great societies in these later ages have extended experimental and mechanical knowledge very far, yet it must be avowed that the ancients too were not ignorant of many things, as well in physics as metaphysics, which perhaps are more generally, though not first known in these modern times."

"The Pythagoreans and Platonists had a notion of the true system of the world. They allowed of mechanical principles, but actuated by soul or mind. They saw there was no such thing as real absolute space. They knew there was a subtile æther pervading the whole mass of corporeal beings, and which was itself actually moved and directed by a mind; and that physical causes were only instruments, or rather marks and signs."

"These ancient philosophers understood the generation of animals to consist in the unfolding and distending of the minute imperceptible parts of pre-existing animalculæ, which passeth for a modern discovery: this they took for the work of nature, but nature animate and intelligent: they understood that all things were alive and in motion."

"The doctrine of real absolute external space induced some modern philosophers to conclude it was a part or attribute of God, or that God himself was space; inasmuch as incommunicable attributes of the Deity appeared to agree thereto, such as infinity, immutability, indivisibility, incorporeity, being uncreated, impassive, without beginning or ending; not considering that all these negative properties may belong to nothing. For nothing hath no limits, cannot be moved or changed or divided, is neither created nor destroyed. With regard to absolute space, it is observed in the Asclepian dialogue, that the word space or place hath by itself no meaning, and again that it is impossible to understand what space alone or pure space is.”

"Concerning absolute space-that phantom of the mechanic and geometrical philosophers, it may suffice to observe, that it is neither perceived by any sense, nor proved by any reason, and was accordingly treated by the greatest of the ancients as a thing merely visionary."

"It was an opinion of remote antiquity that the world was an animal. If we may trust the Thermaic writings, the Egyptians thought all things to partake of life. This opinion was also so general and current among the Greeks that Plutarch asserts all

others held the world to be an animal, and governed by Providence, except Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus. And although an animal, containing all bodies within itself, could not be touched or sensibly affected from without; yet it is plain they attributed to it an inward sense and feeling, as well as appetites and aversions; and that from all the various tones, actions, and passions of the universe, they supposed one sympathy, one animal act and life to result."

"Jamblichus declares the world to be one animal, in which the parts, however distinct from each other, are nevertheless related and connected by one common nature. And he teacheth, what is also a received notion of the Pythagoreans and Platonics, that there is no chasm in nature, but a chain or scale of beings rising by gentle uninterrupted gradations from the lowest to the highest, each nature being informed and perfected by the participation of a higher."

“There is, according to these philosophers, a life infused throughout all things-an intellectual and artificial fire, an inward principle, animal spirit, or natural life, producing and forming within, as art does without, regulating, moderating and reconciling the various motions, qualities, and parts of this mundane system. By virtue of this life, the great masses are held together in their orderly courses, as well as the minutest particles governed in their natural motions, according to the several laws of at traction, gravity, electricity, magnetism, and the rest. It is this gives instincts, teaches the spider her web, and the bee her honey. This it is that directs the roots of plants to draw forth juices from the earth, and the leaves and cortical vessels to separate and attract such particles of air, and elementary fire as suit their respective natures."

"Alcinous, in his tract of the doctrine of Plato, saith, that God hath given the world both mind and soul-others include both in the word soul, and suppose the soul of the world to be God. Plato appears to be of this opinion in several parts of his writingsand Virgil, who was no stranger to the Pythagorean and Platonic tenets, writes to the same purpose,

Deum namque ire per omnes

Terrasque tractusque maris, cœlumque profundum.
Hinc pecudes, armenta, viros, genus omne ferarum
Quemque sibi tenues nascentem arcessere vitas.'

Z

"Thus much the schools of Plato and Pythagoras seem agreed in, to wit, that the soul of the world, whether having a distinct mind of its own, or directed by a superior mind, doth embrace all its parts, connect them by an invisible and indissoluble chain, and preserve them ever well adjusted and in good order."

"Naturalists, whose province it is to consider phenomena, experiments, mechanical organs and motions, principally regard the visible frame of things or corporeal world, supposing soul to be contained in body. And this hypothesis may be tolerated in physics, as it is not necessary in the arts of dialling or navigation to mention the true system or earth's motion. But those who, not content with sensible appearances, would penetrate into the real and true causes (the object of theology, metaphysics, or the philosophia prima) will rectify this error, and speak of the world as contained by the soul, and not the soul by the world."

