ceed from design, and for the following reasons; first, they have been trained to admit, that all they behold and know of natural productions are the work of an almighty maker; secondly, circumscribing their powers of reflection to the analogical effects of their own mental and physical powers of making a watch, of painting a picture, of carving a figure, of building a ship, and of completing other works. of art; knowing that these required intelligence and design, they conclude from a parity of reasoning that the various productions of nature, have proceeded from the hands or creative design of some almighty, sopernatural, intelligent, tortoise-making, hare-making, elephant-making, man-making artificer or mechanist; that after having kneaded together the various properties and portions of matter of which they are composed, this manufacturer breathed into them the breath of life, or vis vitæ, of existence and motion.

I bave said that all that I. G. has stated of the animals he cites, appearing to be the effects of design is founded in truth, should any one imagine this assertion is paradoxical to the argument I use: they will recollect that it is on the word appears that I allow it to be so; we know that the simple and literal meaning of the word truth, is the reality of things; thus mankind knowing from the reality of advantages derived by the tortoise, the hare, the elephant, from the parts described by 1. G. and also knowing the advantages derivable to themselves, from the construction and execution of a watch, a picture, a piece of sculpture, a ship, or any other work of art, and knowing that design was necessary to the production of such things it does appear to the circumscribed minds of such persons, that animated nature and the universe came into existence, from the design of some intelligent undescribable, undiscoverable, supernatural agent maker, manufacturer or mechanist; but it only appears so to them, from their reasoning analogically, upon the effects they are themselves capable of humbly but ingeniously imitating in the works of art which they produce, from the combinations of matter which they apply, to effect a purpose design and work of labour; they cannot divest themselves of the consciousness and reality of the property they themselves possess of organized intelligence and handicraft ingenuity, these being firmly established in their minds, being congenial to their nature, they suppose or take for granted, that every thing that exists must have had an intelligent creator or maker; whether it be an universe, a world, an animal, an insect, a mountain, a mound, or a particle of dust: but if they go about to prove the truth of their opinion, they are lost in a labyrinth of inexplicable difficulties and some of them in the greatest absurdities.

They do not take into account the elements, the actions, operations, combinations and modifications of the elements; the compositions, decompositions, and recompositions of matter; the adapting qualities of the elements, to give to their diversified and organized productions, properties suitable to the motion, or locomotion, acquired by their qualities, and necessary for their succour, support and existence, they strive not, or at least most of them strive not, to account, in a natural, and I may add a rational way, upon the laws

of nature; the operations of the elements; the combinations and actions and counteractions of fire, water, earth and air, the mutations and transmutations of matter, for the effects they behold; they will not reason onward, in reflecting upon what may be the possible effects, of the constant motions and intermingling of certain portions of matter, with other portions of matter, the products which may arise from the combinations of the sun's rays and air, light, caloric, oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, humidity, frigidity, and rarefaction, of all these or a part of these properties upon solidity, or the bases of matter, upon the salts, oils, acids, saccharine and calcarious particles; of vegetables, animals, minerals, and their component parts; not acquainted with the astonishing effects produceable by the aid of chemical affinities and operations, or but superficially acquainted with the science of chemistry, they seem not to consider the incalculable number of changes which may be wrought, the immense number of products which may have birth, from the secretive, accretive, cohesive, inosculative, fermentative, evaporative, attractive, repulsive and gravitating qualities of the multitudinous modifications of solid, liquid and aëriform portions of matter with each other; or if they take into account a part of, or all of these properties, for certain purposes, connected with the transactions of mankind; they are unwilling to allow, that through an infinite variety of chemical affinities and properties, and all the actions and counteractions of which elementary matter is capable, or can have been capable, through illimitable time and space, by its present, or some antecedent properties, and the particular remote and periodical conjunctions of the planetary system; any living thing could have been produced, and that when once produced, respiratory, generative, and sexual organs, could also have been spontaneously or progressively produced, to preserve each genera, species, and class, in as perfect and undeviating order, as is observed in the motions of the planetary system, time without end, or until some mighty periodical convulsion of nature, at some remote period of time, may happen in the course of her ordinary, but to man apparently extraordinary, operations; reduce all matter to chaotic heaps, to be reproduced, or recomposed, through millions of elementary, periodically, revolving motions, and by the infinitely ramified affinities of the great variety of elementary bases and compounds of elementary matter, into some new and extraor dinary forms possessing as now an infinite variety of organized parts, animate and inanimate, inert and sensitive, instinctive and reasoning, until a tortoise, hare or elephant, or some creatures with their properties, and approaching in semblance to them in form, come forth, to engage, the discussions of some other creatures, in semblance of form and properties and reasoning powers; to the imitative mechanic

creature man:

"There is not one atom of yon earth

But once was living man!

