SCENE II.

SCENE--_Deeside._

TIME-_Seven_ P.C.

NORTH--BULLER--SEWARD--TALBOYS.

NORTH.

How little time or disposition for anything like serious Thinking, or Reading, out of people's own profession or trade, in this Railway World! The busy-bodies of these rattling times, even in their leisure hours, do not affect an interest in studies their fathers and their grandfathers, in the same rank of life, pursued, even systematically, on many an Evening sacred from the distraction that ceased with the day.

TALBOYS.

Not all busy-bodies, my good Sir--think of----

NORTH.

I have thought of them--and I know their worth--their liberality and their enlightenment. In all our cities and towns--and villages--and in all orders of the people--there is Mind--Intelligence, and Knowledge; and the more's the shame in that too general appetence for mere amusement in literature, perpetually craving for a change of diet--for something new in the light way--while anything of any substance, is, "with sputtering noise rejected" as tough to the teeth, and hard of digestion--however sweet and nutritious; would they but taste and try.

SEWARD.

I hope you don't mean to allude to Charles Dickens?

NORTH.

Assuredly not. Charles Dickens is a man of original and genial genius--his popularity is a proof of the goodness of the heart of the people;--and the love of him and his writings--though not so thoughtful as it might be--does honour to that strength in the English character which is indestructible by any influences, and survives in the midst of frivolity, and folly, and of mental depravations, worse than both.

SEWARD.

Don't look so savage, sir.

NORTH.

I am not savage--I am serene. Set the Literature of the day aside altogether--and tell me if you think our conversation since dinner would not have been thought _dull_ by many not altogether uneducated persons, who pride themselves not a little on their intellectuality and on their full participation in the Spirit of the Age?

TALBOYS.

Our conversation since dinner DULL!! No--no--no. Many poor creatures, indeed, there are among them--even among those of them who work the Press--pigmies with pap feeding a Giant who sneezes them away when sick of them into small offices in the Customs or Excise;--but not one of our privileged brethren of the Guild--with a true ticket to show--but would have been delighted with such dialogue--but would be delighted with its continuation--and thankful to know that he, "a wiser and a better man, will rise to-morrow morn."

SEWARD.

Do, my dear sir--resume your discoursing about those Greeks.

NORTH.

I was about to say, Seward, that those shrewd and just observers, and at the same time delicate thinkers, the ancient Greeks, did, as you well know, snatch from amongst the ordinary processes which Nature pursues, in respect of inferior animal life, a singularly beautiful Type or Emblem, expressively imaging to Fancy that bursting disclosure of Life from the bosom of Death, which is implied in the extrication of the soul from its corporeal prison, when this astonishing change is highly, ardently, and joyfully contemplated. Those old festal religionists--who carried into the solemnities of their worship the buoyant gladsomeness of their own sprightly and fervid secular life, and contrived to invest even the artful splendour and passionate human interest of their dramatic representations with the name and character of a sacred ceremony--found for that soaring and refulgent escape of a spirit from the dungeon and chains of the flesh, into its native celestial day, a fine and touching similitude in the liberation of a beautiful Insect, the gorgeously-winged, aérial Butterfly, from the living tomb in which Nature has, during a season, eased and urned its torpid and death-like repose.

SEWARD.

Nor, my dear sir, was this life-conscious penetration or intuition of a keen and kindling intelligence into the dreadful, the desolate, the cloud-covered Future, the casual thought of adventuring Genius, transmitted in some happier verse only, or in some gracious and visible poesy of a fine chisel; but the Symbol and the Thing symbolised were so bound together in the understanding of the nation, that in the Greek language the name borne by the Insect and the name designating the Soul is one and the same--ΨΥΧΗ.

NORTH.

Insects! They have come out, by their original egg-birth, into an active life. They have crept and eaten--and slept and eaten--creeping, and sleeping, and eating--still waxing in size, and travelling on from fitted pasture to pasture, they have in not many suns reached the utmost of the minute dimensions allotted them--the goal of their slow-footed wanderings, and the term, shall we say--_of their life_.

SEWARD.

No! But of that _first period_, through which they have made some display of themselves as living agents. They have reached _this_ term. And look at them--now.

NORTH.

Ay--look at them--now. Wonder on wonder! For now a miraculous instinct guides and compels the creature--who has, as it were, completed one life--who has accomplished one stage of his existence--to entomb himself. And he accordingly builds or spins himself a tomb--or he buries himself in his grave. Shall I say, that she herself, his guardian, his directress, Great Nature, _coffins_ him? Enclosed in a firm shell--hidden from all eyes--torpid--in a death-like sleep--_not dead_--he waits the appointed hour, which the days and nights bring, and which having come--his renovation, his resuscitation is come. And now the sepulture no longer holds him! Now the prisoner of the tomb has right again to converse with embalmed air and with glittering sunbeams--now, the reptile that _was_--unrecognisably transformed from himself--a glad, bright, mounting creature, unfurls on either side the translucent or the richly-hued pinions that shall waft him at his liking from blossom to blossom, or lift him in a rapture of aimless joyancy to disport and rock himself on the soft-flowing undulating breeze.

