that ecstacy is the highest state of enjoyment we are capable of; and had we been designed, and our happiness considered, I think we should have been left to the joys of ecstacy for ever, and each individual multiplied fifty million times, and to infinity. This is not nonsense. Either the possibility or the benevolence must be limited, if happiness be not complete, continuous, and infinite.

But these are speculations for poets and the divines. The philosopher has only to do with things as they are, with second causes. He knows no final cause, nor the nature of that cause-condi

tion fundamental to phenomena. Men take up knowledge by fragments.

There are few whose

circle is complete; so that it seems as if society was composed of fragments of men. A man does some noble thing in one direction, and delights us; but we are painfully impressed with his shortcoming in some other department. It is the entireness, the compass of the circle, the universality, that is the greatness of Bacon. His greatness is more in the matter even than in the method. He urged the importance of phrenology, or a physiological account of the mind. He fully recognised the importance of those matters which come under the term Mesmerism. He suggested the homoeopathic character of medicine. He recognised the principle urged by the author of "Vestiges of Creation," &c. The highest object of a philosopher should be universality, and to attain to that state in which we may appreciate and enjoy all things; recognising the true value and

relations of every character, condition, and circumstance; our knowledge being so full, and our enjoyments so high, that we regret nothing. A truly enlightened and noble mind would not be subject to grief.

But our religious systems have done their part, for good and for evil. They are now lumber, blocking up the path of knowledge; that knowledge which must push them all out of the way. A selfish theologian is not for this age. His theology prevents the admission of higher truths, and the development of man's nobler nature. Strange as it may appear, and impossible as it may seem to so many, the Christian religion is, in fact, and will soon be generally, recognised as no better than an old wife's fable. Those who make the Bible an oracle tell us that the earth was created 4,000 years before Christ. Science declares that the piece of rock over which the waters of Niagara fall has taken at least 30,000 years to wear away. I should think Lyell a better authority than Moses on such a subject. That man is of the dust, and to the dust returns, is true; and the dust itself may return to what it was before it was dust: but that the earth is cursed, and that labour is an evil, is not true. And what has become of Eden, and the tree of life preserved by the Cherubim at the eastern gate, and by the flaming sword which turned every way? And it will one day be asked, what has become of Christianity and Mohammedanism, and Judaism, and Buddhism, and Fohism. The Bible will be a curious and charming book for those days,

when men will be burning all rubbish of theologies which fills our libraries.

But here I am running on like an old gossip, when I simply wished to say, that to believe in a cause of the phenomena which we call Nature, and which constitutes the thinking man, seems essential to all reasoning beings. I am far from being an Atheist, as resting on second causes. As well might we, resting on the earth, deny that there is any depth beneath, or, living in time, deny eternity. I do not say, therefore, that there is no God: but that it is extravagant and irreverent to imagine that cause a Person. All we know is phenomena: and that the fundamental cause is wholly beyond our conception. In this I do not suspend my judgment: but rather assert plainly that of the motive power or principle of things we know absolutely nothing, and can know nothing and that no form of words could convey any knowledge of it and that no form of thought could imagine that which is wholly aside of Nature, (as Nature is to us,) and of the nature of the mind, and, as it were, behind the understanding.

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cause of causes " is an unfathomable mystery. Phenomena necessarily have a certain form and order which we term Law. The most fundamental and general law is what Bacon terms Forms. I cannot believe in a manufacturing God as implied in the idea of a Creator, and a creation; nor can I believe in any beginning or end to the operations of Nature. The cause in nature or of nature is eternal and immutable. The earth and stars may pass away

into other forms; but the law is eternal. Man, animals, plants, stones, are consequently in nature. The mind of Man, the instincts of animals, the sympathies (so to speak) of plants, and the properties of stones, are results of material development; that development itself being a result of the properties of matter, and the inherent cause or principle which is the basis of matter. If to have this conception of things is to be an Atheist, then am I an Atheist. If to renounce all idolatry, and to repose upon the deep and solemn conviction of an eternal and necessary cause, such a Cause as that, with our faculties, we could not know, or, as it is expressed, "could not see and live;"-if this be atheism or materialism, -be it so. I care not about terms. I hold that there never has been, or can be, any miracle, or interruption of the laws of nature: "for certain it is," says Bacon,* "that God worketh nothing in nature but by second causes: and if they would have it otherwise believed, it is mere imposture, as it were in favour towards God, and nothing else but to offer to the author of truth the unclean sacrifice of a lie." Spinoza was not an Atheist, but rather what he has been called," a god-intoxicated "a man."

There is a vast number of superior minds which clearly see that all religions founded upon supposed revelations exhibit a low morality, and are unsupported by fact or history, but have not yet cleared

* Advancement of Learning, Book I.

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themselves of self-delusion. They want more support and companionship than they find in society, owing to this undeveloped nature and ignorance; and they imagine an ideal, and take the want for a proof of this ideal being real. Again, they have an instinct of life, and consider this a proof of a future existence, and say, "Plato, thou reasonest well; else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,-this longing after immortality." And thirdly, they feel themselves in a measure free, and have been accustomed to the untrue and immoral doctrine of moral responsibility; and consider this sense of freedom and responsibility proof against mind being subject to law. In the same way they might say, being accustomed to wars, therefore war is right; that their great ancestors painted their skins and ate one another; and therefore to paint our skins and eat one another is right: that we have a sense that the sun goes round the earth, and therefore Galileo was wrong. When our feelings guide reason, instead of reason searching into the cause of our feelings, thus it has been.—There is a rivalry going on now between the insanity doctors and the judges. The doctor says, by the laws of mind, this man is not responsible; but the judge insists on opposing the laws of the land to the laws of nature, and declares the man a criminal. The newspapers take up the matter, and write about the shocking doctrine of a man not being able to resist an impulse; for newspapers but echo the opinions, prejudices, and ignorance of the world, or of a party. So the confusion goes on;