Nor the minutest drop of rain,
That hangeth in its thinnest cloud,

But flowed in human veins,

And from the burning plains

Where Lybian monsters yell,
From the most gloomy glens
Of Greenland's sunless clime,
To where the golden fields
Of fertile England spread
Their harvest to the day,

Thou can'st not find a spot,

Whereon no city stood."-SHelley.

Hamlet. " Why may not the imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander, till he find it stopping a bung hole?

Horatio. Twere to consider too curiously to consider so.

Hamlet. No faith, not a jot; but to follow him thither with modesty enough, and likelihood to lead it."-SHAKSPFARE.

And why may not the imagination trace it by the aid of elementary combinations within the scope of scientific possibility, with "modesty enough, and likelihood to lead it" back again to an organized being, possessing all the rage for conquest, which calls a world to arms.

Though all this may, to unscientific and visionary minds, appear a mere jargon and rhapsody of words, an inconsistent and absurd admission of improbable possibilities; still the votaries of supernatural agencies and spiritual essences, go into the more extraordinary and extravagant admission, of the existence of some indiscernible, intangible, indescribable, inconceivable, self-existent, supernatural ENS or being, without parts, form or mould, a purely "spiritual," immaterial essence, uncomposed of those elementary particles of matter, which with wondrous harmony hold all nature together: a mere assumed "spiritual soul" to which visionaries, can annex no fixed scientific or rational idea; without earth, air, fire, or water, without solidity, frigidity, light, caloric, humidity or motion in its composition or properties, because all these comprehend matter, of which visionaries, believing in divine essences, will not allow their impossible-to-be-described idol to partake.

Ask them to give a definition of the spiritual soul, of its place of abode, from whence it emanates, or where it exercises its operative and creative functions, and they become confused and stuitified, or go into descriptions which indeed consist of jargon and rhapsody; because they embrace, no known laws or properties of nature or science, nor can they be reduced, to the tests of observation, experience, perception, sensation, or common sense.

Their ideal being they fix in some ideal unknown spot of space, to which they give the name of elysium or heaven, and in doing so, they run into other inexplicable difficulties, of giving the power to nonentity of creating entity; of nothing, creating something out of

* As a confirmation of the opinion of the immortal Shelley upon the eternal duration of the earth, and the mutations which it is constantly undergoing. 1 refer your readers to a work of a most important and extraordinary nature published by SAMPSON ARNOLD MACKEY, Norwich; entitled "THE MYTHOLOGICAL ASTRONOMY of the ANCIENTS DEMONSTRATED," by restoring to their FABLES AND SYMBOLS, their original meaning. Berosus informed the Grecian (philosopher Calisthenes, who was in Babylon when Alexander the Great was there) that 403,000, years before his time the pole of the earth was within the plane of the ecliptic."-MACKEY.

nothing; they suppose a supernatural orb, or all glorious Temple, to which they can give no clue, in what part of space it exists; they are thus guilty of the absurdity, of fixing the focus and lever of creative power, upon no substance, to be directed by no substance, and to be preserved in perfect order by, no substance; these are, the primary and fundamental errors they run into; but in describing the moral properties of their immaterial divinity, they multiply their follies a hundred fold in giving to it attributes of the most superlatively excellent qualities, and passions the most revolting to humanity; making it revengeful, passionate, furious, relentless, and cruel; deceitful, hypocritical, faithless, and unjust.

