The object he has in view is of the highest importance. He proposes to explain some of those operations of the vital principle, which, from the earliest ages of our race, have been objects of curiosity to the philosopher, and sources of terror to the vulgar. In the prosecution of this task, he has collected and put together the materials of a very entertaining book;-but that he has given in it a specimen of philosophic investigation,-that he has brightened any portions of the intellectual kingdom which were formerly obscure, or that his present publication is calculated to make men more virtuous and happy, are claims to public patronage, which the writer of these remarks is disposed to assert that Dr Hibbert's Philosophy of Apparitions does not

possess.

Before going farther, it will be proper to notice two positions which the writer of this paper thinks himself at liberty to assume. That the vital principle should influence the aggregation and the form of that mass, which is to serve through life as the soul's temporary home, may appear to many a very unreasonable assumption. When we analyze the subject, when we find that matter of which so much is said, and by which, in the opinion of many, every thing is performed, is nothing more than various modifications of extension and resistance, and when, on the other hand, consciousness commands us to regard hope, and love, and remembrance, as qualities of the substance mind, even cautious philosophers, instead of saying that the one class of qualities is the cause of the other class of qualities, will be led to believe that either of these collections of qualities, may, and does exist independent of the other. But when we advance in the investigation, when, to avoid inconsistency, we are obliged to admit the

VOL. XXIII. NO. X.

vital principle to be one and indivi❤ sible, when physiology demonstrates to us that the particles which compose men's bodies are as fleeting in their existence with us, as the moments that made them ours; it seems most warrantable to conclude, that the principle which remains after all the original particles are gone, did exist previous to their union;-and that the first and governing element in the constitution of our race is, that by which it may be most literally said man lives, and moves, and has his being. By those laws, then, which regulate alike the phenomena of the spiritual and the material kingdoms, the aggregation and assimilation of that matter is carried on by which the soul forms a receptacle for itself, and in which it passes through the various stages of infancy, youth, and manhood. When, however, the great purposes of the eternal are fulfilled, the decay of man, in some cases, goes on in a manner equally gradual as his growth. The processes of assimilation fail,-impressions at first become confused, and are ultimately unperceived, and, at last, after all the bonds which connect the spirit with the body are one by one dissolved,

That wings its flight to scenes of bliss

or woe;

This drops into the dark and loathsome grave,

Like a disabled pitcher of no use.

The other position which is to be assumed relates to the definition of a cause. When the illustrious Sir Humphry Davy, by his experiments on the alkalis and earths, demonstrated that many substances, supposed to be simple, were composed of heterogeneous parts, he performed a similar service to the philosophy of physics which the equally illustrious Dr. Thomas Brown, by his " Essay on Cause

4 S

and Effect," had previously rendered to the philosophy of mind. By that classic production it has been shown, that between two events no connexion can possibly exist ;— that a cause can be nothing more than invariable antecedence,-and that when we imagine something else has been discovered, it is always found, on examination, to be phenomena which are intermediate, indeed, but are not more cemented than the two events which first attracted our attention. A cause, then, we are to regard as an invariable antecedent, an event directly preceding the phenomenon to which we give the name of its effect, and which cannot exist in the ordinary course of things without being followed by the other in an undeviating sequence.

There is one observation yet to be made before proceeding to Dr. Hibbert's book. Anatomists have demonstrated that there are certain organs in the human body denominated the brain, spinal marrow, and nerves. Dr. Thomas Brown has thus summed up the opinions of physiologists regarding the state in which these organs exist in relation to each other. "The brain and the various nerves of sense in continuity with it, may, when taken together, be considered as forming one great organ, which I would term briefly the sensorial organ, essential to life, and to the immediate production of those mental phenomena which constitute our sensations." The illustrious Haller tells 118, "that by making a ligature upon the nerves of the eighth pair, the action of the stomach and the digestion of food are destroyed." Dr. Barclay, the first anatomist of our day, says, in his introduction to the arteries" that mental emotions, affecting the functions of every organ dependent on the nerves, affect also, and each in its own peculiar way, the functions of

arteries so as to vary not only the pulsations, but to change even suddenly the stute of the blood." We thus find that the nervous system is to be considered as one,-that the nervous influence is a first step in the formation of the blood ;and that the condition of the sanguineous fluid, after it is formed, is determined by the action of the vital principle on it, through the agency of the nerves. Dr. Brown, after declaring that we do not now know, and can never possibly become acquainted with those internal changes which are supposed to give rise to the phenomena of the nerves, describes the phenomena themselves in a manner as correct as it is beautiful. "If the brain and nerves be in a sound state," remarks the author of Cause and Effect," and certain substances be applied to certain parts of the nervous system, as, for instance, sapid bodies to the extremities of the nerves of taste, or light to that expansion of the optic nerve, which forms what is termed the retina,there is then instant sensation; and when the brain itself is not in a sound state to a certain extent, or when the nerve which is diffused on a particular organ is, either at this extremity of it, or in any part of its course, to a certain degree impaired, then there is no sensation, though the same external causes be applied."

