a position most convenient for the sufferer, stiffened there; the neck refused to turn or bend, and the body became almost as immovable as if it had been carved out of the rock. Years passed between the first appearance of the disease and this awful completion of its work; years elapsed after the hapless patient was thus hardened into stone, and still he lived. Nor was this all; his eyes were attacked; the sight of one was wholly lost, and the other became so exquisitely sensitive, that it could seldom be exposed to the light, and never but for a few moments at a time. And thus he remained for years, blind, immovable, prisoned in this house of stone, and echoing, we might suppose, the affecting exclamation of the Apostle, “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" But no word of impatience escaped him; the mind was clear and vigorous, the temper was not soured, the affections were as strong and clinging as ever. His good sense, his wit, his knowledge of books, his interest in the passing topics of the day, made his chamber a favorite resort even of those who might not have been drawn thither merely by sympathy for his sufferings; for not infrequently, he was still exposed to agonizing pain. But in the intervals of this distress, his active mind sought and found employment, and numerous contributions, which this living statue dictated for a periodical work, are now in print. The secret of his wonderful composure and gentleness may be told in two words, religious resignation.*

* It cannot be indelicate now to state, that the individual here referred to was the late James Kennard, Jr., of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. A volume of selections from his writings, with a sketch of his life and character, prepared by his friend the Rev. Andrew P. Peabody, has been "printed for private circulation." Mr. Kennard died July 28, 1847, when he had nearly completed his thirty-second year. For nine years before his death he was unable to walk; but "he was occasionally brought down stairs till the summer of 1841, when he found that he could no longer bear removal, except that, with the most careful preparation, and with the utmost delicacy of touch, he was taken daily from his bed, and placed for an hour or two in his easy chair." In November, 1844, his eyes were attacked, and "the residue of his life was spent with a deep shade over his face, and in a darkened room." During the paroxysms of pain which ac

What says the materialist to a case like this? Was that powerless body, maimed, stiffened, blind, hardly animate, was that the person, the man, still active, inquisitive, industrious, generous, and affectionate? or was it only a prison-house, in which the fettered soul was compelled to await its time of release? I envy not the feelings or the intellect of him who could stand by the bedside of that patient sufferer, and still disbelieve that "there is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding."

Philosophy of the ancients on this subject.-We may gather instruction on this point even from the wise men of ancient times, upon whose eyes the light of direct revelation never dawned. The philosophical Athenian, in describing the deathbed of the elder Cyrus, makes the dying monarch thus address the children who were gathered round him:-"For I was never able, my children, to persuade myself that the soul, as long as it was in a mortal body, lived, but when it was removed from this, that it died; neither could I believe that the soul ceased to think when separated from the unthinking and senseless body; but it seemed to me most probable, that when pure and free from any union with the body, then it became most wise." Or take the equivalent remark, equivalent in respect to the essential difference between mind and matter,—in which Plato anticipates the common argument for the immateriality of the thinking principle, which is founded on the constant flux and change of the material particles that make up our bodily organs:- "One would rather say, that each soul wears out many bodies, especially if it should live for many years; for

companied this inflammation of the eyes, and which were generally about a week in duration, “he was able to speak only in the faintest whisper, and could hardly bear the sound of another voice." But his sisters and numerous friends were eager to serve as his readers and amanuenses, and his literary pursuits were soon resumed with as much mental activity and cheerfulness as ever. His contributions, both in verse and prose, to the Knickerbocker, a magazine published at New York, may be traced by his signature of "J. K. Jr."; they were frequent, up to the very month in which he died.

if the body wastes away and is destroyed, the man yet living, while the soul always weaves anew that which is worn out, then it certainly follows, that the soul must have its last covering when it perishes, and that it dies only just before that final vesture."

