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    as gratitude , love , hatred and revenge , together with memory , design and reason , all which are essential properties of a thinking being ; and I have seen such faint indications of it in the latter , as more than once in my life has led me to say of a four-footed animal c ; It has more of mind than that

    man . '' There was at Daventry a man whom the students of that college will recollect , a striking example of an animal with two feet , whose province it was to drive his fellows with four feet

    from Borough Hill , and whose Superiority over them was scarcely di ^ cernable in any particular , except in the power he possessed of shaking in his hand a menacing whip , and making them walk before him * This mi ^ ht liave been

    done by an ourang-outang as well as by him . Horses and dogs , and no doubt elephauts , have done fcatsj of which that man ' s mind seemed scarcely capable . And

    what might be said of idiots , and of others whose system , of action proves them akin to idiots ? Their souls are surely no better in sterling value than the brutes !

    I suspect the ingenuity of Mr . P . will not provoke the pens of our ablest materialists ; and if it happen that you do not receive any observations which are better worth insertion in reply to him , you may perhaps admit the following . To terrify tender minds ] VJr . P , ^ observes the doctrine of

    materialism is a cheerless doctrine / ' To Ihe materialist it is not in the least ; though it may appear so to your correspondent . To be under the government of God in a material torm , without any thing of what is £ &Hed spirit depending upon it

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    is just as satisfactory to him as to exist in any other way whatever He is what his Creator has made him , and shall be what he designs him to be . With this assurance

    he is not Jess comfortable than Mr . P ., though he believe himself in possession of an immaterial and therefore an immortal spirit ; or even though he , not knowing what else to make of his immaterial

    principle , suppose it to be an emanation or ray of Divinity . u It is difficult as it obliges its advocates to prove a negative / ' By no means . The materialist is not obliged to prove any thing . He admits that he is what he appears to be , a material being . Let those

    pfove more than this who are not contented with such a being , and who imagine a something existing in them , which they cannot see , which they cannot feel , and the name of which conveys a vague

    idea , which it is not possible to explain For how can words , which are made to explain sensations rising from matter , describe that which is immaterial ?

    ** The whole man is dissipated at death ; then have we not lost all ? Where then is our identity t ^ It is in the hands of him that made ' us , and who has promised to raise i us up at the last day . And this ^ answer is quite as satisfactory as / the answer that would be given , by the immaterialist to sl similar , question . Where is the spirit when ^ it has forsaken the body ? Let him answer this who can . ' This is a notion that tends to unsettle the religious princip le , and must create some

    apprehension that the lamp of lifc , when once extinguished , may never be lighted up again . " This is »*

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    596 On the Letters Against Materialism .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1811, page 596, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2421/page/20/