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 present. And therefore whatever past actions it cannot reconcile or

* 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

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 fact which we have thus attempted to establish is one of the first class, as it relates to things which exist; a consideration of the second class, or of events which take place, brings us to the idea of cause, or the beginning of existence. The inquiry into the origin and nature of this idea is a fundamental one, as in the former case; for on its issue depends every reasonable anticipation of future events, and all real knowledge of those which have passed. The exact sciences relate exclusively to present existences; the mathematician studies the laws of number and of space, both of which are applicable to simultaneous phenomena. Events are successive phenomena, and the study of them carries us both into the past and the future, and depends in almost every case upon our notion of cause.

The law of causation may be stated thus:-Every event which takes place has a cause. This law is not applicable to things which exist, and much confusion and unsound reasoning have arisen from the attempt to extend it to them. I cannot infer merely from the present existence of a stone, a plant, or an animal, that it must have had a cause; for all I know, it may have existed for ever. But if already aware of the fact, that at some definite epoch it began to exist, that time was when it was not, then I say with absolute certainty that that beginning of its existence must have been caused by something foreign to itself; or, more loosely speaking, that the thing itself must have had a cause. If all things in the universe were motionless and unchangeable, if no event whatever broke the dread uniformity and monotony of time, though all objects should remain precisely as they are at this moment, there would be no foundation for reasoning from effect to cause. The presence of a world would not enable us to prove the existence of its Creator. But the instant a change occurs, as soon as a sound is heard, or a leaf falls, or only quiv

ers on its bough, we declare without hesitation, that some power or agency is at work, that the event must have had a cause. It may be a recondite one; the ingenuity of man may have been engaged ever since the foundation of the world in a vain attempt to discover it; still we say with perfect confidence, that it must have existed; there must have been a cause somewhere.

I speak now of causation in its absolute and literal sense, not merely of an antecedent event, but of an efficient antecedent, - of a cause in respect to which, if it were completely known, we could tell beforehand, or prior to all experience, what would be its effect. Those who are familiar with the speculations of philosophers upon this subject will tell me that I am here adopting the metaphysical notion of cause; I admit it, but I say that it is also the popular notion, the ordinary significance of a very common word,-that people generally never think of attaching any other idea to it, and never find any difficulty in distinguishing the succession of cause and effect, properly so called, from an ordinary sequence, or from the accidental simultaneousness of two otherwise unconnected events. The falling of the spark, they say, is the cause of the explosion, meaning thereby the efficient cause; and they distinguish this case very clearly from that of two clocks striking the hour in immediate succession, never supposing, in this latter instance, that the one operates on the other, and obliges it to strike, though they may have kept exact time with each other for many years. This fact, that the popular acceptation of the word cause is also its strict and scientific meaning, it is important to remember, as will be seen hereafter.

Now, in ordinary physical inquiry, in the world of matter, are we able to perceive and recognize such causes? Admitting, as every rational being must do, that every event, change, or beginning of existence must have an efficient cause, can we discover this cause, and show beforehand that it must produce this particular event, and no other, and why it produces it? The answer may appear startling to some, but there is no doubt of its correctness.

If there is any one conclusion at which both phys