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

this there would, as has been said, be no impropriety in speaking of the half or the eighth of a thought, of the top and bottom of a feeling, of the east and west end of consciousness.

But, again, if this doctrine were true, there could not only be no such thing as simple indivisible thought, but there could be no personal identity. Our bodies undergo constant change; they are no more the same bodies for two days together than the stream which we pass over on two successive days is the same water. The brain participates in these changes. I remember now what happened when I was four years old; but there is not in my system now one particle of matter that was there then. How, then, does this new matter know what happened to the old? How can this consciousness, this sense of identity, be transferred from one particle to another? According to this, we should be undergoing a continual death, for, as the whole brain dies when it ceases to think, so there must be some particles of it, as they are passing off, constantly giving up the ghost, and leaving their transitory honors to their successors. And these others, -how are they exalted! That which was yesterday a portion of a potato or of a calf's brains, may to-day become a part of the soul of a philosopher! That there are any who believe this is the most plausible argument that I know that their souls. are thus made.

In reply to this objection I have never seen anything better than the following ironical answer from Martinus Scriblerus: "Sir John Cutler had a pair of black worsted stockings which his maid darned so often with silk that they became at last a pair of silk stockings. Now, supposing those stockings of Sir John's endued with some degree of consciousness at every particular darning, they

would have been sensible that they were the same individual pair of stockings both before and after the darning, and this sensation would have continued in them through all the succession of darnings, and yet, after the last of all, there was not, perhaps, one thread left of the first pair of stockings, but they had grown to be silk stockings, as was said before."

But however conclusive the above arguments may seem, I am aware that I have not yet touched the real difficulty as it lies in your minds, if you have been accustomed to read a particular class of writings on this subject. It is, that thought is never manifested except in connection with a brain or nervous system, on which it seems to depend; that as one changes the other changes; when the brain is diseased, thought is disordered, and when that ceases to act thought ceases to be manifest. That it is not to be supposed that any one particle in distinction from the others has the power of thought, but that it is the one simple result of the combined action of the whole, just as music is the result of the combined action of the fiddle-bow and the fiddle, or as secretion is the result of the action of the gland. This, I think, is a fair statement of the doctrine of the materialists, and of the kind of analogies by which it is supported.

In reply to this I observe, first, that we have evidence. of the existence of thought without a brain or nervous system, or we have no evidence of the existence and intelligence of God, or of any spiritual being. If there be such beings, doubtless the principle of thought is the same in us as in them.

But allowing that we have no such evidence, I am inclined to think that the statement is absurd, for it supposes the whole to have properties which do not belong