SEWARD.

My dearest sir, the Greek in his darkness, or uncertain twilight of belief, has culled and perpetuated his beautiful emblem. Will the Christian look unmoved upon the singular imaging, which, amidst the manifold strangely-charactered secrets of nature, he finds of his own sealed and sure faith?

NORTH.

No, Seward. The philosophical Theologian claims in this likeness more than an apt simile, pleasing to the stirred fancy. He sees here an ANALOGY--and this Analogy he proposes as one link in a chain of argumentation, by which he would show that Reason might dare to win from Nature, as a Hope, the truth which it holds from God as revealed knowledge.

SEWARD.

I presume, sir, you allude to Butler's Analogy. I have studied it.

NORTH.

I do--to the First Chapter of that Great Work. This parallelism, or apprehended resemblance between an event continually occurring and seen in nature, and one unseen but continually conceived as occurring upon the uttermost brink and edge of nature--this correspondency, which took such fast hold of the Imagination of the Greeks, has, as you know, my dear friends, in these latter days been acknowledged by calm and profound Reason, looking around on every side for evidences or intimations of the Immortality of the Soul.

BULLER.

Will you be so good, sir, as let me have the volume to study of an evening in my own Tent?

NORTH.

Certainly. And for many other evenings--in your own Library at home.

TALBOYS.

Please, sir, to state Butler's argument in your own words and way.

NORTH.

For Butler's style is hard and dry. A living Being undergoes a vicissitude by which on a sudden he passes from a state in which he has long, continued into a new state, and with it into a new scene of existence. The transition is from a narrow confinement into an ample liberty--and this change of circumstances is accompanied in the subject with a large and congruous increment of powers. They believe this who believe the Immortality of the Soul. But the fact is, that changes bearing this description do indeed happen in Nature, under our very eyes, at every moment; this method of progress being universal in her living kingdoms. Such a marvellous change is literally undergone by innumerable kinds, the human animal included, in the instant in which they pass out from the darkness and imprisonment of the womb into the light and open liberty of this breathing world. Birth has been the image of a death, which is itself nothing else than a birth from one straightened life into another ampler and freer. The ordering of Nature, then, is an ordering of Progression, whereby new and enlarged states are attained, and, simultaneously therewith, new and enlarged powers; and all this not slowly, gradually, and insensibly, but suddenly and _per saltum_.

TALBOYS.

This analogy, then, sir, or whatever there is that is in common to _birth_ as we _know_ it, and to _death_ as we _conceive_ it, is to be understood as an evidence set in the ordering of Nature, and justifying or tending to justify such our conception of Death?

NORTH.

Exactly so. And you say well, my good Talboys, "justifying or tending to justify." For we are all along fully sensible that a vast difference--a difference prodigious and utterly confounding to the imagination--holds, betwixt the case _from_ which we reason, _birth_--or that further expansion of life in some breathing kinds which might be held as a _second birth_--betwixt these cases, I say, and the case _to_, which we reason, DEATH!

TALBOYS.

Prodigious and utterly confounding to the imagination indeed! For in these physiological instances, either the same body, or a body changing by such slow and insensible degrees that it seems to us to be the same body, accompanies, encloses, and contains the same life--from the first moment in which that life comes under our observation to that in which it vanishes from our cognisance; whereas, sir, in the case to which we apply the Analogy--our own Death--the life is supposed to survive in complete separation from the body, in and by its union with which we have known it and seen it manifested.

NORTH.

Excellently well put, my friend. I see you have studied Butler.

TALBOYS.

I have--but not for some years. The Analogy is not a Book to be forgotten.

NORTH.

This difference between the case from which we reason, and the case to which we reason, there is no attempt whatever at concealing--quite the contrary--it stands written, you know, my friend, upon the very Front of the Argument. This difference itself is the very motive and occasion of the Whole Argument! Were there not _this difference_ between the cases which furnish the Analogy, and the case to which the Analogy is applied--had we certainly known and seen a Life continued, although suddenly passing out from the body where it had hitherto resided--or were _Death_ not the formidable disruption which it is of a hitherto subsisting union--the cases would be identical, and there would be nothing to reason about or to inquire. There _is_ this startling difference--and accordingly the Analogy described has been proposed by Butler merely as a first step in the Argument.

