on another thing, muft poffefs a power either in herent or communicated.

The property or quality of any thing is nothing elfe but the action of that thing; and the different quality or properties of any thing or fubftance are no other than the different actions or action of that thing.

For every property muft be occafioned by fome caufe, and you can have no conception of a caufe without action. The power of doing fomething feems to be the firft idea that rifes when you contemplate real beings; it is that which diftinguishes them from beings merely poffible or ideal.

The more you confider the fubject, the more you will find it neceffary to admit of an active agency; for the effects perceived cannot poffibly be the mere effects of compofition; for compofition however exalted or refined, is only the union and co-arrangement of parts which before were feparated, from which arifes a certain order and relation more or lefs perfect, according to the quality and adjustment of fuch conftituent and integrant elements.

But if fuch elements be themselves void of all energy, what can mere arrangement generate but various paffive relations and analogies? If individually they poffefs neither the power of action or re-action, of attraction or repulfion, will the most artificial tranfpofition or co-ordination produce in the compofite either energy, or motion, or refiftance of any kind? To fuppofe it, is a manifeft abfurdity; it is to fuppofe real energy can be generated out of nothing, or out of no antecedent fubject; it is to fuppofe a realizing of non-entity, an evocation of fomething out of nothing.

When out of a block of marble the artist

fashions

fashions à ftatue of Venus, he adds nothing internally to the marble; or when from the fuled mixture of falts and fand, the most beauteous forms are called forth, is any thing more effected than a new difpofition of parts which before exifted in another difpofition? But in educing active compofite from inactive elements, not only a new pofition takes place, but à real active quality is fuperadded, which did not pre-exist in the feparate elements.*

Here, however, it is neceffary for me to enforce upon you one confideration, that matter acts upon matter not by an effential but a mechanical power, that is, by it's motion; for in the natural as in the inoral world there is no power but of God.

Motion is never to be confidered as a thing by itself, but as an effect, which like all other effects must be referred to their proper caufes; for the parts of the world have motion not of themselves, but as the limbs have by means of their connection with the body to which they belong,

The parts of every fyftem have fome general reference or connection with one fingle point or part, by which they become a kind of unity or one fyftem. In the animal fuch connection is held by means of the nerves, or nervous fluid, or both, fo that all parts of the fyftem have communication with the center. Whatever new part is fo added as to be united to the common reference, becomes part of the fame fyftem. Whenever any part is fo removed as to have no further reference to, or communication with the common center, it is no longer a part of that system.

It is abfurd therefore, in accounting for the phenomena of nature, to confider the motion of R 2

Berrington's Immaterialifm delineated.

any

any body abstractedly as a thing by itself, for no fuch motion exifts in nature.

There is nothing infulated in nature it is a fyftem of parts connected and related, and every particular part must be confidered under this relation, without which neither the nature nor defign of it can be understood.

To account therefore for the motion in the world, it must be taken as a connected fyftem, and the effects confidered as they stand related to their proper cauffes; and as motion is not a caufe but an effect, there can be no motion without a cause of motion. If the effect be permanent, fo must be the cause.

It is by no means neceffary that there should be but one caufe of motion acting on a body at the fame time. In many inftances there is a concurrence of caufes contributing to the fame effect. A thip may be at once moved by the wind and tide, and the caufe that acts on projected bodies.

Defcartes, in order to make the univerfe a mero independent machine, feigned that natural bodies are indifferent to motion or reft; that if at reft, they will continue fo; if in motion, they will continue to move. till they are ftopped by fome new force; thus endeavouring to frame a machine of a moft extraordinary kind, of which there is no example in art or nature; a machine that continues to move after the moving power has ceafed to act, and upon which it has no fubfequent influence. It is a principle that naturally leads to atheism, for neither the power nor providence of God are neceflary to that body which moves to-day only becaufe it moved yesterday."

Rest and motion are not only different in their natures, but fo oppofite that it implies a contradiction

Jones's Physiological Difquifitions.

diction to suppose an equal difpofition to either to be inherent in any body. Motion is pofitive, implying power or force wherever it acts; reft is a mere negative, in which body exerts no powers; it weighs, acts, or preffes neither backward nor forward, up nor down; it produces no effect, and is in the exercife of no power. Notwithstanding this contrariety between reft and motion, yet are they confounded together in this law of Def

cartes.

Natural power may power may be properly defined to be matter actually moving, or exerting a nifus to motion like a fufpended weight; but there can be no power where there is no tendency to action; the fame body cannot therefore at the fame time be indifferent to the exerting of actual power, and to the exerting none at all.

All natural life, whether animal, mineral, or vegetable, or whatever characterizes matter to our fenfes, depends upon motion, activity, and power in matter, not on the inherent properties thereof; motion is therefore to be confidered not as a natural condition of matter, but fomething fuperadded thereto, and constantly supported to conftitute life, variety, and mutability.

Indeed fo clear is this opinion, that we find even Dr. Clarke affert," that all the great motions in the world are caufed by fome immaterial power perpetually and actually exerting itfelf every moment in every part of the world; and further, that the very laws of motion cannot continue but by fomething fuperior to matter continually exerting on it a certain force or power according to fuch determinate laws."

N PERMANENT MOTIONS IN NATURE. EXTRACTED, FROM THE REV. MR. WM. JONES'S PHYSIOLOGICAL DISQUISITIONS.

"The abfurdity of the foregoing principle of Defcartes will appear more fully by transferring it to a parallel cafe. Thus life is an effect as truly as motion; and as no body can continue to live without the conftant operation of thofe caufes which are acting for the fupport of life, fo no inanimate body can continue to move without the proper caufes of motion. When you are told that bodies are indifferent to reft or motion, you learn no more than if you were told in other words that they are indifferent to life or death; and if you went on from this principle, to affert that a body once moved would move always, unless there were fomething to stop it, you would be as much mistaken as if you should affirm, that the body which lives, once will therefore neceffarily live on till fomething interpofes to kill it.

"In accounting for the nature of human life, he would be thought to affign a very mean reafon, that should urge a inan lived to-day only because he lived yesterday; for there are certain phyfical principles on which the animal life is preferved, and without which it cannot poffibly fubiist.'

In the fame manner a body continues to move only fo long as the natural caufes of motion continue to act upon it, and reft, which is mechanical death, muft inevitably follow. Abfolute reft is abfolute death, the privation of all power, all faculty, all inftrumentality; it can fuffer agency, but exercise none; it can fill up no place in a chain of being, because incapable of any agency even in the lowest degree fubordinate.

Matter