but they were grown to be silk stockings, as was said before.

And whereas it is affirmed, that every animal is conscious of some individual self-moving, self-determining principle; it is answered, that, as in a House of Commons all things are determined by a Majority, so it is in every animal system. As that which determines the House is said to be the reason of the whole assembly; it is no otherwise with thinking beings, who are determined by the greater force of several particles; which, like so many unthinking members, compose one thinking system.

And whereas it is likewise objected, that punishments cannot be just that are not inflicted upon the same individual, which cannot subsist without the notion of a spiritual substance: We reply, that this is no greater difficulty to conceive, than that a corporation, which is likewise a flux body, may be punished for the faults, and liable to the debts, of their predecessors.

We proceed now to explain, by the structure of the brain, the several modes of thinking. It is well known to anatomists, that the brain is a congeries of glands, that separate the finer parts of the blood, called animal spirits; that a gland is nothing but a canal of a great length, variously intorted and wound up together. From the arietation and motion of the spirits in those canals, proceed all the different sorts of thoughts. Simple ideas are produced by the motion of the spirits in one simple canal; when two of these canals disembogue themselves into one, they make what we call a proposition; and when two of these propositional canals empty themselves into a third, they form a syllogism, or a ratiocination. Memory is performed in a distinct apartment of the brain, made up of vessels similar, and like situated to the ideal, propositional, and syllogistical vessels in the

primary parts of the brain. After the same manner it is easy to explain the other modes of thinking; as also why some people think so wrong and perversely, which proceed from the bad configuration of those glands. Some, for example, are born without the propositional or syllogistical canals; in others, that reason ill, they are of unequal capacities; in dull fellows, of too great a length, whereby the motion of the spirits is retarded; in trifling geniuses, weak and small; in the over-refining spirits, too much retorted and winding; and so of the rest.

We are so much persuaded of the truth of this our hypothesis, that we have employed one of our members, a great virtuoso at Nuremberg, to make a sort of an hydraulick engine, in which a chemical liquor resembling blood, is driven through elastic channels resembling arteries and veins, by the force of an embolus like the heart, and wrought by a pneumatick machine of the nature of the lungs, with ropes and pullies, like the nerves, tendons, and muscles: And we are persuaded that this our artificial man will not only walk, and speak, and perform most of the outward actions of the animal life, but (being wound up once a week) will perhaps reason as well as most of your country parsons.

We wait with the utmost impatience for the honour of having you a member of our society, and beg leave to assure you that we are, etc.

What return Martin made to this obliging letter we must defer to another occasion: let it suffice at present to tell, that Crambe was in a great rage at them, for stealing (as he thought) a hint from his Theory of Syllogisms, without doing him the honour so much as to mention him. He advised his master by no means to enter into their society, unless they would give him sufficient security, to bear him harmless from any thing that might happen after this present life.

VOL. V.

CHAP. XIII.

OF THE SECESSION OF MARTINUS, AND SOME HINT OF HIS TRAVELS.

IT was in the year 1699, that Martin set out on his Travels. Thou wilt certainly be very curious to know what they were. It it not yet time to inform thee. But what hints I am at liberty to give, I will. Thou shalt know then, that in his first voyage he was carried by a prosperous storm, to a discovery of the remains of the ancient Pygmaan Empire.

That in his second, he was as happily shipwrecked on the land of the Giants, now the most humane people in the wold.

That in his third voyage he discovered a whole kingdom of Philosophers, who govern by the Mathematicks; with whose admirable schemes and projects he returned to benefit his own dear country; but had the misfortune to find them rejected by the envious ministers of Queen Anne, and himself sent treacherously away.

And hence it is, that in his fourth voyage he discovers a vein of melancholy proceeding almost to a disgust of his species; but, above all, a mortal detestation to the whole flagitious race of Ministers, and a final resolution not to give in any Memorial to the Secretary of State, in order to subject the lands he discovered to the Crown of Great Britain.

Now if, by these hints, the reader can help himself to a farther discovery of the nature and contents of these travels, he is welcome to as much light as they afford him; I am obliged, by all the ties of honour, not to speak more openly.

But if any man shall see such very extraordinary voyages, into such very extraordinary nations, which manifest the most distinguishing marks of a philosopher, a politician, and a legislator; and can imagine them to belong to a Surgeon of a Ship, or a Captain of a Merchantman, let him remain in his ignorance.

And whoever he be, that shall further observe, in every page of such a book, that cordial Love of Mankind, that inviolable Regard to Truth, that Passion for his dear Country, and that particular attachment to the excellent Princess Queen Anne; surely that man deserves to be pitied, if, by all those visible signs and characters, he cannot distinguish and acknowledge the Great Scriblerus.

CHAP. XIV.

OF THE DISCOVERIES AND WORKS OF THE GREAT SCRIBLERUS, MADE AND TO BE MADE, WRITTEN AND TO BE WRITTEN, KNOWN AND UNKNOWN.

HERE therefore, at this great period, we end our

first book. And here, O reader, we entreat thee utterly to forget all thou hast hitherto read, and to cast thy eyes only forward to that boundless field the next shall open upon thee; the fruits of which (if thine, or our fins do not prevent) are to spread and multiply over this our work, and over all the face of the earth.

In the mean time, know what thou owest, and what thou yet may'st owe, to this excellent person, this prodigy of our age; who may well be called, The Philosopher of ultimate Causes, since, by a sagacity peculiar to himself, he hath discovered effects in

their very cause; and without the trivial helps of experiments, or observations, hath been the inventor of most of the modern systems and hypotheses.

He hath enriched mathematicks with many precise and geometrical Quadratures of the Circle. He first discovered the Cause of Gravity, and the intestine Motion of Fluids.

To him we owe all the observations of the Parallax of the Pole-star, and all the new Theories of the Deluge.

He it was that first taught the right use sometimes of the Fuga Vacui, and sometimes of the Materia Subtilis, in resolving the grand phenomena of nature.

He it was, that first found out the Palpability of Colours; and by the delicacy of his touch, could distinguish the different vibrations of the heterogeneous rays of light.

His were the projects of Perpetuum Mobiles, Flying Engines, and Pacing Saddles; the method of discovering the Longitude by Bomb-Vessels, and of increasing the Trade-Wind by vast plantations of Reeds and Sedges.

I shall mention only a few of his philosophical and mathematical works.

1. A complete Digest of the Laws of Nature, with a Review of those that are obsolete or repealed, and of those that are ready to be renewed and put in force.

2. A mechanical Explication of the Formation of the Universe, according to the Epicurean Hypothesis.

3. An Investigation of the Quantity of real Matter in the Universe, with the Proportion of the Specifick Gravity of solid Matter to that of Fluid.

4. Microscopical Observations on the Figure and Bulk of the constituent Parts of all Fluids. A Calculation of the Proportion in which the Fluids of the Earth decrease, and of the Period in which they will be totally exhausted.