TALBOYS.

It remains to be seen, then, whether any further considerations can be proposed which will bring the cases nearer together, and diminish to our minds the difficulty presented by the sudden separation.

NORTH.

Just so. What ground, then, my dear young friends--for you seem and are young to me--what ground, my friends, is there for believing that the Death which we _see_, can affect the living agent which we do not see? Butler makes his approaches cautiously, and his attack manfully--and this is the course of his Argument. I begin with examining my present condition of existence, and find myself to be a Being endowed with certain Powers and Capacities--for I act, I enjoy, I suffer.

TALBOYS.

Of this much there can be no doubt; for of all this an unerring consciousness assures me. Therefore, at the outset, I hold this one secure position--that I exist, the possessor of certain powers and capacities.

NORTH.

But that I do now before Death exist, endued with certain powers and capacities, affords a presumptive or _primâ facie_ probability that I shall after death continue to exist, possessing these powers and capacities--

BULLER.

How is that, sir?

NORTH.

You do well to put that question, my dear Buller--a _primâ facie_ probability, unless there be some positive reason to think that death is the "destruction" of Me, the living Being, and of these my living Faculties.

BULLER.

A presumptive or _primâ facie_ probability, sir? Why does Butler say so?

NORTH.

"Because there is in every case a probability that _all_ things will continue as we experience they are, in _all_ respects, except those in which we have some reason to think they will be altered."

BULLER.

You will pardon me, sir, I am sure, for having asked the question.

NORTH.

It was not only a proper question, but a necessary one. Butler wisely says--"This is that kind of Presumption or Probability from Analogy, expressed in the very word CONTINUANCE, which seems our only natural reason for believing the course of the world will continue to-morrow, as it has done so far as our experience or knowledge of history can carry us back." I give you, here, the Bishop's very words--and I believe that in them is affirmed a truth that no scepticism can shake.

TALBOYS.

If I mistake not, sir, the Bishop here frankly admits, that were we not fortified against a natural impression, with some better instruction than unreflecting Nature's, the spontaneous disposition of our Mind would undoubtedly be to an expectation that in this great catastrophe of our mortal estate, We Ourselves must perish; but he contends--does he not, sir?--that it would be a blind fear, and without rational ground.

NORTH.

Yes--that it is an impression of the illusory faculty, Imagination, and not an inference of Reason. There would arise, he says, "a general confused suspicion, that in the great shock and alteration which we shall undergo by death, We, _i.e._ our living Powers, might be wholly destroyed;"--but he adds solemnly, "there is no particular distinct ground or reason for this apprehension, so far as I can find."

TALBOYS.

Such "general confused suspicion," then, is not justified?

NORTH.

Butler holds that any justifying ground of the apprehension that, in the shock of death, I, the living Being, or, which is the same thing, These my powers of acting, enjoying, and suffering, shall be extinguished and cease, must be found either in "the reason of the Thing" itself, or in "the Analogy of Nature." To say that a legitimate ground of attributing to the sensible mortal change a power of extinguishing the inward life is to be found in the Reason of the Thing, is as much as to say, that when considering the essential nature of this great and tremendous, or at least dreaded change, Death, and upon also considering _what_ these powers of acting, of enjoying, of suffering, truly _are_, and _in what manner_, absolutely, they subsist in us--there does appear to lie therein demonstration, or evidence, or likelihood, that the change, Death, will swallow up such living Powers--and that _We_ shall no longer _be_.

TALBOYS.

In short, sir, that from considering _what_ Death is, and _upon what_ these Powers and their exercise depend, there is _reason_ to think, that the Powers or their exercise will or _must_ cease with Death.

NORTH.

The very point. And the Bishop's answer is bold, short, and decisive. We cannot _from_ considering what Death is, draw this or any other conclusion, _for we do not know what Death is_! We know only certain effects of Death--the stopping of certain sensible actions--the dissolution of certain sensible parts. We can draw no conclusion, for we do not possess the premises.

SEWARD.

From your Exposition, sir, I feel that the meaning of the First Chapter of the Analogy is dawning into clearer and clearer light.

NORTH.

