pendent on a variety of circumstances. The individual's state of mind at the time of forming the judgment-the education he had received-his acquaintance with all the circumstances of the case-his prejudices, desires, and passions-ought all to be taken into account in forming an opinion respecting the freedom or dependency of his judgment. If, for example, a person's brain be affected with fever-if there be a strong determination of blood to the brain, so as to produce insanity, is it not evident that his capacity of judging will be defective, because his organization has become impaired?

The grand inference to be drawn from all the preceding remarks is, that as man is the creature of the associations which surround him, those associations should be of an elevating character. This is what every lover of his species would wish to behold. But the associations which surround men at present are of a degrading description. Competition, strife, domestic and political discord, heart-burnings, drunkenness, fraud, and perjury, along with a thousand other anomalous and degrading circumstances, surround our population. These things exert an unhallowed influence over human beings; and they will never be completely removed until the arrangements contemplated by the maligned and much misrepresented socialists are called into existence.

Sophistry Unmasked.

The above essay was written as a refutation of an ingenious and sophistical argument, which has often been urged against our doctrine of necessity. The argument is simply this :

First. External things produce in man perceptions. Second. Reflection, which is an independent power of the mind, examines those perceptions.

Third. Judgment, which is also an independent power, decides which are right or which are wrong, or what course is most proper to be taken by the individual. And

Fourth. Volition, or willing, and acting follows.
The conclusion deduced from these positions by

their sapient author is, that man is free to act or not to act, free to decide or not to decide; in short, that he has a self-determining power within him, which is called (absurdly enough) free will.

If this argument be divested of all ambiguity, it amounts to a concession on the part of the arguer to his opponents. For assuming all his positions to be correct, they only prove that the primary cause (so far as man is concerned,) of the train of mental phenomena (the different parts of which are called by our sophist reflecting, judging, willing, &c.,) is the influence of external circumstances. Without external circumstances there can be no perceptions-without perceptions there can be no reflection-without reflection there can be no judgment-and without judgment there can be no volition, or acting. Here the different positions are interwoven with each other, and the different things alluded to are dependent on each other. Now, if the man cannot reflect, judge, and decide without external circumstances, how can he be free in the absolute sense of the term?-how can he be independent of the influence of circumstances?

But the judgment and reflection are not independent powers of the mind. They are wholly of a dependent nature. The judgment we have shown to be dependent on the inferior or superior nature of the cerebral organization, the education the man has received, and a variety of other circumstances. The process of reflection is induced by the intensity of the perceptions generated in the mind by the operation of external objects, and the volition to act or not to act is caused by the apparent preferableness or unpreferableness of the object or action. Now, the question is not whether man judges, reflects, and acts, for this all will acknowledge; but whether he could act differently in any given instance, all the inducing circumstances remaining the same, i. e., continuing to operate in the same way upon him. We assert that he could not; the author of the sophism before alluded to asserts that he could.

But it will be said that though, so long as a man's feelings and desires remain unchanged, he will certainly act in a specific manner, yet he has power

to determine on adequate motives, or to change his views and feelings. This is obviously false philosophy. The fact of a man beginning to change his feelings, implies that his feelings have already undergone an alteration. They must appear to him troublesome, or in some way disadvantageous, or he would never have determined to change them. He sees them mentally in another light to that which he saw them in before. The man's views, feelings, or conceptions, (you may call the operations of the thinking principle by any of these names, or any other you please,) have therefore become changed. How, then, could he have been the author of the change, when it has occurred before he deliberately set about the work of changing? It is impossible. The thing is an absurdity.

And even if the man did set about the act of changing his views and feelings, or of determining on adequate motives, he must have had a motive for that determination. Did he create that preliminary motive, he must then have had an ante-preliminary motive for the act of the preliminary motive's creation; and so on, ad infinitum.

