and in every imagined occupation, with the possession of every sense and every limb proper to a human being. There is that order of unity also in the co-operation of the varied faculties belonging to the soul itself; that is to say, it has a spiritual embodiment, even in this world, together with the body by which it manifests itself to others through their organs of sense. And this spiritual body is not necessarily limited to the physical and psychical body, but may pass from it at death, and still belong to the soul as a being created to dwell in more worlds than one. He, however, who could not believe in the existence of a soul till he saw a ghost with his bodily eye, would be about as wise as one who would look for an idea through a lens, which is constructed only in relation to material objects. When a man shall see himself in a looking-glass, he may see other souls by the same mode of reflection: till then he had better look for a spirit with a spiritual eye. We know nothing more of the causes, and but little more of the conditions of material force, than we do of the causes and conditions of mental action. Both material force and mental action belong to the unseen world, except so far as they are both connected with the movements of matter. But material force is known to us only by the impressions produced by its motion on our senses, and thence on our souls. The mind's actions, however, are known to the soul through direct consciousness. The soul indeed receives impressions from without, and thinks, wills, acts, in consequence of impressions thus received. But he would be rather indiscriminative who would say that the power of the soul belonged to the same category as the force of the matter that impressed it. We will not confound things that so essentially differ. The power which gives the properties of matter we properly call material force; the power which enables us to recognise them we with equal propriety may call spiritual. The definition of the one cannot include the other. Mr. J. S. Mill, indeed, defines matter as 'a permanent possibility of sensation,' but we presume he means that, being permanent matter, it may possibly always produce sensation in contact with a being capable of having sensation. The words define nothing, and merely assert of something a further possibility; but inasmuch as matter must exist to possess possibilities, so must mind, or that which evinces mind, before it can be capable of sensation. In defining the idea of spirit we must include will, thought, and feeling; and in defining matter we may include form, force, or motion, but not will nor any property of mind. Many deep thinkers believe in the existence of a subtile medium named by them Ether, to the motion of which the motions of the more evident forms of matter are, they think, due, and without which the force commonly known as material cannot be explained. Thus Newton says, in his 'Optics: Is not heat conveyed through a vacuum by the vibration of a much more subtile medium than air? Is not this medium the same by which light is refracted and reflected? Do not hot bodies communicate their heat to cold ones by the vibrations of this medium? And does not this readily pervade all bodies ? And is it not, by its elastic force, expanded through all the heavens?' In an exceedingly ingenious and elaborate process of thought a recent writer has endeavoured to explain all physical change as connected with the conditions of this subtile medium.* Some acute reasoners deem this hypothetical universal substance the medium acted on between mind and mind, constituting, indeed, a body of life in each living body, in which the soul immediately abides and * See Matter and Ether. By Thomas Rawson Birks, M.A., &c. operates. But in truth, however the supposed existence of such a medium may serve to explain the otherwise inexplicable phenomena of common matter, its supposed existence by no means enables us the better to comprehend the mystery of our own existence, though, as a medium between all worlds, it may be our medium from this to the next world. Such a notion has age enough to recommend it; and as the quaint old cabbalist, Dr. Henry More, observed, the soul's Etherial Vehicle is so exceeding liquid that it will, without any violence, comply to any thing.' In short, we may speculate without end through a vehicle known only to imagination and scarcely to that. 27 CHAPTER II. LIFE IN RELATION TO BODY AND SOUL. Is it matter, or is it WE now ask, What is life? correlated with material force? fested in union with matter, it seems to be in some way related to matter, but, unlike material force, we cannot discover that it is capable of being manifested in any other form than as an organising force, and perhaps this expression may best define life. Whatever may be the connection of material force with life in the building up and maintaining organic structure and function, we do not recognise the organisation nor the function as due solely to material force. There is some power, acting under a fixed law in all organism, which causes the material force to conform to itself as the organising power, and that power is life. All that lives is organised, and derived through seed, egg, or bud, from preceding life and organism. (We cannot determine whether organism is the result of life or life of organism. We only know they coexist now as derived. In the origin or creation of each kind of living creature, organised structure might have been first formed, and then imbued with life, which is the power of continuing, not of creating, organism.?ry cloutiful, There is no fact known that even suggests that life results from the transfer or transmutation of material force from one form to another. Nor is there anything to show that life can be produced by the combined action of any forms of material force. If, then, life is not correlated with the known forms of material force, we are justified in regarding it as related to spirit rather than matter. Although it manifests itself in material products, it does not manifest any property of matter or substance impressing any of our senses. Therefore we are constrained to regard it as a distinct and specific energy. Life-force and mind-force are not embraced in the theory of correlated forms of force-the conservation of energy. As matter cannot be increased but by creation, nor removed out of creation but by the creating Power, so neither can any living entity be produced nor destroyed. And as life and mind, or soul-action, are in the category of especial orders of force or energy, they, like other forms of force, can only be liable to varied modes of manifestation and quiescence, according to conditions established by the creative fiat. It has been observed* that the question whether, first, a peculiar vital spirit can temporarily lodge in the matter of the body; or whether, secondly, a peculiar imponderable vital fluid can temporarily be diffused through the matter of the body; or whether, thirdly, a peculiar form of motion of the matter of the body is all we can recognise as constituting life—each and all of these questions can never be considered by us to have anything whatever in common with any question regarding the existence of the immortal soul.' Quite adopting these words, we may yet consistently contend that, as the peculiar form of motion assumed in the third question is only the mode of manifesting life in bodily relation, so it may also be contended and consistently believed that the manifestation of mind is a mode or form of motion effected in brain and nerve in connection with life. Thus we may possibly obtain a better idea both of life and of the soul, * Croonian Lectures, 1868, Lecture II. |