Inconsiderately, my dear sir, we seem indeed to ourselves to know what Death is; but this is from confounding the Thing and its Effects. For we see effects: at first, the stoppage of certain sensible actions--afterwards, the dissolution of certain sensible parts. But _what_ it is that has happened--_wherefore_ the blood no longer flows--the limbs no longer move--_that_ we do not see. We do not see it with our eyes--we do not discern it by any inference of our understanding. It is a _fact_ that seems to lie shrouded for ever from our faculties in awful and impenetrable mystery. That fact--the produce of an instant--which has happened _within, and in the dark_--that fact come to pass, in an indivisible point of time--that stern fact--ere the happening of which the Man was alive--an inhabitant of this breathing world--united to ourselves--our Father, Brother, Friend--at least our Fellow-Creature--by the happening, _he_ is gone--is for ever irrecoverably sundered from this world, and from us its inhabitants--is DEAD--and that which lies outstretched before our saddened eyes is only his mortal remains--a breathless corpse--an inanimate, insensible clod of clay:--Upon that interior _sudden_ fact--_sudden_, at last, how slowly and gradually soever prepared--since the utmost attenuation of a thread is a thing totally distinct from its ending, from its becoming no thread at all, and since, up to that moment, there was a possibility that some extraordinary, perhaps physical application might for an hour or a few minutes have rallied life, or might have reawakened consciousness, and eye, and voice--upon that elusive _Essence_ and _self_ of Death no curious searching of ours has laid, or, it may be well assumed, will ever lay hold. When the organs of sense no longer minister to Perception, or the organs of motion to any change of posture--when the blood stopped in its flow thickens and grows cold--and the fair and stately form, the glory of the Almighty's Hand, the burning shrine of a Spirit that lately rejoiced in feeling, in thought, and in power, lies like a garment done with and thrown away--"a kneaded clod"--ready to lose feature and substance--and to yield back its atoms to the dominion of the blind elements from which they were gathered and compacted--_What is Death_? And what grounds have we for inferring that an event manifested to us as a phenomenon of the Body, which alone we touch, and hear, and see, has or has not reached into the Mind, which is for us Now just as it always was, a Thing utterly removed and exempt from the cognisance and apprehension of our bodily senses? The Mind, or Spirit, the unknown Substance, in which Feeling, and Thought, and Will, and the Spring of Life were--was united to this corporeal frame; and, being united to it, animated it, poured through it sensibility and motion, glowing and creative life--crimsoned the lips and cheeks--flashed in the eye--and murmured music from the tongue;--_now_, the two--Body and Soul--are _disunited_--and we behold one-half the consequence--the Thing of dust relapses to the dust;--we dare to divine the other half of the consequence--the quickening Spark, the sentient Intelligence, the Being gifted with Life, the Image of the Maker, in Man, has, reascended, has returned thither whence it came, into the Hand of God.

SEWARD.

If, sir, we were without light from the revealed Word of God, if we were left, by the help of reason, standing upon the brink of Time, dimly guessing, and inquiringly exploring, to find for ourselves the grounds of Hope and Fear, would your description, my dear Master, of that which has happened, seem to our Natural Faculties impossible? Surely not.

NORTH.

My dear Seward, we have the means of rendering some answer to that question. The nations of the world have been, more or less, in the condition, supposed. Self-left, they have borne the burden of the dread secret, which for them only the grave could resolve; but they never were able to sit at rest in the darkness. Importunate and insuppressible desire, in their bosoms, knocked at the gate of the invisible world, and seemed to hear an answer from beyond. The belief in a long life of ages to follow this fleet dream--imaginary revelations of regions bright or dark--the mansions of bliss or of sorrow--an existence to come, and often of retribution to come--has been the religion of Mankind--here in the rudest elementary shape--here in elaborated systems.

SEWARD.

Ay, sir; methinks the Hell of Virgil--and his Elysian Fields are examples of a high, solemn, and beautiful Poetry. But they have a much deeper interest for a man studious, in earnest, of his fellow-men. Since they really express the notions under which men have with serious belief shadowed out for themselves the worlds to which the grave is a portal. The true moral spirit that breathes in his enumeration of the Crimes that are punished, of the Virtues that have earned and found their reward, and some scattered awful warnings--are impressive even to us Christians.

NORTH.

Yes, Seward, they are. Hearken to the attestation of the civilised and the barbarous. Universally there is a cry from the human heart, beseeching, as it were, of the Unknown Power which reigns in the Order and in the Mutations of Things, the prolongation of this vanishing breath--the renovation, in undiscovered spheres, of this too brief existence--an appeal from the tyranny of the tomb--a prayer against annihilation. Only at the top of Civilisation, sometimes a cold and barren philosophy, degenerate from nature, and bastard to reason, has limited its sullen view to the horizon of this Earth--has shut out and refused all ulterior, happy, or dreary anticipation.

SEWARD.

You may now, assured of our profound attention--return to Butler--if indeed you have left him----

NORTH.

