account of the very opposite effects which it produces on different individuals, accordingly as the brain may partake of an excessive or defective state of energy. There is generally some degree of truth as a foundation for common remarks; and however it may be enveloped with the clouds of ignorance, or obscured by the mists of prejudice, still the common sense of mankind, will seldom admit to a permanent recognition, that which is wholly and entirely false and before a prudent enquirer rejects apparently vulgar errors, as utterly baseless and worthless, he will do well to hesitate, and ask what semblance of truth at least, had first given currency and consistency to opinions, which appear in the present age, only in the garb of prejudice, and which are now generally associated with ignorance and vulgarity. It is curious to remark, that the rejection of all these deductions as spurious, is in itself a prejudice; a prejudice as complete and as operative, as the very principle it proposes to discard as the result of a similar and irrational influence. So it is with the agency

VOL. I.

R