from external things are conveyed to the soul by the poste rior columns; and by the anterior ones, its will directs and produces the movements of its limbs and body.*

The nervous roots and their continued fibres or extensions spring separately from these distinct columns, and carry with them, as they spread and branch, their several properties and functions; the one sensorial, the other motive.t "There is no necessary dependance of the motions of the heart, and the other involuntary muscles, on the spinal marrow."‡

Of the NERVES, some are nerves of motion only, and are confined to the performance of it; others, and a large number, are nerves both of motion and sensation, which proceed in their distinct columns from the spinal medulla ;|| a few nerves minister to the senses of sight, smell, and hearing.¶ Here again is a remarkable instance of the designing and factitious structure, and specific composition and appropriation of every part of our frame. "The olfactory, auditory, and optic nerves, are gifted with a special sensibility to the objects of the external senses to which they respectively minister. The one receives sensations from what is odour, and from that only; the second from sound, and from sound alone; the third solely from the impressions of sight; but

* Henry, p. 76. "These two vital offices reside in distinct portions of the spina medulla-the propagation of motion in its anterior columns, the transmission of sensations in its posterior columns."-Ib. p. 91.

"Thus, each spinal nerve is furnished with a double series of roots; one set of which have their origin in the anterior medullary column, and one in the posterior. In consequence of this anatomical composition, the spinal nerves are nerves of twofold functions, containing, in the same sheath, distinct continuous filaments from both columns." Ib. p. 76.

Ib. p. 91.

"The class of nerves exercising the single office of conveying motion, comprehends the third, fourth, sixth, portio dura of the seventh, the ninth, and perhaps two divisions of the eighth, viz. the glossopharyngeal and spinal accessores."-Ib. p. 80. "Three of these nerves, the third, sixth, and ninth, arise from a tract of medullary matter, continuous with the anterior column of the spinal marrow."-Ib. p. 83.

"There are thirty-two pairs of nerves, which possess the twofold office of communicating motion and sensation. All of these, excepting one, the fifth pair of the cerebral nerves, spring from the spinal marrow. These thirty-one pairs are all constituted of two distinct series of roots; one from the anterior column, and one from the posterior column, of the spinal marrow."--Henry, p. 83.

"This division comprises the first and second pairs, and the portio mollis of the seventh pair."-Ib. p. 91.

although exquisitely sensitive of these several things, neither of them has any sensation, any feeling from the touch. These nerves are insensible to ordinary stimulants, and possess an exclusive sensibility to their respective objects— odorous matter, light, and aerial undulation."*

The remainder of the nerves form the ganglionic system, or, according to Bichat, are nerves of organic life. These are comprised in the great sympathetic nerve, and its associated plexuses and ganglia; but the functions of these are at present matter of discussion and conjecture.†

I have submitted the observations and facts in this letter to your attention, in order that by studying yourself, and the origin of the knowledge and ideas which you already possess, you may perceive, and personally feel and keep in mind the grand truth, that human nature is not a casual, an undesigned, or a common or necessary course of things, or could have arisen in that way; but that it is in all respects as much intellectual as bodily, a special, a chosen, and an artificial mode of being, devised by its Creator to be so; and specifically formed and caused in every one, by a vast series and complication of specific agencies and causations, successively operating to produce the very compound and particular results which appear in ourselves and in all. It is this perception and conviction, that we are such factitious results from such special provisions purposely devised, made, and arranged, in order to cause us to be what we are, that will give us the more adequate and intimate sense of the creating mind and power of the Deity; which will most strongly lead the understanding to a due recognition of him, and to an habitual adoration and attachment to him as an indispensable REALITY; without which, such a world, and such an order of beings as ours, could not have come into existence.

*Henry, p. 91. "Magendie seems to have been the first to prove, experimentally, that they do not share the common or tactile sensibility. He found the olfactory nerves, like the hemispheres of the brain from which they spring, insensible to pressure, pricking, or even laceration. The optic nerve, and the expansion on the retina, were as insensible to stimulants. The acoustic nerve was also touched, pressed, and even torn, without causing pain."-Ib. p. 87.

† I quote Dr. Henry's report on this interesting subject, as the most concise, judicious, and correct summary of the modern discoveries on it that I have read, with a very candid statement of the claims and authenticated results of each discoverer,

LETTER X.

Considerations on the Plan and Appointment of the Creator as to the Division of Human kind into two Sexes-Review of the distinct Nature and Qualities of each.

MY DEAR SON,

THUS far we have been surveying some of the great principles on which human nature has been constituted, and which have been found to operate, steadily and efficaciously, to fulfil their divine Author's intentions. None have failed: they are continuing to act now as freshly and as vigorously as ever, but with more abundant results, as the human mind improves from their agency, and as our enlarging population and activity are diversifying and multiplying the objects and success of man's emulating and highly cultivated spirit. It is the operation of such principles which forms the real sacred history of the world; for this, in its incidents, only elucidates the workings of the intellectual springs and freelycombined mechanism and established powers, by which human beings are actuated, their transactions produced, and their improvements effectuated. But what we have been contemplating is only a part of the great system of our terrestrial nature. Other interesting portions of the divine plan remain to be considered, and one of the most important of these will be the subject of the present letter.