I have, and I have not. A few minutes ago I was expounding--in my own words--and for the reason assigned, will continue to do so--his argument. If, not knowing what death is, we are not entitled to argue, from the nature of death, that this change must put an end to Ourselves, and those essential powers in our mind which we are conscious of exerting--just as little can we argue from the nature of these powers, and from their manner of subsisting in us, that they are liable to be affected and impaired, or destroyed by death. For what do we know of these powers, and of the conditions on which we hold them, and of the mind in which they dwell? Just as much as we do of the great change, Death itself--that is to say--NOTHING.

TALBOYS.

We know the powers of our mind solely by their manifestations.

NORTH.

But people in general do not think so--and many metaphysicians have written as if they had forgot that it is only from the manifestation that we give name to the Power. We know the fact of Seeing, Hearing, Remembering, Reasoning--the feeling of Beauty--the actual pleasure of Moral Approbation, the pain of Moral Disapprobation--the state--pleasure or pain of loving--the state--pleasure or pain of hating--the fire of anger--the frost of fear--the curiosity to know--the thirst for distinction--the exultation of conscious Power--all these, and a thousand more, we know abundantly: our conscious Life is nothing else but such knowledge endlessly diversified. But the POWERS themselves, which are thus exerted--what _they_ are--_how_ they subsist in us ready for exertion--of this we know--NOTHING.

TALBOYS.

We know something of the Conditions upon which the exercise of these Powers depends--or by which it is influenced. Thus we know, that for seeing, we must possess that wondrous piece of living mechanism, the eye, in its healthy condition. We know further, that a delicate and complicated system of nerves, which convey the visual impressions from the eye itself to the seeing power, must be healthy and unobstructed. We know that a sound and healthy state of the brain is necessary to these manifestations--that accidents befalling the Brain totally disorder the manifestations of these powers--turning the clear self-possessed mind into a wild anarchy--a Chaos--that other accidents befalling the same organ suspend all manifestations. We know that sleep stops the use of many powers--and that deep sleep--at least as far as any intimations that reach our waking state go--stops them all. We know that a nerve tied or cut stops the sensation--stops the motory volition which usually travels along it. We know how bodily lassitude--how abstinence--how excess--affects the ability of the mind to exert its powers. In short, the most untutored experience of every one amongst us all shows bodily conditions, upon which the activity of the faculties which are seated in the mind, depends. And within the mind itself we know how one manifestation aids or counteracts another--how Hope invigorates--how Fear disables--how Intrepidity keeps the understanding clear--

NORTH.

You are well illustrating Butler, Talboys. Then, again, we know that _for Seeing_, we must have that wonderful piece of living mechanism perfectly constructed, and in good order--that a certain delicate and complicated system of nerves extending from the eye inwards, is appointed to transmit the immediate impressions of light from this exterior organ of sight to the percipient Mind--that these nerves allotted to the function of seeing, must be free from any accidental pressure; knowledge admirable, curious, useful; but when all is done, all investigated, that our eyes, and fingers, and instruments, and thoughts, can reach--_What_, beyond all this marvellous Apparatus of seeing, is _That which sees_--what the percipient _Mind_ is--that is a mystery into which no created Being ever had a glimpse. Or what is that immediate connexion between the Mind itself, and those delicate corporeal adjustments--whereby certain _tremblings_, or other momentary changes of state in a set of nerves, upon the sudden, turn into Colours--into Sight--INTO THE VISION OF A UNIVERSE.

SEWARD.

Does Butler say all that, sir?

NORTH.

In his own dry way perhaps he may. These, my friends, are Wonders into which Reason looks, astonished; or, more properly speaking, into which she looks not, nor, self-knowing, attempts to look. But, reverent and afraid, she repeats that attitude which the Great Poet has ascribed to "brightest cherubim" before the footstool of the Omnipotent Throne, who

"Approach not, but with both wings veil their eyes."

TALBOYS.

For indeed at the next step beyond lies only the mystery of Omnipotence--that mystery which connects the world, open and known to us, to the world withheld and unknown.

NORTH.

The same with regard to Pleasure and Pain. _What_ enjoys Pleasure or suffers Pain?--all that is, to our clearest, sharpest-sighted science, nothing else but darkness--but black unfathomable night. Therefore, since we know not what Death itself is--and since we know not what this Living Mind is, nor what any of its powers and capacities are--what conclusion, taken in the nature of these unknown subjects, can we possibly be warranted in drawing as to the influence which this unknown change, Death, will exert upon this unknown Being--Mind--and upon its unknown faculties and sensibilities?--None.

SEWARD.

Shall unknown Death destroy this unknown Mind and its unknown capacities? It is just as likely, for anything that Reason can see, that it will set them free to a larger and more powerful existence. And if we have any reason upon other grounds to expect this--then by so much the more likely.

NORTH.

