CHAP. V.]

THE PROBLEM STATED.

311

body, the senses and the mind,1 that

into another body."

passes onward

DAMON. It is a good statement of the great problem; and we may safely agree with Nachiketas when he goes on to say that this is a matter that we must know if we would know the highest end of man.

PYTHIAS. You observe that he also declares that it is "a matter beyond human observation and human reasoning," that it is "a very subtle matter," and that "there is no other teacher to be found like death."

DAMON. It is curious how modern all this sounds. But, as a matter of fact, are human observation and human reasoning inadequate to prove that man is not wholly of the material order-that he has a self over which the death of the body has no power? I do not think they are inadequate.

PYTHIAS. I should like to hear your argument on this topic. For myself, I frankly own I think the materialists have a strong case. They keep to the facts. They find that life can be traced to a certain collocation of matter. They find that another collocation of matter extinguishes it. The existence of the soul is merely an hypothesis. It may be true. I don't see how it can be proved.

DAMON. Do not let us go too fast. You may

1 Manas, commonly, but not very satisfactorily, translated by "mind "-with which it is etymologically akin—is, in Indian philosophy, the receptive and discriminating faculty: it is part of the bodily organism and is quite distinct from the soul.

may

call the existence of the soul an hypothesis, if you please; but you may with equal justice call the existence of matter an hypothesis. I mean matter in itself—matter as an objective fact, apart from mind. What, indeed, is matter but the name we give to an unknown force of which the manifestations be reduced to resistance, or, perhaps I should rather say, inertia, under conditions of time and space? Do we really know anything more than that about matter, in the last resort? I do not think we can say that we do. But we know more than that about spirit. We know of external phenomena through the mind. Our knowledge of mental states and processes is direct. True it is that all real knowledge supposes a prior sensation. Still, what is sensation? Coleridge described it as "vision nascent; not the cause of intelligence, but intelligence itself, revealed as an earlier power in the process of self-construction"; and the description seems just.

PYTHIAS. Of course, matter cannot be known without a mind to know it-whatever mind may be-nor can we pretend that we know it as it is in itself, or that we know anything about it except its qualities. But pray go on, for the subject is to me of most pressing interest.

DAMON. I do not know that I shall say anything new. All I can profess to do is to put before you what commends itself to my own mind as indubitably true. Let us, then, consider man as we

CHAP. V.]

OUR TRUE SELF.

313

know of him, or rather-for in this department no less than in our own profession the maxim holds, Dolus latet in generalibus-let us avoid abstractions, and let me speak of the one man whom I know best-myself. What am I then? Well, the first fact about me is the consciousness of my own separate existence. I know that I am Ithat under my hat exists a being who is not you, nor any one else; who lives alone, and who dies alone; and who from his first breath to his last is the same man. My personal unchanging identity, say, is the first fact about me.

I

PYTHIAS. I do not see how that fact can be denied, however it may be explained.

DAMON. What, then, is this personal unchanging self of which I am conscious? Is it anything

belonging to the material order? One of the most definitive gains of modern physical science, as of course I need not tell you, is the establishment of the constant flux of all matter. This isolation from the rest of the universe, of which I am conscious as being the first fact about me, cannot be referred to my physical organism, for every particle of that organism is incessantly changing and entering other organisms, animal and vegetable. Physically considered, we have nothing of our own. What is really ours, what constitutes our true self, is the thinking being. The phenomenal part of me has changed over and over again. I remain. It is now changing, and in a short time will have

completely changed. I shall still be the same I. Ego, ego, animus.

PYTHIAS. It is a strong point, this unbroken consciousness of personal identity amid the constant mutation of the atoms which make up our physical organism. I do not know that it has been satisfactorily met by the materialists-as yet. Büchner, indeed, observes, that, though the substances which make up the brain change, the mode of their composition must be permanent and determinative of the mode of individual consciousness. He adds that those interior processes are inexplicable and inconceivable.

DAMON. There at all events we may safely agree with him.

PYTHIAS. But, before you go on, let me point out that the argument which you have just urged applies equally to the brutes. Look at my dog

Spider, as he lies there on the hearthrug. All the atoms of which his bodily frame is made up are in a constant state of flux, just as those atoms are which make up my body. Materially, he is not the same dog that he was a very short time ago, but an entirely different dog. His personal identity, however, remains the same, and he is very conscious of it. He knows that he is Spider, not Leo his friend, nor Hector his foe; and he knows that he is the same Spider that he always has been. What is really he, what constitutes his true self, is, I suppose, not his nerves, nor his tissues, nor his

CHAP. V.] PHENOMENA AND SUBSTANCE.

315

bones, nor his tail, but the thinking being which resides within these environments.

DAMON. And why not? It seems to me manifest that in every living organism, be it animal or vegetable, you must distinguish, as the old schoolmen did, between phenomena and substance. What we call life, wherever we find it, is, as I account, the result of the union of spirit and matter-of the animæ et corporis dulce consortium-the sweet wedlock of soul and body. Descartes's machine theory of the animals we call lower is certainly no longer tenable in the face of what we now know about them.

PYTHIAS. So that we may talk of a thinking self in dogs, horses, and cats; so that Sir Joseph Banks, upon the memorable occasion when, if Peter Pindar is to be trusted, he exclaimed,

Fleas are not lobsters, damn their souls,

was not exactly bombinans in vacuo: and a poet of a different order is to be taken literally when he sings of "a spirit in the woods."

DAMON. There is a profound saying of Thoreau, to whom so many of nature's open secrets were revealed: "The mystery of the life of plants is kindred with that of our own lives. We must not expect to probe with our fingers the sanctuary of any life, whether animal or vegetable." I am persuaded that the true self of every animate being is spiritual. I do not, of course, say that all souls are the same, or that human souls have not endowments