be too cautious, too patient, or too exact in their observations; and that a proneness to precipitate theory, may greatly retard, if not defeat their object. It owes whatever of plausibility at present belongs to it, to the fact, that it arose without any reference to theory; and the strongest prima facie objections to which it is liable are, undoubtedly, those which have reference to the very great rapidity with which it has assumed its present shape, and the very minute subdivisions, each having appropriate offices, into which the brain has been divided, If former philosophers have erred in supposing that there were no original propensities, but that all men came into the world with equal powers and capacities, and only differed from each other as their minds were formed by the education they received, or the circumstances by which they were surrounded, so it is to be suspected that phrenologists have erred by passing into an opposite extreme, and multiplying the primitive faculties to an extent that is unphilosophical and needless.

That phrenology leads to materialism has often been asserted; and the assertion has been rendered specious by the fact, that it numbers amongst its most ardent votaries, individuals who are known to be favorable to the material philosophy. But, in truth, it leaves the great question at issue exactly where it found it. Phrenology does not profess to throw any light on the nature of mind; it is only the laws which govern its manifestations, with which it pretends to be acquainted.And it might as well be said that a man was a materialist, because, admitted that he received ideas of colour by means of the eye, as that he should be so considered, because he maintained that all other emotions and impressions were perceived by reason of certain peculiarities of cerebral conformation. The brain is an instrument in the one case, exactly as the eye is in the other, and neither are to be confounded with the mind, any more than the music produced from a piano is to be confounded with the keys or the strings by impressions upon which it was occasioned.

But it may be said, if mind be a result of organization, as music is of impact upon an instrument, does not that savour, at least, of materiality? We

think not. We only know body by means of mind. We have no direct, or immediate cognizance of matter. Reid says we have; but his opinions are, at present, very little regarded. The late Dr. Thomas Brown says we have; but, we believe, no individual worthy of notice, himself excepted, ever adopted his peculiar view. The first refers the cognizance of external nature to a faculty which he denominates common sense; the latter to the resistance occasioned by an interposing body to the power of muscular contraction. But, in both cases, obviously, that which is immediately, present to the mind, is the sensation, impression, idea, or whatever else it may be called, which is considered as intimating the presence of the external object; not the object itself, which is inferred, rather than perceived; which, as in the case of dreams, may be perceived when it is not present, and, as in the case of the heavenly bodies, may be perceived to be in one place, when it is known to be in another.

The most vivid perceptions, therefore, do not of necessity argue the presence of an external cause; although doubtless, they, in the great majority of instances, furnish sufficiently good reasons for believing such a cause to be in existence. But, we must not confound the inference of the judgment with the act of, or impression upon the mind. Of the latter, we have the evidence of consciousness. If we analyze the evidence upon which we rest our belief in the former, we will find it to resolve itself into no more than this, that such objects, supposing them to exist, furnish the most plausible account that can be given of the phenomena of perception.

A man hears the sound of a trumpet, and, in common parlance, he says he hears a trumpet. By which he does not mean that an external object, called a trumpet, is immediately present to his mind; but only, that the sound which he has heard leads him to infer that a trumpet must be somewhere in his neighbourhood. In like manner, with respect to all the other senses. The eye conveys impressions of colour, the nose of scent, which, although they lead to an almost instinctive inference that some external cause of these impressions must exist, yet by no means impart to us the same distinct and in

fallible evidence respecting that cause which we have of their own existence. Phrenologists affect to have found out a faculty somewhat analogous to Dr. Reid's "common sense," and by which they maintain that we havewhat amounts to self-evident knowledge of external existence. But we beg to ask, will not that faculty manifest itself in the dreamer, with an activity as intense, and a belief as unhesitating, as in any waking subject? And if so, how can it be presumed that any certain or infallible knowledge of the external world is the result of its operations? We are very much inclined to think, that the faculty to which the phrenologists allude, is a primitive faculty; that is, that some individuals are born with a peculiar power of observing and distinguishing particular objects; but that power affords no evidence whatever of the necessary existence of external objects, beyond the very natural inference which may be drawn in the case of any of the other senses. So that, for aught that

phrenology accomplishes, the great question between materialists and immaterialists remains exactly where it was before.

