bationary punishment, is not a whit more orthodox; although Christ drove the evil spirit into a herd of swine.* Incidit in Scyllam, qui vult vitare Charybdim. We must set this author right. I see no reason why there should not be different species of immaterial souls, as different species of material bodies. This involves no absurdity; neither is it contradictory to suppose a variety of immaterial souls, both in nature and degree, for insects, fishes, birds, and beasts. So far from improbable is such a scheme, that it ought to be looked upon as one of the greatest beauties of the creation, and that which best shews the rising scale of immaterial beings. It would be a wide gap, indeed, if there were nothing between dead matter and the human soul, especially when we see such a gradation of workmanship and perfection maintained from rude, unformed earth, through all the species of plants and animals, up to the human fabric, and while we have the conviction, that so carried up to the human soul, it cannot possibly end there.

Brutes are determined by irresistible and unerring instinct to those truths, which are necessary to their well-being. We deviate from them perpetually. May we not, with justice, demand, therefore,

VOL. IV.

F

therefore, it is asked, if it be not as likely that other animals should share the human reason, which is denied, as that man should share the divine reason, which is affirmed? Beasts, are many of them, naturally, extremely vicious. We know perfectly they cannot sin, for they are not free. Carnivorous beasts and birds are cruel. Insects of the same species devour each other. Many tribes are perfidious and ungrateful; others are jealous and revengeful. In the schools it is said, they are necessitated to evil; to trouble the general order; to do every thing, in short, that is contrary to natural equity, and to the principles of virtue.* But, there can be no obligations on beings who are incapable of understanding the laws of God. Not being endued with the means of acquiring ideas of justice and injustice, it is evident nothing can be expected from them of the like tendency, that must be expected from men to whom is given a capacity of knowledge. Morally speaking, therefore, there is not any thing positively commanded, or positively forbidden to animals. They have no regulation or guide, but one appropriated and uniform ray of intellect. Incapable of the distinction between merit and demerit, they have no claim upon divine justice. Their souls may, therefore,

Lang, de Betes.

therefore, be supposed mortal, though not mate

rial. *

Bolingbroke says, it would be as wise to talk of our walking eternally, as of our thinking eternally. The philosophical absurdity of this argument is too palpable to need a comment. We will now proceed to a more awful subject. In the mean time, if conviction have not found its way into your mind, let me at least intreat you to have confidence in the belief of a comfortable and elevating doctrine, which no man yet was ever able to disprove. He who pursues the glimmering steps of hope, with a stedfast, but not with a presumptuous eye, may avoid that gloomy rock, on either side of which spread the horrid abysses of incredulity and superstition. The real sage looks upon himself as a sojourner only in this world. But, if you ask him where his country lies, he points, like Anaxagoras, with his finger to the heavens.

* Traite des Animaux.

F 2

LETTER LXV.

THIS little scene of life, in which we are so busily engaged, has some sort of reference to a much larger plan of things. Whether we are any way related to the more distant parts of the boundless universe into which we are brought, is altogether uncertain. All on that side of the question is incomprehensible: we know nothing of what has been, what now is, or what shall be hereafter. The utmost perfection of human reason, is, indeed, the knowledge of its own defects, and the limits of its own confined powers. It is a lamp, which serves us very well for the common occupations of life, that are near at hand, but can shew us no clear prospect at a distance. Yet we love to tread on the brink, where light and darkness begin to mingle. We delight in approaching that precipice, where obscurity hangs over the unfathomable ways of Omniscience.

"You believe I have an intelligent soul," says Plato, "because you perceive order in my words, and in my actions. Judge then from the order and harmony which you perceive in nature, if there must not be an universal mind, which regulates the world." Every man who

exists,

exists, if he make a right use of his reason, may easily become more certain of the being of a supreme independent cause, than he can be of any thing else, besides his own existence.

Hobbes and Spinoza, both advance this absurd tenet, that there neither is any where, nor possibly can be, any principle of motion, or beginning of operation at all; but that every thing is caused necessarily, by an eternal chain of dependent causes and effects, without any independent original. Now, to suppose an endless succession of dependent causes and effects without any original, or first, and self-actuating principle, is supposing a series of dependent things, to be from eternity, produced from nothing. If there be no first cause, every thing in the universe must be passive, and nothing active; every thing moved, and no mover; every thing effect, and nothing. cause. But Spinoza himself, notwithstanding the vastness of his disbelief, in another part of his work, is obliged to quit so contradictory a ground. Every body in motion, or at rest, says he, must have been determined to that motion or rest by some other body, which must itself like