The doctrine of Innate Ideas having been deservedly exploded, it follows that these Ideas must be derived from our intercourse with the world we inhabit. For this purpose we are furnished with five senses, from each of which we obtain a separate and different kind of intelligence, which is denominated Perception. The perceptions of the Eye, under an attentive inspection, leave on the Sensorium a phantasm or Idea of the object, a vivid memorial of that which has been perceived; but the other senses do not convey any similar phantasm.[1] The doctrine of Ideas appears to have been countenanced, and reconciled under all its difficulties, from a presumed spiritual operation and guidance in the act of thinking, and especially to an implacable aversion to any explanation that might be deemed to savour of _materialism_. This term, the denunciation of the pious, the convenient obloquy of the ignorant, being equal in its sweeping persecution, to the horrible word craven, demands a brief and modest exposition. That we exist in a material world, will scarcely be denied, and it is a fair inference, that the annihilation of matter would involve our globe and its inhabitants in equal destruction. Of this matter, the concentrated power of man cannot create nor exterminate a single atom. The human body is a material fabric: the brain and nerves, together with those delicate organs that are the instruments of our perceptions,--whereby we receive light, detect fragrance, apprehend sounds, relish viands, and enjoy the gratifications of contact, are all of material structure: and when that state, called Death, has ensued, their offices cease, and they undergo the decompositions to which all animal matter is subjected. The _Capacities_, by which we 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.