neous, and all further reasoning upon it would be confirming the deception.

A fallacy may therefore be suspected in those appearances which were considered as voluntary motions. It is worthy of remark, that the monads were viewed through the refracting medium of water, and that many of the fibres retained their thread shaped forms, while others, still farther divided, were reduced to points or globules. Being so attenuated as to be scarcely visible, the progress of decomposition producing a further separation of parts, and moving them by chemical action, might easily cheat the senses with the appearance of animation. While the motions accompanying a chemical process are visible to our unassisted sight, they excite no surprise. A piece of sugar rises and falls in a glass of water, bubbles agitate the mass with motions which appear to be inherent, but these phenomena are not suspected of bearing any relation to life. The motions of the eye stone in a plate of vinegar have been attributed to animal life, but as it is a calcareous stone, the motions are obviously referable to the action of the acid upon it, which, disengaging a gas, impels it mechanically from side to side. Gaseous particles, disengaged or acquired at the precise point of time when those macerated materials were under examination, by effecting a moving impulse upon them, aided by the refraction of the water, and the minuteness of the particles, might produce a resemblance to life, although by no means a demonstration that they possess vitality. Further proof is unattainable, as the subject eludes further inspection.

We are therefore warranted in doubting the correctness of the inference, that the motions discovered by the microscope were attributable to animal life and we are justified in believing that the senses were deluded by appearances resembling life which were not life; inasmuch as the circumstances under which they were detected, render the evidence of the senses imperfect; and as the conclusions drawn from the analysis are unsupported by analogy throughout the visible creation.

But if no doubt rested upon the fidelity or capacity of the human senses in this inquiry, and if it were granted that man, with his excellent perfections, and the oak with its duration and grandeur, are composed of the identical particles which form the ignoble reptile, and the poisonous weed; yet we are assailed at this point of the inquiry with

not revive on its reapplication? Mr. Edwards expressly states that "they never recover the faculty of locomotion, unless the water, after evaporation, is immediately restored." It is a contradiction to say, that life is inherent in matter, when, by changing its circumstances, it becomes deprived of it, and cannot regain it. What is that but death in its common acceptation? The term death implies a change from the power of acting to total inactivity. It implies an utter and irrecoverable extinguishment of sensation, and the faculty of motion. Inertness expresses the state of matter without life, and without any innate principle of revivification.

If the water were not withdrawn, would those particles of matter remain stationary, or would they increase in dimensions; or would they change into other living beings; or form other and unknown combinations? Whatever their shape or location, whether they remain units for ever, or experience transformation, if they are indued with an inherent living spirit, they must be immortal. A thing possessing an innate principle of vitality cannot be dispossessed of it, unless it is annihilated. If annihilation can dispossess a material monad of existence, the same principle may apply to masses of matter, and the balance of the globe be destroyed by its operation. The order being disturbed which rules the planets in their spheres, and establishes the symmetry of the universe, the whole might rush into chaos, or vanish into nonentity.

But to return to the vitality of material elements. Animal and vegetable matterhaving been interred in the earth, or decomposed upon its surface, for nearly six thousand years, if the particles were immortal in the animalcular form, the grave would not secure them, and the earth by their accumulation would be heaving and rolling under our feet. There is abundant evidence, however, that bodies continue in the grave long after their inhumation. A single instance is sufficient for the argument. The remains of Charles I. of England were discovered a few years since, after having been interred two hundred years. They were found in their natural state, so far as to be readily identified, and exhibited every appearance of inert matter, resolved and resolving into elementary dust.

The microscopic theorists having conducted us to the lowest gradation of existence, remark that "physiologists can carry analysis no farther, except to convert the substance into gases by distillation." If so, where is the vital principle then? Can distillation extinguish that principle which resisted death and all the previous stages of decomposition? If "life and matter are coexistent, and from everlasting to everlasting," it is absurd to say that distillation, or any other material

agency, can separate them, or destroy that life; and there appears no other alternative but to presume it to be still existing invisible among those ærial vapours to which it was driven by this mode of analysis, waiting for some casual chance to be united to a new shape, and enabled to pursue some new career of being.

From these premises the conclusion is irresistible, that after experiencing the changes of death and decomposition, material atoms, possessing inherent vitality, are transformed into some unknown shape of moving life, which establishes the doctrine of the metempsychosis without qualification. Those who affirm that when a living being dies, it only changes its form, will casily believe that men may arise unseen from their sepulchres to people the fields and forests;* or, indulging the poetry of feeling, they may fancy their departed friends returning among them as singing birds or blooming flowers, or as waving trees overshadowing their dwellings.t

But our later philosophers are not as courteous as Pythagoras and Ovid, nor as pious as Plato and Epicurus. They make us descend to the most degraded state, and from the decomposing remains of our animal nature they see clouds of loathsome insects floating on the air, winged with pestilence and death. They do not indulge in the fine imaginings of those heathen; the former of whom maintained that the spirits of human beings who led virtuous lives were changed into seraphs, fairies, and heroes; trees, flowers, and fountains: or with the latter, that the gift of life was bestowed by a divine almighty power; or with Plato, that it remigrates to the divinity from whence it originated, after leaving its transitory abode in this world.

In assuming that "life and matter are coexistent," identified, indivisible, and eternal, it is also asserted, " that it is perpetually living, dying, reviving, and recombining in new shapes and modes of existence." If so, then is not the boast of the atheist established, and accountability and moral obligation destroyed?

Based upon this hypothesis is the theory of the Gordius Aquaticus, or horse hair snake; and as this is the boldest example, in illustration of this system of physiology, it is selected as a test for the

Third inquiry-Whether inert particles of matter spring to life in forms and natures remote from, and opposite to, their own previous state of existence?

