ugh the lakes of the Tyrol and Styria to the highest torrents of the
Noric and Julian Alps.

_Phil_.--My own experience proves in the strongest manner the immediate
connection of sensibility with respiration; all that I can remember in my
accident was a certain violent and painful sensation of oppression in the
chest, which must have been immediately succeeded by loss of sense.

_Eub_.--I have no doubt that all your suffering was over at the moment
you describe; as far as sensibility is concerned, you were inanimate when
your friend raised you from the bottom. This distinct connection of
sensibility with the absorption of air by the blood is, I think, in
favour of the idea advanced by our friend, that some subtle and ethereal
matter is supplied to the system in the elastic air which may be the
cause of vitality.

_The Unknown_.--Softly, if you please; I must not allow you to mistake my
view. I think it probable that some subtle matter is derived from the
atmosphere connected with the functions of life; but nothing can be more
remote from my opinion than to suppose it the cause of vitality.

_Phil_.--This might have been fully inferred from the whole tenor of your
conversation, and particularly from that expression, "that which commands
sensation will not be their subject." I think I shall not mistake your
views when I say that you do not consider vitality dependent upon any
material cause or principle.

_The Unknown_.--You do not. We are entirely ignorant on this subject,
and I confess in the utmost humility my ignorance. I know there have
been distinguished physiologists who have imagined that by organisation
powers not naturally possessed by matter were developed, and that
sensibility was a property belonging to some unknown combination of
unknown ethereal elements. But such notions appear to me
unphilosophical, and the mere substitution of unknown words for unknown
things. I can never believe that any division, or refinement, or
subtilisation, or juxtaposition, or arrangement of the particles of
matter, can give to them sensibility; or that intelligence can result
from combinations of insensate and brute atoms. I can as easily imagine
that the planets are moving by their will or design round the sun, or
that a cannon ball is reasoning in making its parabolic curve. The
materialists have quoted a passage of Locke in favour of their doctrine,
who seemed to doubt "whether it might not have pleased God to be