It has been appointed from the origin of our race, that it should be divided into two sexes of different temperament and character, with a corresponding distinction of powers and qualities in each. This has been made the law of the whole animated kingdom; but it is among human kind, that its moral and intellectual operations are most perspicuously displayed.

This also has been a deliberate choice, and not a necessity. Each individual, like each plant, might have produced its own successor; or if there were to be two such species of human beings, each sex might have evolved a descendant like itself. Males might have had a male ancestor alone, and females one of their own kind only. Deucalion and

Pyrrha were fabled to have thus produced the new race of mankind from the pebbles which they severally threw behind them.*

On this plan there would have been two sets of human beings, as separate from each other as eagles and pheasants are; but this mode of origin would have soon sprung up into divergences, the consequences of which we cannot calculate. One effect, however, we may say, would have ensued, that neither sex would have become what it now is. Each would have differed so much in habits, nurture, and feelings, from what they now are, and from each other, that they might never have associated in sympathy, nor have long continued in amity together.

To prevent the disadvantageous result of such a division and distinctness of origin, it has been made an unaltering principle in the divine creation of human nature, that all mankind shall be of one blood and of one descent,† with perpetually attaching sympathies thence arising towards each other; and therefore that both sexes shall be born from the same mother, and have the same father: although such an appointment required a most peculiar and complicated contrivance and creative sagacity, in order to carry it into universal and unceasing effect, through all the successions of the human duration.

Most special, indeed, must have been the devised provisions to ensure such a perpetuated result. For that it might never fail, it has also been necessary that the two sexes should be kept alive in equal number, and therefore be born so as to preserve this mutual proportion with each other,a circumstance which the Creator made more difficult to himself by his laws of death, taking each away at all ages of their earthly existence, and by his assigning to them such different forms and offices of their bodily structure. It so happens in life, that from their more violent or consuming habits and occupations, the general mortality of males exceeds that of females. In order to prevent this consequence from altering their average equality, it became therefore ex

* See Letter XVI. of this volume, note.

When St. Paul expressed this truth to the Areopagus of Athens (Acts xvii. 26), it must have surprised them as much as his declaration of the final resurrection, for it formed no part of the theories of any of the ancient philosophers, nor of the popular mythologies.

pedient that rather more of the male sex should be born. By such an arrangement, the little inequalities of births and deaths would correct each other, and the balance be preserved between these two classes of the human population.

Now, on reference to the statistical tables of our own nation and of Europe on this subject, we find all these laws and provisions everywhere in effective operation. In Eng land and Wales, and in the smaller adjacent isles, the two sexes come into existence in nearly equal numbers, and with the difference in favour of the male sex.* In France and elsewhere, we observe the same result. The calculations of the proportions of births, in various countries, present average numbers to us that differ in each, because the ratio of the deaths have similar variations. For we find that more males die within any particular period than females,§

* In the Population Abstract ordered to be printed by the House of Commons in 1833, of the Parish Register Returns, digested and reduced into order with so much ability and correctness by Mr. Rickman, we have these authenticated facts on this subject:

In ENGLAND, during ten years, from 1821 to 1830, there were baptized 1,832,721 males, and 1,758,663 females.-Vol. iii. p. 412. In WALES during the same time, 83,949 males, and 76,666 females, p. 483. In the BRITISH ISLES of Guernsey, Jersey, and the adjacent ones, 15,096 males, and 14.409 females, p. 492.

†Thus, in France during the fifteen years from 1817 to 1831, there were born 7,490,931 males, and 7,041,247 females.-Ann. Long. for 1834. In Denmark in 1828, the boys born were 19,954, the girls 18,840. - Bull. Univ. 1830, p. 248. In the Prussian Provinces on the Rhine, the proportions born in 1828 were 40,893 boys, and 38,348 girls.-Ib. 435. At Brussels in 1833, the males born were 2,092, and the females 1,931.

The general proportion of the births of the different sexes in Europe has been thus calculated: For every 100 GIRLS born, there have been born the following number of BOYS:

In Russia, 109; Prussia, 107; in Sicily, Austria, Pomerania, Brandenburg, France, and Holland, 106; in Sweden, between 104 and 105; and in Great Britain, rather more than 104.

Mr. Rickman's Abstract states, that in ENGLAND in the ten years from 1821 to 1830, there were buried 1,193,461 males, and 1,155,665 females. During the eighteen years from 1813 to 1830 were buried 1,899,694 males. and 1,848,048 females.-V. iii. p. 412.

In WALES, during eighteen years from 1813 to 1830, the buried were 96,501 males and 94,253 females.-P. 483.

In both ENGLAND and WALES taken together, during the ten years from 1821 to 1830, there were buried 1,251,105 males and 1,211,802 females.-P. 486.

In the British Isles of Guernsey, Jersey, &c., the buried during these ten years were 9,077 males, and 8,933 females.-P. 492

In London for these ten years the burials were 160,242 males, and 152,250 females; and during the eighteen years from 1813 to 1830, there VOL. II.-N