A knowledge of matter presupposes the existence of mind. But the existence of mind does not necessarily presuppose the existence of matter. It may be true that the latter exists as well as the former. But it is not a self-evident truth. And however men may doubt about the one, the very fact of doubting at all, affords perfect certainty respecting the other. Our conjectures or inferences may be erroneous

and therefore we can never be sure that we are not under a delusion when we are led by our sensations to the belief of an external object. Many such delusions are practised by those who are skilful at slight of hand. But the very act of conjecturing at all, proves infallibly the existence of a being that conjectures, and we therefore, can never entertain any doubt respecting the real existence of an intellectual nature.

SIR,

The frequent complaints made of Reporters in the public papers, would induce those who value the honour of our Established Church, to hope, that it was to the inaccuracy of one of these we were to ascribe a report on the Education Question in Ireland. It is, at all events, due to propriety, to visit on the Reporter what he has presumed to put into the lips of his Grace the Archbishop of Dublin; and I can only treat it as coming from such a writer. It is due to the cause of truth and the Clergy of Ireland, not to allow that writer's observations to escape unnoticed. I merely touch on a few pointsThis writer, Sir, uses the cloak of the Archbishop's authority, to vindicate the book which the Commissioners VOL. I.

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of Education have published, from the charge of being a mutilation of the Scriptures, and the plea is, that a mutilation of a book, is a publication professing to be the whole book, which it is not." It were well, if such a plea as this could be admitted to vindicate the iniquitous principle of this selection. A selection from the Sacred Volume, used in education, in conjunction with the whole Bible, to the study of which, little children are taught with feelings of reverence to aspire, cannot indeed, with justice be called "a mutilation,” but an honest and valuable introduction to the use of that inspired Volume.

But a selection from the Sacred Volume, used in education as this is, to the exclusion of the remainder, and made on the iniquitous principle,

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that this remainder or any part thereof, is unfit for the instruction of youth, this, Sir, is not only a mutilation, but it is worse than a mutilation of the Scriptures, it is a mutilation of some parts of this holy Volume and a desecration of the rest.

I would, Sir, that we had been left to impute this exclusively to Popish superstition, and that we had been permitted to consider the Protestant members of the Board merely as the dupes of a mistaken and perverted policy. But alas! we are deprived even of this melancholy consolation-we are compelled to admit that the Board is guided, not by a perversion of policy, but by a dereliction of principle. What is the account given of this selection? it is this

"The first publication of selections by the Society comprised the whole book of Genesis, with the exception of those parts which all parents would refrain from putting into the hands of their children." Here, Sir, is not a submission to an error of Popish superstition, not a weak and criminal compromise of truth with falsehood, but a plain dogma of Popery herself, a plain, direct and awful charge against the purity, and the perfection of the truth of the eternal God. Such dogmas may be novel in English people, but we are too well accustomed to them in Ireland.

The first in the ranks of impiety, who recently set forth a modification of this principle, was Dr. Doyle, who, in his letters on the Bible Society, in 1825,

says

"Some person in Waterford, quoted with religious horror the saying of a priest "that the Bible would play the devil with them," meaning the children, yet the priest thought rightly, though he expressed himself in the Irish manner, putting the wrong end of the sentiment foremost. The Scriptures would not play the devil with the children, but the devil would play his pranks with the children by means of the Scriptures!!"-See Letters of J. K. L.

This was followed by a worthy pupil of such a master, Mr. Sheil, who in the attack which he and Mr. O'Connell commenced upon the London Hibernian Society, declares it as the dogma of his Church, that "the Bible is not fit for the unassisted perusal of every shoeless urchin, and that we should not make a primer of the Word of God," and in

attacking the then Commissioners of Education for the principle that " means should be taken to supply the Protestant children with the Testaments," he urges this sentiment with the caustic irony of mingled infidelity and superstition, thus

"The Protestant child who sits beside the Catholic, is to be initiated in the interesting details of criminality contained in the history of the Jews, while his Popish neighbours are to be denied all access to those pure and salutary sources of information from which so much useful knowledge is to be derived." I refer those who wish to examine the impious amplifications with which ribald blasphemy can enlarge upon this principle, to a perusal of that gentleman's speech on that occasion. So Mr. Maguire in his controversy with Mr. Pope, says— "Christ will not allow his children to use good food, when by the circumstances of the case, it might be converted into poison. Would you give to a child food of an indigestible quality?" In short, Sir, this is a principle which has been set forth and dilated on by men of every grade and every class, from the schoolmaster to the pope, in the ranks of superstition, and from the liberal to the atheist, in those of infidelity; but no man has ever yet ventured to suppose, a Protestant Archbishop gravely to stand up and tell a Protestant nation, that in conjunction with the ministers of superstition, he had composed an expurgate edition of an inspired book of God, "omitting those parts which all parents would refrain from putting into the hands of their chil dren." That is, Sir, in plain English, that the Bible is a book unfit for our children, and that these parents-these worms of the dust, are wiser than the God and Father of lights, whose wisdom inspired, and whose mercy gave his Sacred book to be "a lantern to our feet and a light to our paths," to guide us to salvation from the cradle to the grave.

