Lord Brougham enters fully into some topics which in his opinion have been more cursorily touched upon, than they ought to have been, by previous writers on Natural Theology. He enlarges more especially on the proofs of design displayed in the mental constitution of man, and on the arguments for the soul's immateriality and immortality. Many of his arguments on these subjects are new and striking, and some of them as sound and conclusive as they are novel and ingenious. Some of his speculations with respect to dreams, and one or two new arguments he has adduced in refutation of materialism, by no means satisfy us; but our limited space warns us not to enter upon these tempting, though extensive and important themes. Whatever deductions may be made on such points, there is no competent judge who will not admit that Lord Brougham has adduced abundantly enough to overthrow the system of materialism; and when it is considered how prone are the votaries of purely physical science to embrace that shallow theory, we cannot but feel high delight to find his lordship so powerfully combating it.

The principal defect in Lord Brougham's book, is the cursory manner in which he treats what he calls the "Deontological" branch of his subject, or what relates to the discovery of the will of God and probable intentions with regard to his creatures, their conduct and their duty." He attempts to prove from various arguments, the immortality of man and the tendency of that doctrine to relieve the perplexities and harmonize the incongruities of the present system; he also just touches upon the argument of a future state, as drawn from the inequalities observable in the present moral administration of the Deity. But here his lordship's argument on this extensive subject closes. If it be said that he has told us all that can be told us, with any tolerable degree of certainty by Natural Theology, what a powerful argument does his lordship's treatise furnish for the necessity of revelation! Of that revelation, we observe with great pleasure, that his lordship always speaks in terms of profound respect.

Upon the whole, whatever obscurity there may be in some of the statements in this volume, and whatever minute inaccuracies in others; though some of the assertions may be considered too sweeping, some of its generalizations too hasty, and some of the remarks on former writers too unqualified, all which we think Dr. Turton has proved; the work cannot but be regarded, considering the circumstances under which it was composed, as a very extraordinary production of a very extraordinary mind. The greater part was written during the time his lordship held the Great Seal, and amidst all the overwhelming cares and labours of that onerous office. That the book will do much good, especially among a certain class of scientific sceptics, for whose benefit it was principally intended, we have no doubt. Such men are generally, though most unreasonably, prejudiced against any work on such subjects which proceeds from professional advocates. Here they have the arguments and convictions of an illustrious layman, equal to any of themselves in genius and knowledge, and superior to them all in eloquence.

VOL. I. N. S.

KK

We shall now present our readers with a few short extracts from Lord Brougham's work. The first shall be from that part in which he insists on the proofs of design disclosed in the constitution of the human mind, and the whole of which is well worth attentive perusal. The extract is on the effect of habit; and we have selected it, because the main illustration is not only so appropriate, but so evidently dictated by the author's own experience. It is from the pen, be it recollected, of the greatest orator of his age.

"The effect of habit upon our whole intellectual system deserves to be further considered, though we have already adverted to it. It is a law of our nature that any exertion becomes more easy the more frequently it is repeated. This might have been otherwise: it might have been just the contrary, so that each successive operation should have been more difficult, and it is needless to dwell upon the slowness of our progress, as well as the painfulness of all our exertions, say, rather, the impossibility of our making any advances in learning, which must have been the result of such an intellectual conformation. But the influence of habit upon the exercise of all our faculites is valuable beyond expression. It is indeed the great means of our improvement both intellectual and moral, and it furnishes us with the chief, almost the only, power we possess of making the different faculties of the mind obedient to the will. Whoever has observed the extraordinary feats performed by calculators, orators, rhymers, musicians, nay, by artists of all descriptions, can want no farther proof of the power that man derives from the contrivances by which habits are formed in all mental exertions. The performances of the Italian Improvisatori, or maker of poetry off-hand upon any presented subject, and in almost any kind of stanza, are generally cited as the most surprising efforts in this kind. But the power of extempore speaking is not less singular, though more frequently displayed, at least in this country. A practised orator will declaim in measured and in various periods will weave his discourse into one texture-form parenthesis within parenthesis-excite the passions, or move to laughter,-take a turn in his discourse from an accidental interruption, making it the topic of his rhetoric for five minutes to come, and pursuing in like manner the new illustrations to which it gives rise-mould his diction with a view to attain or to show an epigrammatic point, or an alliteration, or a discord; and all this with so much assured reliance on his own powers, and with such perfect ease to himself, that he shall even plan the next sentence while he is pronouncing off-hand the one he is engaged with, adapting each to the other, and shall look forward to the topic which is to follow and fit in the close of the one he is handling to be its introducer; nor shall any auditor be able to discover the least difference between all this and the portion of his speech which he has got by heart, or tell the transition from the one to the other."-p. 62.

