of mankind was not the product of truth, but an experience of their own creation; an experience, at which we now recoil with ineffable horror and amazement. We now at last understand and feel, that from this experience can only be deduced a portentous fact in the History of Man; that there is no abomination, which may not be engrafted among the customs of the Human Race, as conformable to the Laws of Nature and as confirmed by the universal testimony and authority of mankind. It is now acknowledged, that the most illustrious sages in the art of medicine and the grossest of the people, in all former times, have gazed with the same eye of fatal and unsuspecting ignorance on various appearances of Death; and that they have committed their fellow creatures to the grave, who were still instinct with the principles of Life, and possessed even with the powers of a sound and healthy frame, ready at once to resume in all its former vigour, the various offices of motion-sensation-and reflection. While we look back with consternation and dismay on the ravages, which so baleful a delusion must have of necessity produced among the inhabitants of the earth; we are still totally ignorant of the extent to which this delusion C delusion has been spread, nor can we form any notion of that wide sphere of action, in which these ravages may have operated. Our attention has at present been directed only to peculiar cases of sudden and violent Death, and in these alone have the false conceptions of former ages been detected, and their enormities partially corrected. We know not however, whether innumerable other instances do not still remain, in which our own ignorance may be equally fatal and our own practices equally pernicious. The facts, which the Humane Societies have established, conspire in suggesting to our minds, that we probably are still deeply involved in the same labyrinth of error, and that we differ only from the past times by the strength and obstinacy of our delusions, which still continue to pervert the understanding, when new lights have been afforded to guide and direct its wanderings. The experiments which these Societies have exhibited, concur to excite alarms, to infuse doubts, and to destroy all confidence in the rectitude of our opinions and practices on a subject, in which nothing certain has been discovered but the ignorance and errors of mankind. The knowledge, which we have acquired acquired from these Societies, is indeed of the most valuable and important nature; if we are contented to appreciate its excellence, not so much by that which they have discovered, as by that which they have abolished—not by the practices which they have induced us to adopt, but by those which they have taught us to reject with abhorrence, or to regard with suspicion. The great discovery, which has been made by the Humane Societies, does not consist in supplying any new principles, by which we can infallibly decide, that the powers of life are totally and irrecoverably annihilated. On the contrary, they have taught us, that those ordinary signs of Death, which have ever been regarded as infallible criterions of the absolute extinction of the vital principle are all doubtful and fallacious, and that they afford us no evidence whatever on which our decisions can be formed. They have proclaimed to mankind in the most express and unequivocal manner, at least from the force and spirit of their discoveries, that the only evidence on the total extinction of Life is to be found in that mode of decision, to which they have themselves resorted in those peculiar C2 peculiar instances, which they have undertaken to examine. This evidence consists in actual experiment on every case, which is presented to the attention; and we are not authorised to pronounce our sentence on the question of absolute and irremediable Death, till all the arts of resuscitation have been applied without effect, which are at present to be found within the sphere of our knowledge. Though the facts, which the Humane Societies have supplied, directly conduct the understanding to this important inference; yet we do not find, that a conclusion so obvious has at all operated either on their minds, or on the opinions of the public, to whom they have appealed. The truth which they have established, remains an insulated fact, and confined within the narrow limits of the particular cases, by which it has been proved. It has not been adopted as the basis of a general conclusion, nor has it operated on the customs and institutions of mankind. In vain have these Societies demonstrated to the most perfect satisfaction of themselves. and the public, that the absence of apparent motion and sensation affords no criterion whatever whatever of the annihilation of Life. The artists, who have exhibited the most numerous and brilliant proofs of this truth, and the people, who have been convinced by the demonstration, still continue to regulate their ordinary practice by a maxim directly opposite, just as if no such Societies had existed, and no such truth had been established. The absence of apparent motion and sensation still continues in these times as in all the past, to be regarded in our ordinary practice as an infallible criterion of the annihilation of Life; and on this conclusion at this moment, through the whole extent of the globe, we consign our fellow creatures to their graves, without reflection or remorse. Nothing surely can exceed our astonishment, when we cast our eyes on this unquestionable fact, and consider the period in which it still continues to prevail. The time however is, I trust, at last arrived, in which the attention of mankind will no longer slumber over a theme, pregnant with such mighty consequences. The time, I trust, is at last arrived, in which a series of conclusions will be adopted, commensurate with the importance of the materials, which have been sup |