What, Sir!-Is it that very portion of God's holy Word which his own authoritative command ordains that we "should teach them diligently unto our children?" that we should “teach them to our sons, and our sons' sons," that "children which have not known anything may hear and learn to fear the Lord their God, as long as they live." Is this that Word which we are now to learn

that "parents are to refrain from putting into the hands of their children," and that we are to be indebted to the Board of Irish Education for a safe and proper edition of it for their instruction? Sir, there is not a man who values the honour of our Church, whose heart must not burn with feelings of grief and shame at a statement such as this. We do not protest against individuals, but against errors-not against men but against principles, and when a principle of Popish superstition, such as this, is set forth before the nation, the higher the authority from which it emanates, the louder and the loftier shall be our protest against it. We value and we respect as we ought, the dignities and offices of men, but it is only calculated to bring them into degradation and contempt when those who fill them stand upon the little molehill of their earthly elevation, to lift their puny voice against the authority and the glory of the God of Heaven.

It is asserted that "an outcry had been raised against the first number of the selections made by the Society, before they were published, the proof sheet having been surreptitiously procured from the printers, and it was said that in those selections they had introduced a passage sanctioning the worship of the Virgin Mary."

Now, Sir, if this sentiment had been uttered in the House of Lords, it would seem perfectly unaccountable on any principles of ordinary candour, to any man acquainted with the facts; it would seem like an attempt to evade the charge, by casting an imputation of dishonesty on those who procured the sheet, and of falsehood on those who brought the accusation. I did not see that sheet, Sir, but I know that the gentleman who made the charge knew nothing of it till it was placed in his hands, and I know that it was not procured surreptitiously, but fell accidentally into the hands of the gentleman who got it. Mr. Carlisle made this same cry, and wrote a pamphlet on it too, which was industriously circulated in England, complaining, forsooth, as if this passage only appeared in a proof sheet, but ought not to be charged on the extracts as published; whereas, this very passage came out with a title changed in the selections, and it was not said to sanction the worship of the Virgin Mary, but it

was proved to do so-proved beyond the power of the Commissioners, not only to refute, but even to attempt to answer the charge; they could not, and they are unable to do so. If the Archbishop of Dublin can find one of the Commissioners to answer that charge, he shall be instantly refuted; and now I say, Sir, not only that their vote sanctions the worship of the Virgin Mary, but since I find that the Board tolerates, as is openly acknowledged, the use of the books in the Roman Catholic depository, to be admitted. into the religious instruction of the schools, I say this, that they sanction the most abominable idolatries and superstitions that ever disgraced a people calling themselves christians, and I charge the Board of Education with patronizing the worst and most abominable antichristian delusions that can blind the human intellect, and destroy the human soul; and if they will undertake to disprove this charge, since it is complained they were not allowed to plead their cause in Exeter Hall, and since it is said that the Church of Ireland is factious in opposing this Board-and since, respect for his Grace's office forbids such an appeal to the Archbishop of Dublin, in the name of the Church of Ireland, let Mr. Carlisle, and Mr. Anthony Blake, meet a clergyman of the established Church and a clergyman of the Scotch Church, or an Irish Lawyer in Exeter Hall, and let the Popish principles of their constitution, and their Popish extracts, and the Popish superstitions of that depository, which they sanction, be brought fairly to the light, and I will venture to assert, that there is not a man that shall ever have the hardihood to call himself a Protestant Minister, and stand up to tell the British nation that the public money should be devoted to such an abominable purpose. Now, Sir, this is plain language, such as befits the subject. Let us see will the Board of Education venture to meet it, then, Sir, the nation shall see where political faction and crooked policy; and Christian fidelity and truth are to be found. "He that doeth evil, hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved; but he that doeth truth, cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God."