Our next extracts are from the "Second Part;" namely, "on the pleasures" which natural theology is calculated to impart. Our readers will agree with us, that they are very beautiful.

"The branch of science which we are here particularly considering differs in no respect from the other departments of philosophy in the kind of gratification which it affords to those who cultivate it. Natural Theology, like the other sciences, whether physical or mental, bestows upon the student the pleasures of contemplation of generalization; and it bestows this pleasure in an eminent degree. To trace design in the productions and in the operations of nature, or in those of the human understanding, is, in the strict sense of the word, generalization, and consequently produces the same pleasure with the generalizations of physical and psychological science. Every part of the foregoing reasoning, therefore, applies closely and rigorously to the study of Natural Theology. Thus if it is pleasing to find that the properties of two curves so

exceedingly unlike as the ellipse and the hyperbola closely resemble each other, or that appearances so dissimilar as the motion of the moon and the fall of an apple from the tree, are different forms of the same fact, it affords a pleasure of the same kind to discover that the light of the glow-worm and the song of the nightingale, are both provisions of nature for the same end of attracting the animal's mate, and continuing its kind-that the peculiar law of attraction pervading all matter, the magnitude of the heavenly bodies, the planes they move in, and the directions of their courses, are all so contrived as to make their mutual actions, and the countless disturbances thence arising all secure a perpetual stability to the system which no other arrangement could attain. It is a highly pleasing contemplation of the self-same kind with those of the other sciences, to perceive every where design and adaptationto discover uses even in things apparently the most accidental to trace this so constantly, that where peradvanture we cannot find the purposes of nature, we never for a moment suppose there was none, but only that we have hitherto failed in finding it out-and to arrive at the intimate persuasion that all seeming disorder is harmony-all chance, design-and that nothing is made in vain; nay, things which in our ignorance we had overlooked as unimportant, or even complained of as evils, fill us afterwards with contentment and delight, when we find that they are subservient to the most important and beneficial uses. Thus inflammation and the generation of matter in a wound we find to be the effort which Nature makes to produce new flesh, and effect the cure; the opposite hinges of the valves in the veins and arteries are the means of enabling the blood to circulate; and so of innumerable other arrangements of the animal economy. So, too, there is the highest gratification derived from observing that there is a perfect unity, or, as it has been called, a personality in the kind of the contrivances in which the universe abounds; and truly this peculiarity of character, or of manner, as other writers have termed it, affords the same species of pleasure which we derive from contemplating general resemblances in the other sciences."-p. 182.

"But it is equally certain that the science derives an interest incomparably greater from the consideration that we ourselves, who cultivate it, are most of all concerned in its truth-that our own highest destinies are involved in the results of the investigation. This, indeed, makes it, beyond all doubt, the most interesting of the sciences, and sheds on the other branches of philosophy an interest beyond that which otherwise belongs to them, rendering them more attractive in proportion as they connect themselves with this grand branch of human knowledge, and are capable of being made subservient to its uses. See only in what contemplations the wisest of men end their most sublime inquiries. Mark where it is that a Newton finally reposes after piercing the thickest veil that envelopes nature-grasping and arresting in their course the most subtle of her elements and the swiftest-traversing the regions of boundless space-exploring worlds beyond the solar way-giving out the law which binds the universe in eternal order! He rests, as by an inevitable necessity, upon the contemplation of the first great First Cause, and holds it his highest glory to have made the evidence of his existence, and the dispensations of his power and of his wisdom, better understood by men,

"If such are the peculiar pleasures which appertain to this science, it seems to follow that those philosophers are mistaken who would restrict us to a very few demonstrations, to one or two instances of design, as sufficient proofs of the Deity's power and skill in the creation of the world. That one sufficient proof of this kind is, in a certain sense, enough cannot be denied; a single such proof overthrows the dogmas of the atheist, and dispels the doubts of the sceptic; but is it enough to the gratification of the contemplative mind? The great multiplication of proofs undeniably strengthens our positions; nor can we ever affirm respecting the theorems in a science, not of necessary but of contingent truth, that the evidence is sufficiently cogent without variety

and repetition. But, independently altogether of this consideration, the gratification is renewed by each instance of design which we are led to contemplate. Each is different from the other. Each step renews our delight. The finding that at every step we make with one science, and with one object in view, a new proof is added to those before possessed by another science, affords a perpetual source of new interest and fresh enjoyment. This would be true if the science in question were one of an ordinary description. But when we consider what its nature is-how intimately connected with our highest concerns— how immediately and necessarily leading to the religious adoration of the Supreme Being-can we doubt that the perpetually renewed proofs of his power, wisdom and goodness tend to fix and to transport the mind by the constant nourishment thus afforded to feelings of pure and rational devotion? It is, in truth, an exercise at once intellectual and moral, in which the highest faculties of the understanding and the warmest feelings of the heart alike partake, and in which not only without ceasing to be a philosopher the student feels as a man, but in which the more warmly his human feelings are excited, the more philosophically he handles the subject. What delight can be more elevating, more truly worthy of a rational creature's enjoyment, than to feel, wherever we tread the paths of scientific enquiry, new evidence springing up around our footsteps-new traces of divine intelligence and power meeting our eye! We are never alone; at least, like the old Roman, we are never less alone than in our solitude. We walk with the Deity; we commence with the First Cause, who sustains at every instant what the word of his power made.”—p. 193.

