So far as I could gather, Dr.Horsley supposes that _every atom of matter has a soul_, which is the cause of its motion, its gravitation, &c.

What has made him adopt this strange unphilosophical notion I cannot tell, unless it be the fear that his study of natural philosophy should make him suspected of Atheism, or at least of Materialism.

For it is certain that there is at present a prejudice among the English clergy that natural philosophy has a tendency to make men Atheists or Materialists.

This absurd prejudice was first introduced, I think, by that illiberal, though learned, prelate, Dr.Warburton."[160] A similar opinion has been recently reproduced by Dr.Burnett in his "Philosophy of Spirits in relation to Matter," in which he attempts to show that the forces and laws of Nature cannot be proved to be _the result of anything inherent in matter alone_, and that they ought to be ascribed to some substantive and distinct, but immaterial and dependent _spirits_, called "the spirit of life," "the spirit of electricity," "the spirit of heat."[161].
All these statements are only so many modifications of the same theory, and they agree in denying the existence of any active powers in matter, while they ascribe the phenomena of motion, life, and thought to an immaterial principle.

There is, as it seems to us, a mixture of truth and error in this theory.