Dr. Hibbert is not satisfied with this statement of our knowledge regarding the phenomena of life. Instead of saying, that we perceive external things by impressions made directly on our nerves, without attempting to discover the connection between these two events, he thinks, that if we insert between them an expansion or a condensation of the blood, we shall completely understand the mysterious process. As a foundation for this hypothesis, he sets out with sup

regarding the nerves, that he should have put them aside as a set of very troublesome and unmanageable agents. "The nerves belonging to the sensitive organs of our frame, cannot generate any mental affections without first producing those peculiar sanguineous effects which we have before described, and to which the immaterial principle of the mind seems, in some unknown manner, to be related." page 56.Agreeably to the view which I have given of nervous fibres, they may be described of three kinds. Fibres of the first description take their course from the external organs of sense, or from sensitive cavities; and, in transmitting their influence to the sanguineous system, thereby induce correspondent sensations and renovated feelings. Fibres of the second kind are connected through a system of ganglions with the brain and spinal cord; their action on the blood being for the processes of secretion and assimilation, while, at the same time, they are capable of rendering the affections of the mind more or less vivid. Nervous fibres of a third class have no immediate connexion with our mental states, but merely obey the stimulus of the will in inducing muscular motion." page 71. It is very difficult to say whether Dr. Hibbert's anatomical knowledge or his reasoning faculties make here the most ludicrous part of the exhibition. In the first place, we are told of certain insulated nerves which do convey external impressions-but these nerves convey impressions no farther than the sanguineous fluid, -the blood here takes up the tale, and passes it to a neighbouring nerve,-and this last nerve, gossip-like, communicates the tidings to the brain. Next we are informed, that the vital principle can send a message to the extremities of the body without passing it through the blood; thus mak

ing a very obvious distinction between what the soul gives and what it receives. Last of all," which ends this strange and most eventful history," a gentleman, who has undertaken to enlighten the world on one of the most profound subjects within the range of metaphysics, tells us that the will is not a term expressive of states of the mind!

This long discussion may seem to many to have no better object than the scholastic puzzle, as to whether the chicken or the egg was first created. But those who examine attentively Dr. Hibbert's theory will come to a very different conclusion. " According to the very important physiological experiments of Dr. Philip, it appears, that the nervous system consists of parts endowed with the vital principle, yet capable of acting in concert with inanimate matter; and that in man, as well as in certain well known animals, electricity is the agent thus capable of being collected by nervous organs, and of be ing universally diffused, for purposes intimately connected with the animal economy throughout every part of the human system," p. 55. Hence," when we take into consideration the effect of certain gases on the blood in inducing definite qualities and degrees of vividness in our mental feelings, the conclusion is inevitable, that the nerves belonging to the sensitive organs of our frame cannot gener. ate any mental affections without first producing those peculiar sanguineous effects, which we have before described, and to which the immaterial principle of the mind seems, in some unknown manner, to be related," p. 56. Here we have two vague hypotheses thrown upon the public; and those who know the bad consequences which have resulted to mankind from the adoption of erroneous opinions in philosophy, will not be surprised at

the eagerness here displayed to have, them rejected. As to the first, the man who can impute the nervous phenomena to electricity, merely because effects in some cases analogous have been observed, cannot hesitate to reduce to the same principle, attraction, and impulse; and must assert that power which keeps the planets in their orbits to be a modification only of the same law, which, if allowed to act with uncontrolled force, would hurl with an everlasting and undiminishing velocity the same bodies through unbounded space. The writer, on the other hand, who would have us to believe, that if we admit expansion of the blood to precede our mental affections, the manner in which the nerves operate will then be less mysterious, forgets, like the electrical theorist, that the insertion of a supposed something between two events, so far from connecting them, doubles the difficulty, by requiring itself to be connected. It would perhaps be impossible, in this age of speculation, to point out two hypotheses more closely resem. bling each other in those qualities at which the vulgar may stare, but which every man of science will deprecate in the writings of others, and avoid in his own.

-Facies non omnibus una, Nec diversa tamen, qualem decet esse so

rorum.

The metaphysical reasonings of Dr. Hibbert, are still more objectionable. That gentleman is evidently the possessor of a strong mind; he writes in a business-like style; and he invariably takes the shortest road to the object he has in view. But, as a metaphysician, he has great defects :-many of the phenomena of mind he seems not to understand even by name; the terms which he employs are not unfrequently used first in one sense

and then in another; and his digres sions, his terminations, and his recommencements, during the discussion of his subject, are so irregular, and so very whimsical, that if they do not drive every idea from the mind of his readers, they must have a conviction that the writer was an ardent admirer, if not an imitator, of the author of Tristram Shandy.

A

There is not a more simple or easier demonstrated fact connected with intellectual philosophy, than that if man had been created in the possession of only one sense, such as that of sight, he could never have arrived at a belief in the existence of things without. There cannot be a doubt that he would have made a distinction between what he saw when looking round, and the remembrance of visual ob jects which must have formed the trains of his ideas after his eyes were closed; but that he should have regarded the one class of phenomena as entirely mental, and the other as not, is an assumption too ridiculous even to be supposed. Under such circumstances he would have regarded them as more and less intense; and to the one class he might have given the name of impressions, and called the other ideas. But strength and weakness are merely relative terms,-they are founded on comparison; and objects, to be compared, must either be present, or their different relations must be remembered. In this way it is easy to perceive, that if a person can be so placed, that, unknown to him, those impressions which he derived through any par ticular organ of sense are entirely excluded, he may be led to mistake ideas of that particular class for impressions; or if every avenue of sense were shut up, ideas in that case would appear equally vivid to the mind as impressions formerly did, because then they could not be