But the fact of a man determining on adequate motives is an absurdity. A motive exists in the mind, and embraces those feelings, convictions, and desires which are produced in the man by the operation of circumstances on his senses. Now, for an individual to determine on the creation of any particular motive, implies that he is already aware of that motive; so that the fact of the motive's creation is rendered utterly impossible. For, if the mental conception already exists, how can the individual call it into being? The thing is impossible, and involves an absurdity, implying that the motive was in being before it was in being, a contradiction which I leave the would-be reverend to reconcile.

In conclusion, let it be observed, that any person who, with an unprejudiced mind, devotes his hours to the contemplation of man, will, we are persuaded, be convinced, by an evidence amounting almost to the force of a mathematical demonstration, that man is the creature of those associations which surround him.

A DISSERTATION

ON THE DOCTRINE OF ABSOLUTE CREATION AS TAUGHT BY MODERN CHRISTIANS, PRIESTS, AND THEIR ABETTORS.

(Continued from page 95.)

IT appears that the notion, that "God was all, and all was God," was the foundation of the polytheism of ancient times. The learned Cudworth declares that this is his opinion. "We conceive," says he, "it was the mistake and abuse of this one thing which was the chief ground and original of the both real and seeming polytheism, not only of the Greek and European, but also of the Egyptian and other pagans, they concluding that because God was all things, and consequently all things God, that therefore God ought to be worshipped in all things—that is, in all the several parts of the world, and things of nature-but especially in those animated intellectual beings which are superior to men. Consentaneously whereunto they did both Jeoλoyšív ü ñаvтα, theologise, or deify, all things, looking upon everything as having something supernatural, or a kind of divinity, in it. They also bestowed several names upon God, according to the several parts of the word and things of nature, calling him in the starry heavens and æther, Jupiter; in the air, Juno; in the winds, Eolus; in the sea, Neptune; in the earth and subterranean parts, Pluto; in learning, knowledge, and invention, Minerva and the muses; in war, Mars; in pleasure, Venus; in corn, Ceres; in wine, Bacchus; and the like.”*

Now, this notion that God was all, and all was God, was associated with the notion of creation among the Egyptians. Indeed, a large part of the Greek mythology was derived from the Egyptian priests. Very probably the word Zevc, Jupiter, and also the word Neptune, are Egyptian words, or at least derived from the language of that country. The vulgar amongst

Intel. Syst., p. 308; folio edit.

the Egyptians worshipped leeks and onions, or probably made use of them in their religious ceremonies, in the same way as the Roman Catholics make use of images, pictures, and beads. Origen, writing against Celsus, saith, "To him that cometh to be a spectator of the Egyptian worship, there first offer themselves to his view most splendid and stately temples, sumptuously adorned, together with solemn groves, and many pompous rites and mystical ceremonies: but, as soon as he enters in, he perceives that it was either a cat, or an ape, or a crocodile, or a goat, or a dog, that was the object of this religious worship."

Cudworth, after quoting the above passage from Origen, observes that, "notwithstanding this multiform polytheism and idolatry of the Egyptians, they did nevertheless acknowledge one supreme and universal Numen, and that this can be proved from the great fame which they anciently had over the whole world for their wisdom. The Egyptians are called by the Elei, in Herodotus, oopéraтоι aveρжπov, the wisest of men; and it is a commendation that is given to one in the same writer, that he excelled the Egyptians in wisdom, who excelled all other mortals. Thus the encomium of Moses in the scripture runs, that he was learned in all the learning of the Egyptians; and the transcendency of Solomon's wisdom is likewise thus expressed by the writer of the book of Kings, that it excelled the wisdom of all the children of the east country, and all the wisdom of Egypt; where, by the children of the east, are chiefly meant the Persian magi and the Chaldeans: and there seems to be a climax here, that Solomon's wisdom did not only excel the wisdom of the magi and of the Chaldeans, but also that of the Egyptians themselves. From whence it appears, that in Solomon's time, Egypt was the chief school of literature in the whole world, and that the Greeks were then but little or not at all taken notice of, nor had any considerable fame for learning. For which cause, we can by no means give credit to that of Philo, in the life of Moses, that besides the Egyptian priests, learned men were sent for by Pharaoh's daughter, out of Greece, to instruct Moses. Whereas it is manifest