is an animal in the full extent of that designation. When the body sickens,
the mind droops; and when the blood ceases to flow, the soul takes its
departure. Charged with the care of his preservation, admonished by a sense
of pleasure or pain, and guarded by an instinctive fear of death, nature
has not intrusted his safety to the mere vigilance of his understanding,
nor to the government of his uncertain reflections.

The distinction betwixt mind and body is followed by consequences of the
greatest importance; but the facts to which we now refer, are not founded
on any tenets whatever. They are equally true, whether we admit or reject,
the distinction in question, or whether we suppose, that this living agent
is formed of one, or is an assemblage of separate natures. And the
materialist, by treating of man as of an engine, cannot make any change in
the state of his history. He is a being, who, by a multiplicity of visible
organs, performs a variety of functions. He bends his joints, contracts or
relaxes his muscles in our sight. He continues the beating of the heart in
his breast, and the flowing of the blood to every part of his frame. He
performs other operations which we cannot refer to any corporeal organ. He
perceives, he recollects, and forecasts; he desires, and he shuns; he
admires, and contemns. He enjoys his pleasures, or he endures his pain. All
these different functions, in some measure, go well or ill together. When
the motion of the blood is languid, the muscles relax, the understanding is
tardy, and the fancy is dull: when distemper assails him, the physician
must attend no less to what he thinks, than, to what he eats, and examine
the returns of his passion, together with the strokes of his pulse.

With all his sagacity, his precautions, and his instincts, which are given
to preserve his being, he partakes in the fate of other animals, and seems
to be formed only that he may die. Myriads perish before they reach the
perfection of their kind; and the individual, with an option to owe the