What inconsistency! What fatuity!! What knavery!!! Has the spurious philosophy of "spiritual essences" been productive of, as promulgated and propagated by the amiable visionaries Pythagoras, Plato, and their disciples, in contradiction of the philosophy of materialism, professed by the learned Phenecians, some thousand years ago, or long before their time-and supported by the learned and most learned, the rational and most rational, long afterwards, even to this day; but when taken hold of by greedy and designing men, and incorporated with the Judaical and Pagan priest-craft idolatries, and Christianized by miracles, parables, mysteries, dreams, visions, and revelations; and supported by craft, fraud, and power; we are constrained to call out, Oh! what monstrous evils have been entailed upon mankind; in consequence of the visionary speculations of heated and mistaken imaginations: speculations in themselves innocent, and indeed productive of entertainment; when we reflect upon the satire, sarcasm, or delusion, which abounds in the dreams and imagery contained in the "Metamorphosis of Ovid," " Milton's Paradise Lost," "Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress." "Shelley's Queen Mab," "The Devil upon Two Sticks," &c. &c. but when we consider the long age of horrid crimes which have afflicted mankind in consequence of the religious phrenzy and fury with which they have assailed each other; it becomes too serious a subject for levity to sport with, otherwise were the materialists to attack the prejudices, follies and errors of mistaken and deluded visionaries; with all the force of satire; what a field have priests and fanatics opened, to enable any one of superior genius, talent, vigour and sarcasm, to frolic and jest, with the cant, delusion and jargon which has been propagated by all religionists, and none more so than the Christians, to mislead and defraud a credulous, puling, puerile, and idolatrous world.

But as the object of your publication appears to be to beat down superstition and persecution, by the force of argument, reason, and science, rather than by satire, and as I. G. seems to possess no feeling of enmity towards the advocates of Materialism; were I disposed to

The Phenicians were a maritime and commercial people, inhabiting a large Island (in the Atlantic Ocean) which according to Pluto was swallowed up (or the greatest part of it) about eleven thousand years ago, Mackey. These people were Materialists, one of their countrymen of the name of Toth, became King of Egypt and broached a new religion; making his God to arise from the chaos of matter upon which is founded the Mosaical creation,

ridicule his opinions or to satirize the visions of religionists; it would be intruding upon your pages to introduce it in this letter, and uncalled for in my answer to I. G. who does not appear to be tainted with the rhapsodical spirit, which marks the language of most of the advocates of an almighty supernatural designing power; having extended this letter to a greater length than I had intended at its commencement, I shall defer my answer to I. G's. observations upon the motions of the Planets, which he concludes must be the effect of a designing being; in the meantime, probably, I. G. will have the goodness to state whether he supposes the design of the planetary motions, and animal life proceeds from material or immaterial properties, or from natural or supernatural effects; as a prompt and frank declaration of his opinion in these respects, may save some time to your readers and some space in your Republican: although in either case, I consider that I. G's. notions of the existence of a designing creator of matter, and fabricator of animal life, are equally fallacious; or that necessity required design or intellectual power to be employed, in putting in motion either an orb or an atom, or in giving life to a mammoth or a mite; if I am in error I shall willingly relinquish all pre-conceived opinions upon the subject, provided I. G. or any one else, can advance other principles more conclusive and convincing than those I have been in the habit of reasoning uponTRUTH being my polar star.

None out of Nature can pass into space,
Nor no design, out of nature, can trace;
Nor in nature, can mankind, trace a thought,
That's not by matter into being brought,
Not by a supernat'ral ENS devised
For mind, is but matter organized,
Nature adapting effects to their cause,
Upholds all products by unerring laws;
A stone as it falls, a bird as it flies,
Ocean as it heaves, vapours as they rise,"
Earth in space as it whirls, man as he thinks,
Are but matter chained in organized links *;
By the elements succoured as they go,

Like the grass, or trees, or plants as they grow,
Or animals, that breathe; all are sustain'd,

Not by design or by being ordain'd;

But from matter; in motion confined

To each orb, as through their orbits they wind.

J. WATSON, Brewer Street.

"How wonderful! That even,

The passions, prejudices, interests,

That sway the meanest being, the weak touch,
That moves the finest nerve,

And in one human brain

Causes the faintest thought, becomes a link

In the great chain-of nature."-SHELLEY.