It is imagined that myriads of monads congregate upon a hair immersed in water; that having in itself a vital principle, it assimilates with these extraneous visitants, and

they with each other, until this admixture of fortuitous materials becomes a living being; that gradually a complete animal is developed, the root of the hair assuming the shape and character of the head, with eyes and mouth." It is not difficult to conceive that a hair, by being placed in water, an element where millions of ephemera occasionally reside, should be covered with them so as to make an entire surface, and that from its elasticity their motions should impart sinuosity through its whole length, and that it should be found writhing and turning like an organized, animated being, although no more endowed with animal life than the limb of a tree, which sways backward or forward, in compliance with the impulse of a boy upon its branches. But for a mass so heterogeneous, and so far removed from all the habits and laws which are invariable concomitants of animal life in every known instance, to obtain a head to guide its voluntary motions; a mouth whereby to receive its sustenance; itself affording aliment to a congeries of insects, creatures of a distinct and separate genus; to become identified with them, and spring to independent existence, and be itself the individual in which they lose their identity; is too monstrous and absurd to admit of belief. It is confounding the distinctions which divide animals from each other, and from brute matter, to affirm, that an integral part of a quadruped, having been reduced to utter inertness, should revivify itself, acquiring a head with its curious and complex organization to control its movements, and from the identity of a land animal to become a water serpent. If it be possible for one quadruped to produce snakes, another may; and, if snakes, why not other and more monstrous forms of existence?

Pursuing the analogy, why are not cemeteries and fields of battle overgrown with night-shade and hellebore, and peopled with gorgons and hydras? But it is argued that a butterfly arising from a worm is analagous to the presumed metamorphosis of the gordius aquaticus. The example is not a parallel one. The butterfly preserves its identity through all its changes: it is the same specific and entire being; and its race is continued subject to the same invariable laws. It is not a casual association of atoms, at one time part of a horse, at another, part of a serpent. If the chrysalis were attached to the side of a piece of tortoise shell, or other substance similar to hair, and on bursting its cerements, the shell should become its head or its painted wings, then the case would be parallel to the horse-hair snake.

It is further stated, as will be kept in mind, that vegetables after death arise with the locomotion of animals. Also that the monads of animal remains revive in vegetables, or animals, as chances occur. The atoms of a

chesnut leaf were animals while in the water, but upon being dried upon the sides of the glass, became vegetables, with appropriate forms and colours; and finally, that a drop of water in which a vegetable (potatoe) had been boiled, discovered innumerable atoms in great activity. This is an anomaly in the experience of the whole world, boiling heat being destructive of life; but in this instance the vital principle is stated to have triumphed over its vegetable origin-over death-over the destruction of fire-and, surpassing even the fabled Phoenix, to have awaked to life and animation.

On a review of the whole argument it appears that the following are undeniable positions:

1st. That life is not inherent in matter, because it is in proof that the material elements of animal and vegetable remains continue insensate for ages after death-that the presumed fact of their revivification rests upon the slender evidence of microscopic observations-that the phenomena adduced to establish it were probably optical illusions, occasioned by chemical action and disturbance or were owing to some other cause than material innate vitality.

2d. That the order which prevails throughout the visible creation proves that all things are governed by immutable laws, which have been the same from the beginning, and which forbid the revolting idea that inert matter springs to life in odious and degraded shapes, remote from its generic origin; and that animals cannot change to vegetables, nor vegetables to animals; nor animals to others of opposite genera; else

"Man himself might spring from ocean, Prone down the skies the bellowing herds might

bound,

* Lucretius.

tree, though with other grains and other combinations it sustains the tree in verdure and beauty. If men could obtain a knowledge of the mystery of life, they might restore it when taken away-the fabulous systems of the poets might return as realities

groves might wave in sudden luxuriance over the dreariest deserts-and multitudes arise, as if by the magician's impulse, where solitude and silence have hitherto held undisputed dominion.*

PENANCES AND EXPIATIONS OF THE HINDOOS.

(From the Asiatic Journal.-No. CLIV.)

ACCORDING to the Hindu legislator, certain bodily defects, infirmities, or diseases, are penalties for sins committed in this life, or for some bad actions in a preceding state. These evidences of guilt are enumerated with the accustomed disgusting precision: e. g. a' stealer of gold has whitlows on his nails; the slayer of a brahmen has marasmus; a falsc detractor, stinking breath; a stealer of grain, the defect of some limb; a stealer of dressed grain, dyspepsy; a stealer of a lamp, total blindness; the mischievous extinguisher of it, blindness in one eye, &c. "Penance, therefore, must invariably be performed for the sake of expiation; since they, who have not expiated their sins, will again spring to birth with disgraceful marks."

The comparative guilt of various offences is then declared; but the gloss has greatly varied the degrees of guilt. For instance, certain crimes, which are declared in the original text to be equal to the killing of a brahmen, the first crime in the highest degree, are, by the construction given to the text by the interwoven comment, merely crimes of the second degree, and only nearly equal to the slaughter of a priest, which the comment pronounces to be less than incest in a direct line. Amongst the crimes in the third degree, are slaying a bull or cow, selling oneself, usury, selling a wife or child, abandoning a kinsman, working in mines of any sort, or engaging in great mechanical works, excessive attention to music or dancing, killing a woman, denying a future state of rewards and punishments, and application to The latter the books of a false religion. seems to be an obstacle in the way of Christian teachers. Amongst the minor offences,

The author appears not to have adverted to the fact that innumerable animalculæ are discovered by the microscope in and upon almost every thing, and that therefore the apparent animation of inert matter may arise from the adherence of these animalcules, whose origin is doubtless by the regular although singular processes of life.-Ed.