We know that this Eye and its apparatus of nerves no longer shall serve for _seeing_--we know that these muscles and their nerves shall no longer serve for _moving_--we know that this marvellous Brain itself no longer shall serve, as we are led to believe that it now serves, for _thinking_--we know that this bounding heart never again shall throb and quicken, with all its leaping pulses, with joy--that pain of this body shall never again _tire_ the mind, and that pain of this mind shall never again _tire_ this body, once pillowed and covered up in its bed of imperturbable slumber. And there ends our knowledge. But that this Mind, which, united to these muscles and their nerves, sent out vigorous and swift motions through them--which, united to this Brain, compelled this Brain to serve it as the minister of its thinkings upon this Earth and in this mode of its Being--which, united to this Frame, in it, and through it, and from it, felt for Happiness and for Misery--that this Mind, once _disunited_ from all these, its instruments and servants, shall therefore perish, or shall therefore forego the endowment of its powers, which it manifested by these its instruments--of that we have no warranty--of that there is no probability.

TALBOYS.

Much rather, sir, might a probability lie quite the other way. For if the structure of this corporeal frame places at the service of the Mind some five or six senses, enabling it, by so many avenues, to communicate with this external world, this very structure shuts up the Mind in these few senses, ties it down to the capacities of exactness and sensibility for which _they_ are framed. But we have no reason at all to think that these few modes of sensibility, which we call our external senses, are _all_ the modes of sensibility of which our spirits are capable. Much rather we must believe that, if it pleased, or shall ever please, the Creator to open in this Mind, in a new world, new modes of sensation, the susceptibility for these modes is already there for another set of senses. Now we are confined to an eye that sees distinctly at a few paces of distance. We have no reason for thinking that, united with a finer organ of sight, we should not see far more exquisitely; and thus, sir, our notices of the dependence in which the Mind now subsists upon the body do of themselves lead us to infer its own self-subsistency.

NORTH.

What we are called upon to do, my friends, is to set Reason against Imagination and against Habit. We have to lift ourselves up above the limited sphere of sensible experience. We have to _believe_ that something more _is_ than that which we see--than that which we know.

TALBOYS.

Yet, sir, even the facts of Mind, revealed to us living in these bodies, are enough to show us that more is than these bodies--since we feel that WE ARE, and that it is impossible for us to regard these bodies otherwise than as _possessions of ours_--utterly impossible to regard them as Ourselves.

NORTH.

We distinguish between the acts of Mind, inwardly exerted--the acts, for instance, of Reason, of Memory, and of Affection--and acts of the Mind communicating through the senses with the external world. But Butler seems to me to go too far when he says, "I confess that in sensation the mind uses the body; but in reflection I have no reason to think that the mind uses the body." But, my dear friends, I, Christopher North, think, on the contrary, that the Mind uses the Brain for a thinking instrument; and that much thought fatigues the Brain, and causes an oppressive flow of the blood to the Brain, and otherwise disorders that organ. And altogether I should be exceedingly sorry to rest the Immortality of the Soul upon so doubtful an assumption as that the Brain is not, in any respect or sort, the Mind's Organ of Thinking. I see no need for so timid a sheltering of the argument. On the contrary, the simple doctrine, to my thought, is this--The Mind, as we know it, is implicated and mixed up with the Body--_throughout_--in all its ordinary actions. This corporeal frame is a system of organs, or Instruments, which the Mind employs in a thousand ways. They are its _instruments_--all of them are--and none of them is itself. What does it matter to me that there is one more organ--the Brain--for one more function--thinking? Unless the Mind were in itself a seeing thing--that is, a thing able to see--it could not use the Eye for seeing; and unless the Mind were a thinking thing, it could not use the Brain for thinking. The most intimate implication of itself with its instruments in the functions which constitute our consciousness, proves nothing in the world to me, against its essential distinctness from them, and against the possibility of its living and acting in separation from them, and when they are dissolved. So far from it, when I see that the body chills with fear, and glows with love, I am ready to call fear a cold, and love a warm passion, and to say that the Mind uses its bodily frame in fearing and in loving. All these things have to do with manifestations of my mind to itself, Now, whilst implicated in this body. Let me lift myself above imagination--or let my imagination soar and carry my reason on its wings--I leave the body to moulder, and I go sentient, volent, intelligent, whithersoever _I_ am called.

TALBOYS.

It seems a timidity unworthy of Butler to make the distinction. Such a distinction might be used to invalidate his whole doctrine.

NORTH.

