Note 206 — Chapter IX · Latter-Day Saints.—Of the Mormon Religion.

“If man,” says Dr. Priestley, “be a material being, and the power of thinking the result of a certain organization of the brain, does it not follow that all his functions must be regulated by the laws of mechanism, and that, of consequence, all his actions proceed from an irresistible necessity?” It is the glory of the present age, the highest result of our nineteenth century physiological and statistic studies, brought to bear by a master-mind of the age upon the History of Civilization—to establish the fact that mankind progresses by investigating the laws of phenomena; in fact, to prove, not to conjecture, that such mechanism really exists. I need hardly name Mr. Buckle.