al victory. But I regard you as one still open to conviction. I believe you are venturing your all, for time and for eternity, on principles, weak and worthless as the spider's thread, and on principles, too, that can be so demonstrated to be contrary to common sense, that every honest mind can be made to see the inconsistency. I ask then, have you the patience, the candor, and the kindness to bear with me, while I attempt such a demonstration? Will you encourage me in the effort, by the assurance that you will endeavor to free your mind from the bias of party feeling, the pride of committed opinion, the pride of sex, and the aversion to being convicted of wrong, and examine what I offer, fairly, honestly and kindly?

Give me such assurances, and though I do not feel that I can "convert you," as you jocosely gave me leave to do, I hope I may, at least, influence you to a course of rational investigation, that, with the blessing of Heaven, may guide you into all truth.

Your friend, &c.

MY DEAR SIR:

LETTER II.

Your kind assurances are most welcome, and I am encouraged to proceed. I am going to attempt, then, to show that your principles are at war with common sense. By this I mean, that they are principles that men of common sense never do, and never would act upon, in any of the business or interests of this life; that they are principles which no man could act upon in common affairs, without losing his character for common sense, or more probably, being lodged in a lunatic hospital.

The two main principles of your system are, in the first place, that "we are not free agents, but are governed by the necessity of fate,”—and in the second place that "there is no God."

Now the principles involved in both these propositions, have been run into the deepest extremes of metaphysical gloom. But I do not believe it is owing to any inevitable difficulties that embarrass these subjects; for it seems to me that they not

only are capable of being rendered plain and comprehensible to all common minds, but that they actually are matters of every day thought and communication, and are as clearly understood as any principles of every day feeling and action. For this reason it is, that we shall have no difficulty in finding both language and illustration to convey all the ideas and distinctions gained by metaphysicians, and familiar not only to the most common minds, but even to children.

I will begin, then, with one of the simplest illustrations. Children, in their play, often set up a row of bricks on the end, and at such equal distances, that the fall of the first one will knock over the second, and that will overthrow the third, and so on till all are fallen.

Now ask any child engaged in this amusement, "what was the cause of the fall of the last brick that fell?” and he will tell you it was "the brick that stood next to it ;" and if you ask for the cause of the fall of that, he will tell you it was still the next brick, and so on till you are referred to the child who gave a blow to the first brick that fell, as a cause, and finally stop at the mind of that child as the real cause of all. Here ask the child, “could the bricks have fallen thus if they had not been arranged in that manner?" and he will say “no.” "Could they have fallen if the child or something else had not overthrown the first brick?” and he will say "no." Ask him if the bricks could help falling after they were struck, and he will say "no." Ask him if the boy could help choosing to

strike the first brick? and he will say "yes." Here is the whole theory of cause and effect, free agency and necessity, and all the distinctions necessary to explain the meaning of all the terms used.

The brick that caused its next neighbor to fall is an intermediate or secondary cause; the child's mind, or his act of choice, in knocking down the first brick, was the primary or efficient cause, and the arrangement of the bricks was a necessary circumstance, without which the event could not have happened. A necessary circumstance is readily distinguished from either a primary or a secondary cause. If a child should proceed still farther into inquiries after causes, he would learn the law of gravitation, which is another secondary cause; and the inquiry farther urged would bring him to the great primary or efficient Cause of all things; who formed matter and gave it all its laws and arrangements. Here it could be explained that all changes that take place in matter are caused either by some secondary cause, which is itself matter, as in the case of one brick knocking down another, or else by some efficient cause, or the volition of some mind. And it can be explained, also, how efficient causes, or acts of mind, sometimes act directly on matter, as in the case of the raising of the child's arm when he goes to strike the first brick; and how they act through the intervention of secondary causes, as when a man's mind plans all the arrangements of some machine, and after he has given it the first impulse, it moves

on by secondary causes, without any farther influ ence of his mind. So also an immensely long string of bricks, when placed at proper distances, would keep falling after the blow was given to the first one, without any farther efficiency of mind in the one that planned the arrangement, and gave the first blow.

Now all the changes that take place in matter, are traced either to a secondary cause, or to a primary and efficient cause; and nobody ever believes any change of matter to take place without some such cause. And the secondary cause is never believed to act by any power of its own, but only as an intermediate instrument in effecting what is in reality caused by the volition of some intelligent mind. So that all changes in matter are traced through intermediate secondary causes, back to an efficient cause, or some intelligent mind.

But there are changes or effects in mind for which causes are sought, as much as in the changes of matter. For example, a child sees the overthrow of the bricks before described. He feels an emotion of pleasure, and expresses it by a laugh, Now what was the cause of that emotion in the child's mind? It was owing, in the first place, to a certain constitution of mind, which is susceptible to pleasureable emotions at what is curious and new, which is a necessary circumstance; and, in the second place, to the exhibition of an event before the child which was new and curious, which is a cause.

The child's mind is so made that such an emotion