revelation, if it appear to be consistent with phenomena of
nature, to suppose that God is constantly occupied in forming
mind out of matter and that the various impressions that man
receives through life is the process for that purpose. The
employment is surely worthy of the highest attributes of the
Deity.

This view of the state of man on earth will not seem to be
unattended with probability, if, judging from the little
experience we have of the nature of mind, it shall appear upon
investigation that the phenomena around us, and the various
events of human life, seem peculiarly calculated to promote this
great end, and especially if, upon this supposition, we can
account, even to our own narrow understandings, for many of those
roughnesses and inequalities in life which querulous man too
frequently makes the subject of his complaint against the God of
nature.

The first great awakeners of the mind seem to be the wants of
the body. (It was my intention to have entered at some length
into this subject as a kind of second part to the Essay. A long
interruption, from particular business, has obliged me to lay
aside this intention, at least for the present. I shall now,
therefore, only give a sketch of a few of the leading
circumstances that appear to me to favour the general supposition
that I have advanced.) They are the first stimulants that rouse
the brain of infant man into sentient activity, and such seems to
be the sluggishness of original matter that unless by a peculiar
course of excitements other wants, equally powerful, are
generated, these stimulants seem, even afterwards, to be