It might--if granted--and legitimately. But the course is plain, and the tenor steadfast. As a child, you think that your finger is a part of yourself, and that you feel with it. Afterwards, you find that it can be cut off without _diminishing you_: and physiologists tell you, and you believe, that it does not feel, but sends up antecedents of feeling to the brain. Am I to stop anywhere? Not in the body. As my finger is no part of Me, no more is my liver, or my stomach, or my heart--_or my brain_. When I have overworked myself, I feel a lassitude, distinctly local, in my brain--_inside of my head_--and therewithal an indolence, inertness, inability of thinking. If reflection--as Butler more than insinuates--hesitatingly says--is independent of my brain and body, whence the lassitude? And how did James Watt get unconquerable headaches with meditating Steam-engines?

TALBOYS.

It is childish, sir, to stagger at degrees, when we have admitted the kind. The Bishop's whole argument is to show, that the thing in us which feels, wills, thinks, is distinct from our body; that I am one thing, and my body another.

NORTH.

Have we SOULS? If we have--they can live after the body--cannot perish with it; if we have not--wo betide us all!

SEWARD.

Will you, sir, be pleased to sum up the Argument of the First Chapter of the Analogy?

NORTH.

No. Do you. You have heard it--and you understand it.

SEWARD.

I cannot venture on it.

NORTH.

Do you, my excellent Talboys--for you know the Book as well as I do myself.

TALBOYS.

That the Order of Nature shows us great and wonderful changes, which the living being undergoes-and arising from beginnings inconceivably low, to higher and higher conditions of consciousness and action;--That hence an exaltation of our Powers by the change Death, would be congruous to the progress which we have witnessed in other creatures, and have experienced in ourselves;--That the fact, that before Death we possess Powers of acting, and suffering, and enjoying, affords a _primâ facie_ probability that, after Death, we shall continue to possess them; because it is a constant presumption in Nature, and one upon which we constantly reason and rely, speculatively and practically, that all things will continue as they are, unless a cause appear sufficient for changing them;--But that in Death nothing appears which should suffice to _destroy_ the Powers of Action, Enjoyment, and Suffering in a Living Being;--For that in all we know of Death we know the destruction of parts _instrumental_ to the Uses of a Living Being;--But that of any destruction reaching, or that we have reason to suppose to reach the Living Being, we know nothing;--That the Unity of Consciousness persuades us that the Being in which Consciousness essentially resides is one and indivisible--by any accident, Death inclusive, indiscerptible;--That the progress of diseases, growing till they kill the mortal body, but leaving the Faculties of the Soul in full force to the last gasp of living breath, is a particular argument, establishing this independence of the Living Being--the Spirit--which is the Man himself--upon the accidents which may befall the perishable Frame.

NORTH.

Having seen, then, a Natural Probability that the principle within us, which is the seat and source of Thought and Feeling, and of such Life as can be imparted to the Body, will subsist undestroyed by the changes of the Body--and having recognised the undoubted Power of the Creator--if it pleases Him--indefinitely to prolong the life which He has given--how would you and I, my dear Friends, proceed--from the ground thus gained--and on which--with Butler--we take our stand--to speak farther of reasons for believing in the Immortality of the Soul?

SEWARD.

I feel, sir, that I have already taken more than my own part in this conversation. We should have to inquire, sir, whether in His known attributes, and in the known modes of His government, we could ascertain any causes making it probable that He will thus prolong our existence--and we find many such grounds of confidence.

NORTH.

Go on, my dear Seward.

SEWARD.

If you please, sir, be yours the closing words--for the Night.

NORTH.

