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."

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 teresting and instructive volume to be published, so that it may attain a wide circulation. Mr. Kennard died July 28th, 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 accompanied 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.

The severest affliction of his life, the death of his mother, happened just at the time when the disease attacked his eyes. The mother's love had increased, as is usual, in proportion to the helplessness of its object; and when this bond of affection was broken, it seemed as if no tie remained which could still bind her much-suffering son to earth. But though greatly agitated during her illness, his mind at once resumed its former serenity after her death, and the other members of the sorrowing family derived consolation and peace from his words and example.

I cannot deny myself the pleasure of making the following extract from Mr. Peabody's affecting account of this remarkable case.

the death-bed 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 or

"One other friend he had, in humble life, but of a noble heart, whose extraordinary bodily strength had long rendered her services absolutely indispensable. We refer to Nancy Sherburne, an elderly woman, who, on his return from the hospital, was officiating as cook in his father's family. From the first, she took great pleasure in rendering him whatever assistance he demanded. When he was disabled from walking, she drew him from his carriage, and bore him in her arms over the staircase. As he grew more helpless, she gradually suspended her other duties, and devoted herself wholly to the care of him, remaining perpetually within call by day and night, and so strongly attached to her charge, that other friends could hardly win permission of her to perform for him any service that lay within her power. She lifted him as if he had been an infant, and with a grasp as gentle as it was firm. There were frequently times when even the adjustment of his pillows by a less skilful hand than hers would have given him excruciating torture; and the hour-long process by which alone he could be conveyed from his bed to his chair, a process as delicate as if his frame had been strung with threads of glass, demanded more than a common man's strength, and all of a woman's love. Had he been her own child, she could not have loved him better; and though a person of the scantiest education, and bearing no outward marks of refinement, she gradually grew into a sympathy of spirit and character with him, and evidently derived the richest recompense for her self-denying toil in the improvement and elevation of her whole moral nature. His attachment to her was only less than filial; and one of his last requests was, that room for Nancy should be left at his side in the family inclosure at the cemetery."

* Cyropædia, L. VIII. c. vII. 19, 20.

gans : "One would rather say that each soul wears out many bodies, especially if it should live for many years; for 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 cease to exist, it must be that it exists necessarily, and therefore it never began to exist. Hence, the argument proves the preexistence, 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 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 presAnd therefore whatever past actions it cannot reconcile or

ent.

* Phædon, 83.

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, 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.

LECTURE IV.

THE IDEA OF CAUSE, AND THE NATURE OF CAUSATION.

In the last Lecture, I endeavoured to show the origin and nature of our idea of personality, or rather of our knowledge of self, and to vindicate 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