I do not accumulate these arguments and illustrations to establish the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, the proof of which, from the light of nature, has been already admitted to be insufficient. The essential unity of the person is contrasted with the essential complexity of matter only to show, that the body is but the house we live in, or the garment which covers us for a season. But an indivisible atom is not necessarily indestructible, any more than it is ingenerable. If it cannot sease to exist, it must be that it exists necessarily, and, therefore, it never began to exist. Hence, the argument proves the preëxistence, quite as strongly as it does the immortality, of the soul; and it was so understood by Plato and his followers, who argue from the antecedent life of man to the subsequent, or that which follows the night of the grave.

The affections recognize the unity and continuity of self.— The continuity and identity of our personal existence amidst the ceaseless changes and renovations, the growth, progress, and decay, of the material structure which we inhabit, form the basis of the relations in which we stand to all other beings. The affections and the duties of life are equally founded upon this unity of personality; this alone makes us responsible both to human and Divine law. "Person," says Locke, "is a forensic term, appropriating actions and their merit, and so belongs only to intelligent agents, capable of a law, and of happiness and misery. This personality extends itself beyond present existence to what is past by consciousness, whereby it becomes concerned and accountable, and owns and imputes to itself past actions upon the same ground, and for the same reason, that it does the present. And, therefore, whatever past actions it cannot reconcile or appropriate to itself, it can no more be concerned in than if they had never been done."

Our social feelings, also, regard this sameness of person, or

self, behind the numerous and important changes which our outward frames exhibit. The body wastes, the skin shrivels, the joints and muscles languidly perform their office, and the hair becomes thin and gray. Not a line is preserved, in that bent and decrepit form, of the fresh and elastic vigor of youth, of the quick eye, ready hand, and ruddy lineaments of childhood and maturer years. The features and general aspect of the subject have wholly changed, and the artist must begin the portrait anew. Time has left no indistinct traces of his work, also, on the character and intellect. Enthusiasm is checked, impulse has given way to reflection, appetite is cooled, and the enjoyments of boisterous youth and strenuous manhood pall upon the dulled and satiated sense. But the eye of affection still discerns the same person beneath the altered aspect, and the father, brother, son, or friend is loved and cherished still. Instinctively, in the growth of that affection, has the real being, the man, been separated from his accidents, from his whole environment of outward circumstances, including those of form and feature, no less than of social position and the world's contumely or respect. If the feeling be true, the object of it is one and indivisible, and knows no change. Thus, in our friends as well as in ourselves, in our observation and judgment of others, as much as in the depths of our own consciousness, do we involuntarily separate the transient from the permanent, acknowledge inherent and essential oneness in the midst of complexity and transmutation, and under the fading vesture of time, a garment laid in shifting colors, discern the inflexible features of eternity.

CHAPTER IV.

THE IDEA OF CAUSE, AND THE NATURE OF CAUSATION.

Summary of the last chapter.-I have spoken of the origin and nature of our idea of personality, or rather of our knowledge of self, and vindicated that knowledge from the metaphysical objections and cavils that have been brought against it by abstract reasoning. The object was, to establish a distinction, not merely between material and intellectual phenomena, which no one can affect to question, but between the substance of mind or person and material substance, and thus to show that the difference between them is essential, instead of phenomenal; — or, in other words, that this difference does not depend merely on the dissimilarity of their outward manifestations. I wished to prove, that we have no idea whatever of material substance, except by abstraction, and no proof of its existence, except by inference from its qualities or attributes, of which alone we have any immediate knowledge. But personality manifests itself externally, not by qualities, but by actions; and these occur, not simultaneously, but in succession; while self, and the perception of self, or consciousness, being continuous, we know it in the intervals of thought or action, and consequently our knowledge of it is direct, and not merely an inference. We know, also, that person is absolutely simple and indivisible, and is thus distinguishable from its present house of flesh, or bodily covering, which, like all other matter, is essentially complex and infinitely divisible, and which, in fact, is going through a constant process of waste and restoration, the man alone remaining unchanged. This conclusion, far from being metaphysical in character, is a fact of universal and continuous observation, and as such is inwoven with our principles of conduct; it supports the idea of responsibility, and forms the basis of the social affections.

The idea and the law of causation.

The fact which we have