as I could gather, Dr. Horsley supposes that _every atom of matter has a
soul_, which is the cause of its motion, its gravitation, &c. What has
made him adopt this strange unphilosophical notion I cannot tell, unless
it be the fear that his study of natural philosophy should make him
suspected of Atheism, or at least of Materialism. For it is certain that
there is at present a prejudice among the English clergy that natural
philosophy has a tendency to make men Atheists or Materialists. This
absurd prejudice was first introduced, I think, by that illiberal,
though learned, prelate, Dr. Warburton."[160] A similar opinion has been
recently reproduced by Dr. Burnett in his "Philosophy of Spirits in
relation to Matter," in which he attempts to show that the forces and
laws of Nature cannot be proved to be _the result of anything inherent
in matter alone_, and that they ought to be ascribed to some substantive
and distinct, but immaterial and dependent _spirits_, called "the spirit
of life," "the spirit of electricity," "the spirit of heat."[161].

All these statements are only so many modifications of the same theory,
and they agree in denying the existence of any active powers in matter,
while they ascribe the phenomena of motion, life, and thought to an
immaterial principle. There is, as it seems to us, a mixture of truth
and error in this theory. It affirms a great truth, in so far as it
declares the impossibility of accounting for the phenomena of motion,
life, and thought, without ascribing them ultimately to a spiritual,
intelligent, and voluntary cause; but it adopts a dangerous, and, as we
conceive, a perfectly gratuitous assumption, when it denies that matter
is capable of possessing any other properties or powers than those of
extension, solidity, and "vis inertiae." We know little of the nature of
those fluids, forces, or powers, which have been denominated "dynamides"
or "imponderables;" but, unquestionably, they possess properties and
produce phenomena very different from any that can be reasonably
ascribed to mere "vis inertiae." Nor is their possession of these
properties incompatible with that law, when it is correctly understood.
For what is the real import of the law of "vis inertiae?" It amounts
simply to this, as stated by Baxter himself, "that a resistance to any
change of its present state,--whether of motion or rest,--is essential
to 'matter,'" he adds, indeed, "and inconsistent with any active power
i