DUTIES INVOLVED IN RIGHTS.

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there be such relations established by God that one portion of the community cannot take part in the government without injury to society, then that portion may be excluded. How far this may be the case in any particular instance, each society must judge for itself, as it does upon other and similar questions.

I cannot close this lecture without observing that this subject of rights, regarded as a barrier against encroachment, and as involving duties, demands the especial attention of a free people. Among such a people there will always be a tendency to regard liberty as a right of unrestrained action, and rights as something to be enforced. It is those days when liberty was gained and rights enforced that nations celebrate. But is easier to gain liberty and enforce rights than, having gained them, to practise the self-control that shall respect rights, and the self-denial and faithfulness and patient waiting required in performing the duties that our rights involve. This is the turning point with us. Can we use our freedom and enjoy our rights without encroaching upon the liberty and the rights of others? Will parents, and magistrates, and citizens, fulfil the duties that correspond to their rights? Will they see that individual and unauthorized action is so restrained that all shall have their rights? There is no grander sight than that of a great people, powerful and free, under the guidance of a comprehensive wisdom, always arresting its action at the point where it touches the rights of others, protecting those of the most feeble, and trusting calmly for its aggrandizement to the gradual but resistless power of intelligence, industry, and freedom, under the guidance of justice. And there is no sadder sight than such a people governed by fraud and cunning, torn by faction, disintegrated by selfishness, denying to

others what they claim for themselves,, with no faith in the natural power of free institutions to perpetuate and extend themselves without force, and thus putting into the hands of others a cup, which, in the circuit and balance of God's retributions, must be returned to their own lips, and which they must be compelled to drain to the very dregs.

LECTURE XII.

A FUTURE LIFE.-ITS RELATION TO MORALITY.-THE PHYSICAL ARGUMENT.-MORAL ARGUMENTS.

WHAT man ought to do will depend on the end for which he was made. If he was made for this world only, then he ought to live for this world. But if he was also made for a life after this, and his conduct in this life would affect his condition in that, then he ought to live with reference to that. We labor for the morrow, because we expect to awake in the morning. It is thus that the doctrine of a future life connects itself with morality; and as we have seen that man is connected with all that is below him, it will be a fitting close of our subject to inquire what indications there are in his nature that he is also connected with that which is beyond and above him.

Than this no inquiry can be of greater interest. Whether there is a God or not; whether this visible structure of the universe is to be eternal or not; whether the generations of men are to be perpetuated, or are to be destroyed by some general convulsion of nature, are questions that little concern the individual man if he is evoked into being like the bubble upon the ocean, to appear but for a moment, and then vanish forever.

The first indication of a future life that I shall mention is drawn from the nature of the mind as simple and indivisible, and so incapable of destruction except by annihilation.

Concerning that which underlies the power of thought three suppositions may be made, and only three. It must belong either to one single, indivisible, ultimate particle of matter; or to a number of such particles united together; or to what we must call an immaterial substance entirely distinct from matter.

Does the power of thought, then, reside in a single, indivisible, ultimate particle of matter? I think not, because these particles are so minute. No microscope can reach them. If a single grain of the salts of iron be put into thirty thousand pints of water, it can be detected by experiment in every drop of that water. A hare, in his flight, leaves particles of insensible perspiration upon the earth at every footfall. These must be inconceivably minute, as they are constantly given off so long as the hound can follow the track. But to suppose that one such ultimate particle has, in addition to the properties of matter, those of thought, feeling, memory, imagination, judgment, that it studies fluxions and metaphysics, indites poems, and governs nations, seems absurd.

But I need not dwell on this, because those materialists who deny a future life do not advocate it, and for the very good reason that it would be a strong argument against them. If the soul be such an ultimate particle, then it can perish only by annihilation, and it seems to be a principle in the government of God not to annihilate anything. What we call destruction is simply a change of form, never an annihilation of substance.

Is, then, the power of thought the property of a number of particles of matter united together?

Here again we must look at the constitution of matter. Concerning this there are two suppositions. One is that of Boscovich, and was adopted by Priestly, a distinguished

materialist. (The supposition is that what we call matter consists, not of solid particles, but of centres of attraction and repulsion. As other philosophers have said, take away solidity and matter vanishes, so Priestly says expressly, "Take away attraction and repulsion and matter vanishes." This seems to me to deny the existence of matter as a substance, though not as a force, and it cannot be necessary in opposing materialism to show that thought cannot be the property of a number of centres of attraction and repulsion, when, by the supposition, those centres themselves, as material bodies, do not exist.

We take next the common supposition that matter consists of solid extended particles of great minuteness.

Whether such particles are ever so united that there is actual contact between them is not decided; but whether there is or not, we must remember they are separate and independent bodies, and that a body which we call one is not a unit, but a collection of units to which we give a common name. There is no unity till we come to ultimate particles, or to mind.

Now the supposition is that thought, though not the property of any one of these particles separately, is yet the property of a number of them, greater or less, united together.

But this is surely contradicted by the consciousness of every man in regard to the oneness of that being which he calls himself. It is also contradicted by the nature of the mental phenomena, as thought, feeling, consciousness, which are simple, and incapable of division. If this doctrine be true, then the thought, originating not solely in one particle, but in a number, must come, part of it from one, and part from another, and what is thus made up by composition may be again divided. According to