Our last extract contains a part of his lordship's refutation of Hume's arguments against miracles. We wish that we could give the whole of it. The illustration with which the extract closes is much the same with the hypothetical case with which Paley concludes his introduction to his Evidences. And yet a certain unprin cipled critic on Lord Brougham's book, has represented his lordship as attempting to confute Hume by arguments totally different from any of those urged by Paley, and has even attempted to defend Hume's reasoning against that of Lord Brougham; that is, in effect, against Paley! But it is too evident that this writer views every thing through the eyes of party, and would not accept truth itself, except when it happens to be found in his own clique. He is one who would evidently rather have Paley in the wrong, than endure the thought of Lord Brougham being in the right; who would rather misrepresent a friend, than allow merit to an enemy.

"But that testimony is capable of making good the proof [of miracles] there seems no doubt. In truth, the degree of excellence and of strength to which testimony may rise seems almost indefinite. There is hardly any cogency which it is not capable by possible supposition of attaining. The endless multiplication of witnesses--the unbounded variety of their habits of thinking, their prejudices, their interests-afford the means of conceiving the force of their testimony augmented ad infinitum, because these circumstances afford the means of diminishing indefinitely the chances of their being all mistaken, all misled, or all combining to deceive us. Let any man try to calculate the chances of a thousand persons who come from different quarters, and never saw each other before, and who all vary in their habits, stations, opinions, interests-being mistaken or combining to deceive us, when they give the same account of an event as having happened before their eyes-these chances are many hundreds of thousands to one. And yet we can conceive them multiplied indefinitely; for one hundred thousand such witnesses may all in like manner bear the same testimony; and they may tell us their story within twenty-four hours after the transaction, and in the next parish. And yet, according to Mr. Hume's argument, we are bound to

disbelieve them all, because they speak to a thing contrary to our own experience, and to the accounts which other witnesses had formerly given us of the laws of nature, and which our forefathers had handed down to us as derived from witnesses who lived in the old time before them. It is unnecessary to add that no testimony of the witnesses whom we are supposing to concur in their relation contradicts any testimony of our own senses. If it did, the argument would resemble Arbhbishop Tillotson's upon the real presence, and our disbelief would be at once warranted."

There has not appeared for many years a work which has called forth so much criticism as Lord Brougham's Discourse on Natural Theology. As we are total strangers to his Lordship, we cannot pretend to say whether this marked attention is gratifying or not; we should think it was so; and that considering the temper in which many of his opponents have assailed him, and the obvious motives by which they are actuated, some of the animadversions of his enemies must have been more gratifying than the praises of his friends. They show at least that they think his influence and his talents far greater than they choose to acknowledge; and if they show at the same time that they hate and slander him, he must reflect that hatred and slander from such men are the highest compliments. They are men whose praise one would not have for all the world.

Amongst such enemies we certainly do not rank Dr. Turton, nor the writers of the articles in the British Critic. These writers are, at least in our judgment, a little captious and hypercritical, yet they have at least not violated the decencies of controversy; they have never descended to vulgar abuse; they have treated with respect throughout, the genius and talent of his Lordship, even when they supposed that genius and talent misdirected; they have not been ridiculous enough to deny his great powers; they have not raked in the offals of political and party controversy to supply them with offensive missiles; they have not questioned the value of many of Lord Brougham's speculations, or the eloquence with which he has sustained them; they have not imputed base and unworthy motives in the teeth of the author's most deliberate declarations; they have not suspected him of the unutterable hypocrisy of concealing under a pretended respect for revelation, an insidious attack upon it; they have not garbled what he has said, nor ascribed to him what he has not said.

But all this and more than all this, some of his opponents have done, in what the British Critic (surely no partial testimony) justly calls "rabid persecutions of his Lordship's book." To increase the baseness of their conduct they have shown in the manner in which they have conducted the attack, and the spirit by which they are animated, that they have been actuated by the meanest party motives; that it is the hatred of a political opponent, and not the love of truth that has so stirred their gall. Indeed, were this not the case, they would have blushed to treat questions of Natural Theology and Metaphysics in the style they have done.

Whatever the defects of Lord Brougham's work, and we by no means contend that it is free from such defects; whatever its occasional obscurity; its minor inaccuracies; its too general and sweeping