known properties of the mind, I should be told of a certain incomprehensible union of matter and mind whereby they mutually and necessarily sympathise with each other, though they are substances as dissimilar and heterogeneous as possible.

I will not attempt to disprove this incomprehensible union, because, against what is confessedly incomprehensible, there is no arguing.

In addition to what I have said in answer to Dr. Clarke's "plain reason" for asserting that thought is not material-namely, that it is not figure and motion-I will only observe, that the mind may have both figure and motion. I know that my mind has limits, and I cannot conceive any thing to have limits without having figure. If the mind cannot have motion, then surely it cannot have the power of self-motion, which the doctor is contending that it has; and if

And

it has not the power of self-motion, then it can have no such faculty as free will. if it has figure and motion, it may have been generated by that which has those properties-namely; matter. Some one, I forget who, perceiving the very shocking impiety in supposing that matter could have any incapacity of thought which God could not subdue, admit, that God may impart to matter the faculty of thought, but observes that such faculty would be something added to matter, and therefore not properly mat ter. But is not every property of matter something added to matter; or, rather, are not all the properties of matter equally the free gifts of God; and if so, how can any one property be an addition to matter more than another?

Buffon concludes, from the similarity of construction that subsists between the brain of a man and that of an ourang outang,

that thought is not the result of material organisation. But surely there may be

essential differences in the formation of the two brains; in the matter of which the brains are composed, as well as in the organs from which, and the nerves by means of which, impulse is transmitted to these brains, wholly imperceptible to Buffon.

Let man, then, remember that he is "but dust ;" and let him be assured that nothing but his ignorance and his vanity will ever lead him to think any thing belonging to him aught but dust.

I have argued for the materiality of the mind or soul, on the assumption that matter has a real and not a merely imaginary or ideal existence. That it has any real existence, I know it is impossible to prove; but immaterialists (I mean those who contend for the immateriality of the soul) gain nothing by the admission that matter has

G

no real existence: if matter does not exist, it follows that our bodies are as immaterial

as our minds, and consequently that our minds are as material as our bodies; and that is all for which I contend.

LETTER VIII.

ADMITTING, for the sake of argument, that the mind is what is called a spirit, I confess I cannot conceive how a created being, whether spiritual or not, can have such a property as free will. The nature of every created being must consist of such properties and relations to other beings and things as it pleased the Creator to confer upon it; and by those properties and relations it must, while it is permitted to exist, be necessarily and exclusively regulated and governed. And it is clearly impossible that any created being could have any option respecting the properties which constitute its nature. Before it could exer