II. When, however, we have proceeded so far as to conceive the universe as one individual substance, the attributes with which it must be endowed will be no less embarrassing than its first existence. For, it is too plain to be denied, that whatever we find to exist, must be derived from the independent Being that existed from eternity. It follows, that this independent Being must either have possessed in himself whatever exists, or must have had the power of producing it. We find, however, sense and motion to exist; and if that eternal thing is the world itself, there is no other source to which we can refer the origin of sense and motion.

Now, without attempting to define matter or mind, and only taking the evidence of our senses for the existence of the former, it is surely safe to affirm that we find in ourselves, and observe in other animals, in some in an equal, in others in an inferior degree, a power of sensation and

stance, are words, which, when joined together, destroy each other." An observation, solely founded on the ambiguity of the word substance.

reflection, and a power of moving ourselves and other things. We find in the world other bodies, which are to all appearance entirely without the sensitive or reflecting power, and are certainly incapable of spontaneous motion. It has, therefore, been pretty generally concluded, that animals endued with these qualities, owe their superiority over the other bodies which are without them, and which we term inanimate, to the exclusive possession of an immaterial substance, which philosophers have called spirit; and that there are, in fact, two sorts of beings in the world, cogitative and incogitative, corporeal and spiritual.

This difference is altogether denied by those who assert the universe to be one substance. "The same matter," they affirm*, " crystallizes in the mineral, vegetates in the plant, lives and is organized in

* Academical Questions, p. 251, et seq.: a book, of which the precise object is not declared; but in which the old atheistic and sceptical arguments are brought again into view, according to their several systems, with considerable labour, and placed in as popular a light as their nature allows.

the brute, feels, thinks, and reasons in man. Thoughts and sentiments proceed from peculiar distributions of atoms in the human brain; and as necessarily result from its organization, as the forms and modes of being, in inferior creatures, result from the peculiar disposition and arrangement of their component particles, and the properties inherent in these. The reason why a stone falls to the ground, and the reason why the globe of the earth turns on its axis, are equally to be found in the book of nature. In man, the machinery is more wonderful, and the motion more complicated, than in any other creature. Hence, is his superiority in the scale of existence; and hence, too, result all his faculties of thinking and acting."

It might be sufficient merely to ask, whether these passages contain a more satisfactory explanation of the phenomena of thought and motion, than to suppose that the "first thinking Being," namely, a God distinct from the visible world, "should have communicated to certain systems of created senseless matter, put together as he thinks fit, some degrees of sense, per

In

ception, and thought*." But it is impossible not to observe in addition, that the argument involves a confusion between the mechanical laws of matter, and the spontaneous motion of animate nature. order to establish the pretended analogy, the motion of a stone, and of the globe of the earth, ought either to be voluntary, or that of man, and other living animals, to be necessary, and determined by prescribed laws. Man is subject to the laws which govern matter in the same way as other bodies are subject to them, and is confined to the earth by their influence; but man is endued with a faculty altogether distinct and separate, which is totally wanting to unorganized matter. The difference between the power of beginning motion, and passive inactivity; between inward consciousness and sluggish insensibility, is not such as to be hastily accounted for by the different situation of the primary atoms of the same material substance. We are reduced therefore to the dilemma of supposing, either that the whole universe is one cogitative, sentient being, as some have

* Locke, Essay on Human Understanding, vol. ii. p. 167.

affirmed, but, I think, without much countenance from reason and our natural apprehensions; or of embracing the manifest absurdity, that the one universal substance is endued with attributes which are wanting to many of the parts of which it is composed*.

III. It will be sufficient to point out one other inadmissible conclusion resulting from the hypothesis now under consideration. If the universe itself is the first eternal Being, its existence is necessary, as metaphysicians speak; and it must be possessed of all those qualities which are inseparable from necessary existence. Of ́this nature are immutability, and perfection. For, change is the attribute of imperfection; and imperfection is incompatible with that Being, which is, as the hypothesis affirms, independent, and therefore can have no possible source of imperfection. To suppose, therefore, of the first independent Being, that it could have ex

*"As substance cannot exist without all its attri

butes, so extension must always exist with thought." Ac. Quest. 237. The necessary inference is not added, that thought must always exist with extension.

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