e feel, experience pleasure and pain,
perceive, remember, exercise volition, and become conscious, may be
termed Spiritual, or if it be preferred, Divine endowments; and it is
not probable that we shall ever detect the immediate agency by which
these operations are performed. The state of _Life_, the indispensable
medium for the display of the phenomena of intelligence in our present
condition of existence, is equally inscrutable by human sagacity,
although different hypotheses have been adventured for its solution.

To account for the harmonious concurrence of motions and processes that
distinguish living animals, a MATTER OF LIFE has been supposed, and its
nature conjectured to be some modification[2] of electricity or
galvanism, and which being unsupported, is not deserving of further
comment. Another sect of physiologists has conceived that life is the
immediate result of a particular organization; but they are unable to
demonstrate that any arrangement of parts is consequently endowed with
vital actions. This arrangement of particular tissues, may be absolutely
necessary for the performance of various functions in the living state:
but this is altogether different from the energy or cause that excites
the action. A violin and its bow are prepared to "discourse most
excellent music," yet they are mute until guided by the skilful hands of
the performer. When death ensues from many diseases, the organization
remains, for without this concession our anatomical knowledge must be
very imperfect. Thus the nature of life, whether it be developed in the
vegetable creation, or display its admirable complications in the higher
animals, is inexplicable on any of the principles that regulate our
philosophy, and can only be referred to the contrivance and disposition
of infinite wisdom: yet the vehicle in which these stupendous operations
are conducted owns a material basis: even the confused mass that
composes the earth we tread on possesses certain intrinsic properties.
Every atom is subjected to definite regulation, and without
exaggeration, may be considered endowed with instinctive tendency to
coalesce or disunite under favourable opportunities, and the correct
observation of these habitudes, constitutes the foundations of chemical
science. When the power and intelligence of the supreme Artificer is
conspicuous in the ultimate particles of matter, we ought to be more
temperate in our invectives against the doctrine of materi