That the instinct of animals and the mind of man are the results of nothing but material organization is an obvious corollary from this doctrine. "The difference," says this writer, "between mind in the lower animals and in man is a difference in degree only; it is not a specific difference." Mental phenomena, apparently so various and unstable in the individual, are reduced at once to regularity, and become subject to calculation, if considered in the mass. This shows, that, like the phenomena of the weather, they are under the presidency of natural laws. The phrenologists are the only persons who have followed the order of nature in the study of mind; they have even determined the functions of the different parts of the brain. An experiment is mentioned with a newly killed animal, whose brain was taken out and its place filled with substances producing electric action, when the process of digestion, that had been interrupted, was instantly resumed, thus "showing the absolute identity of the brain with a galvanic battery." The experiment of inducing muscular action in a corpse, by applying galvanism, is sufficiently well known. To borrow an illustration from Sidney Smith, it would seem, that, if we only knew to what organs of the brain to direct an electric current, an automaton, or a dead man, might be made to hold an argument, "at least as well as most country parsons." A person who should hear for the first time this naked exposition of the writer's theory would be tempted at once to reject the whole, as too extravagant and absurd to deserve further notice. But he would be much mistaken in this conclusion. The theory is a very plausible one; it is one of the best cosmogonies that the wit of man has ever framed. It is a revival of the old atheistic hypothesis,--the Epicurean doctrine of the formation of the universe by a fortuitous concourse of atoms,--with all the modifications and improvements that were rendered necessary by the discoveries of modern science. We call it an atheistic theory, because, though the writer supposes that primitive matter was first endowed _by divine power_ with its mysterious qualities and capacities, this supposition is gratuitous and arbitrary, and only mars the simplicity of the scheme, and injures the consistency and coherence of the parts with each other. We can more easily believe that these qualities are necessarily inherent in the constitution of matter, forming a part of its very essence, just like the properties of impenetrability and extension, than that they subsequently developed themselves by forming myriads of intricate organizations, without further aid from the divine architect. If we can credit the hypothesis, that bricks and mortar came together of their own accord, and arranged themselves into the first house meet for the habitation of man, we can very readily admit, also, that the bricks first assumed the proper shape, and mortar the proper