The preceding passages, as well as many others which might have been quoted from the same author, have a reference to his own peculiar notions respecting the non-existence of material substances, and the being of all things, simply as ideas produced in the mind by the universal and pervading spirit of nature. But, disclaiming all participation in his notions on these points and admitting also, the puerile and figurative style of philosophizing which was not unnatural in the early ages of human thought—and which is so distinctly impressed on the quotations from the ancient authors we have now produced, the inference is still obvious, that some idea of the vitality of nature has been entertained by philosophic minds in all ages. It was simply indeed with the view of establishing this point, that the preceding quotations have been given-and when it is considered, that it is impossible to annex any philosophic notion to the term dead or brute matter, as applicable to existing things—we are of opinion that the idea should henceforth be banished from all the theories which reflecting and enlightened minds may in future propound respecting the nature of things and the grand appearances of the universe. As a simple abstraction, it may be possible for a metaphysician to give some plausible definition of what he means by matter as absolutely dead or inert-but as applicable to the actual existences of nature, the term has no legitimate meaning,

and only serves to produce confusion and error in every speculation into which it is admitted.

It may also be remarked, in the perusal of the preceding quotations, that the notion of absolute external space, is placed by the author in the same class with the notions respecting the inertness or absolute death which is supposed to belong essentially to matter-and we may accordingly affirm that the correction of these two notions or just ideas respecting the nature of space and time, and respecting the essential activity or vitality of existing substances, furnish two of the most important keys to a just explanation of natural appearances-and serve to open up ideas that are at once beautiful and full of all pious thoughts respecting the entire order of existing things.

Indeed, a great part of what have been termed philosophic puzzles, would vanish when these two notions are settled-and would be seen to be no mysteries of nature's production, but results only of the limited and erroneous views belonging to an early and infant state of human speculation.

It is not simply, however, the vitality or essential activity of all the parts of nature, that must be taken into account for obtaining a just view of existing arrangements. We must also keep in view, that there is a tendency in nature to advance from one state or degree of perfection to another. We find accordingly that this idea was as familiar to the ancient philosophers, as that simply relating to the essential activity of matter-for the early Pythagoreans held that " mind and understanding, being the most perfect, were necessarily the last productions of nature. For in all other things, what was most perfect, they observed always came last, as in plants and animals it is not the seed that is most perfect, but the complete animal, with all its motions, in the one; and the complete plant, with all its branches, leaves, flowers, and fruit, in the other."

What we are to believe then, is, that nature is constantly tending, by the evolution of its living propensities, to a still higher and more perfect condition of being-and that as man seems, so far as this world is concerned, to have been the latest production which has yet adorned its surface, it may still be destined to sustain more perfect races, by whose instrumentality the grand purposes of Omnipotence are to be more efficiently and gloriously carried towards their consummation.

Nature," ," said Fichte, "tends to an apotheosis, and may be considered as a sort of divinity in the germ." On this idea Fichte and some other of the German metaphysicians have no doubt founded very absurd and pernicious theories-and have expressed themselves in terms which are not suitable to human infirmity, and has justly given offence to pious and considerate minds. But the notion itself, so far as it merely regards a progressive tendency in nature, towards the evolution of more perfect and intellectual conditions of being, has no necessary connection with such errors. On the contrary, it may be employed to open up views of the order of nature which are at once superlatively grand and pleasing, and subservient to the most just and profound sentiments of piety—and may indeed be considered as but one exemplification, in addition to those already noticed, in the course of these illustrations, of the magnificent correspondences which pervade all being, or, in the words of Bacon, as but the "footsteps of nature treading, in the same style, on the least and the greatest matters or subjects."

To the passages above quoted, the author begs leave to add the following from Cousin's excellent preface to his "Fragmens Philosophiques," which has fallen into his hands since the substance of this note was written and which is pervaded by views completely in accordance with those at which the author of the present treatise has now hinted.

"Le monde exterieur n'est donc qu'un assemblage de causes correspondantes à nos sensations réelles ou possibles; le rapport de ces causes entre elles est l'ordre du monde. Ainsi ce monde est de la meme etoffe que nous; et la nature est la soeur de l'homme ; elle est active, vivante, animée, comme lui; et son histoire est un drame tout aussi bien que la notre."

The author has an intention of making these ideas the subject of a future work-as they not only throw a beautiful light over all the order of external nature, and the relation of man to its successive appearances-but cannot fail, if successfully treated, to point out some radical misconceptions which have long infested and deteriorated the whole range of philosophical speculation.