the mind, I will not allow that extension and solidity are so also.

Extension and solidity, or to use their representative word FIGURE, is different from hard, soft, hot, cold, white, black, taste, smell, and sound, which are sensations of the mind. The existence of any one of these senses cannot be proved by any or all of the others; whereas they can all be used to prove the existence, form and extension of it.

You cannot prove that colour exists by any deductions from smell, or smell by taste, or taste by sound, or sound by heat, or heat by cold, or cold by hard, or hard by soft-at most you can but draw comparisons; but with respect to FIGURE, you can judge of its distance mathematically, by sound, and its identity by colour, smell, taste, heat, or cold, &c., being at the same moment combined in the same object: for instance

"It is established, as well by mathematical reasoning from the nature of an

elastic fluid whose compression is as the weight, as from experiment, that all sounds whatever arrive at the ear in equal times from sounding bodies equally distant”—the common velocity is 1142 English feet in a second of time. If a cannon is loaded, painted any colour, the juices of sweet, bitter, and fragrant herbs put upon it, its flash seen when fired, and the seconds counted on a watch between seeing the flash and hearing the report, its distance is mathematically ascertained; and all the senses which cannot prove the existence of each other-hearing, seeing, tasting, smelling, and feeling, we can bring together, to corroborate what MATHEMATICS demonstrates to have existence and extension.

If Hume had thought of this simple yet lucid argument, his conclusions would have been very different, and scepticism would not have found in him so able an advocate: -or if it had presented itself to the great and inquiring mind of Bishop Berkeley, he would have been led to the same conclusions

66

66

with myself, from similar desires to prove the exalted nature and immortality of man. He would not have rejected the materiality of the world, nor have used the silly and inconsistent expedient in support of idealism, "that we have no ideas of spirits," and that we can speak, think, and reason about them and their attributes, without having any ideas of them;" and of giving Reid the opportunity of sneeringly asking him, If this is so, my lord, what should hinder us from thinking and reasoning about bodies and their qualities without having any ideas of them?" They would have agreed with me, that what they called ideas, sensations, &c., were the inexplicable workings, faintly expressed by the word perceptions, of a portion of "the Divinity which stirs within us," that this portion of the Divinity is separate from matter, that the latter exists as well as the former, and that the union of both, as in man and other animals, is no proof in favour of idealism, materialism, or scepticism.

Ideas appear to me to be simply combinations of memory-the evidence for the existence of any thing must be examined by the mind before what is called the idea. can be formed, and it is very evident that memory must combine the evidence previously, but with such rapidity as to be considered instantaneous.-It cannot be denied that the various properties or capabilities for examination are innate in the mind; and it matters as little in the argument for the immortality of the soul, whether ideas are innate, or impressions made by matter, as whether a turnip existed before the combination of its constituent gases, or the colours of a rainbow before their combination on a cloud.

All the arguments about ideas, whether they are innate, or impressions made by matter, have been inadequate to support their respective theories-they have, no doubt, excited some of the most powerful minds to philosophical inquiry, and so far

have done good by expanding the range of thought, but theory has only succeeded theory. Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, have followed each other in succession, building upon the foundation of consciousness different superstructures, which vanishing before the scrutiny of mind, have proved that the foundation and superstructures they so ingeniously described, existed only in the regions of their respective, highly adorned imaginations; they had no efficient point or fulcrum, on which to raise the universe of mind to view, or even hold it for a moment in one position, for microscopic observation.

Truth, as St. Pierre says, " is only to be found in nature," and I may add, when discovered, is simple. Facts of the most simple kind prove that mind and matter are separate and distinct from each other, and that in every chemical change in substances there is a change of electricity, and that electricity can produce motions in animate