The implanted longing in every human bosom for such permanent existence--the fixed anticipation of it--and the recoil from annihilation--seem to us intimation vouchsafed by the Creator of His designs towards us;--the horror with which Remorse awakened by sin looks beyond the Grave, partakes of the same prophetical inspiration. We see how precisely the lower animals are fitted to the places which they hold upon the earth, with instincts that exactly supply their needs, with no powers that are not here satisfied--while we, as if out of place, only through much difficult experience can adapt ourselves to the physical circumstances into which we are introduced--and thus, in one respect, furnished below our condition, are, on the other hand, by the aspirations of our higher faculties, raised infinitely above it--as if intimating that whilst those creatures _here_ fulfil the purpose of their creation, _here_ we do not--and, therefore, look onward;--That whilst our other Powers, of which the use is over, decline in the course of nature as Death approaches, our Moral and Intellectual Faculties often go on advancing to the last, as if showing that they were drawing nigh to their proper sphere of action;-That whilst the Laws regulating the Course of Human Affairs visibly proceed from a Ruler who favours Virtue, and who frowns upon Vice, yet that a just retribution does not seem uniformly carried out in the good success of well-doers, and the ill success of evil-doers--so that we are led on by the constitution of our souls to look forward to a world in which that which here looks like Moral Disorder, might be reduced into Order, and the Justice of the Ruler and the consistency of His Laws vindicated;--That in studying the arrangements of this world, we see that in many cases dispositions of Human affairs, which, upon their first aspect, appeared to us evil, being more clearly examined and better known, resulted in good--and thence draw a hope that the stroke which daunts our imagination, as though it were the worst of evils, will prove, when known, a dispensation of bounty--"Death the Gate of Life," opening into a world in which His beneficent hand, if not nearer to us than here, will be more steadily visible--no clouds interposing between the eyes of our soul and their Sun;--That the perplexity which oppresses our Understanding from the sight of this world, in which the Good and Evil seem intermixed and crossing each other, almost vanishes, when we lift up our thoughts to contemplate this mutable scene as a place of Probation and of Discipline, where Sorrows and Sufferings are given to school us to Virtue--as the Arena where Virtue strives in the laborious and perilous contest, of which it shall hereafter receive the well-won and glorious crown;--That we draw confidence in the same conclusions, from observing how closely allied and agreeing to each other are the Two Great Truths of Natural Religion, the Belief in God and the Belief in our own Immortality; so that, when we have received the idea of God, as the Great Governor of the Universe, the belief in our own prolonged existence appears to us as a necessary part of that Government; or if, upon the physical arguments, we have admitted the independent conviction of our Immortality, this doctrine appears to us barren and comfortless, until we understand that this continuance of our Being is to bring us into the more untroubled fruition of that Light, which here shines upon us, often through mist and cloud;--That in all these high doctrines we are instructed to rest more securely, as we find the growing harmony of one solemn conviction with another--as we find that all our better and nobler Faculties co-operate with one another--and these predominating principles carry us to these convictions--so that our Understanding then first begins to possess itself in strength and light when the heart has accepted the Moral Law;--But that our Understanding is only fully at ease, and our Moral Nature itself, with all its affections, only fully supported and expanded, when both together have borne us on to the knowledge of Him who is the sole Source of Law--the highest Object of Thought--the Favourer of Virtue--towards whom Love may eternally grow, and still be infinitely less than His due--till we have reached this knowledge, and with it the steadfast hope that the last act of this Life joins us to Him--does not for ever shut us up in the night of Oblivion;--And we have strengthened ourselves in inferences forced upon us by remembering how humankind has consented in these Beliefs, as if they were a part of our Nature--and by remembering farther, how, by the force of these Beliefs, human Societies have subsisted and been held together--how Laws have been sanctioned, and how Virtues, Wisdom, and all the good and great works of the Human Spirit have, under these influences, been produced;--Surely GREAT IS THE POWER of all these concurrent considerations brought from every part of our Nature--from the Material and the Immaterial--from the Intellectual and Moral--from the Individual and the Social--from that which respects our existence on this side of the grave, and that which respects our existence beyond it--from that which looks down upon the Earth, and that which looks up towards Heaven.

_Printed by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh._

FOOTNOTES:

[19] _The Strayed Reveller, and other Poems._ By A. London: 1849.

[20] _Miscellany of the Spalding Club_, iii. 58.

[21] Ibid. 62-3.

[22] We remember once in such a house--it was a rainy day, and for the amusement of the inmates a general rummage was made among old papers--that in a corner of a press of a law library were found a multitude of letters very precisely folded up, and titled--they had a most business-like and uninteresting appearance, but on being examined they were found to consist of the confidential correspondence of the leaders of the Jacobite army in 1745. Their preservation was accounted for by the circumstance that an ancestor of the owner of the house was sheriff of the county at the period of the rebellion. He had seized the letters; but, finding probably that they implicated a considerable number of his own relations, he did not consider himself especially called on to invite the attention of the law officers of the crown to his prize; while, on the other hand, the damnatory documents were carefully preserved, lest some opportunity should occur of turning them to use. They are now printed in a substantial quarto, under the patronage of one of the book clubs.

[23] _Miscellany of the Spalding Club_, iii. 60.

[24] _Miscellany of the Spalding Club_, iii. 6.

[25] _Houston's Memoirs_, 92.

[26] _Miscellany of the Spalding Club_, iii. 34-5.

[27] _Miscellany of the Spalding Club_, iii. p. 57.

[28] _Miscellany of the Spalding Club_, iii. p. 46.

[29] _Miscellany of the Spalding Club_, iii. 4.

[30] Ibid. p. 6.

[31] _Miscellany of the Spalding Club_, pp. 17-20.

[32] _Houston's Memoirs_, p. 31.

[33] Ibid. p. 8.

[34] It is a curious coincidence, that the _first man_ whom her Majesty met with and addressed, when she landed in Glasgow, was the _Earl of Morton_, the lineal descendant of the ruthless baron whose arms then proved so fatal to her beautiful and unfortunate ancestress.

[Transcriber's Note:

Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation are as in the original.]