Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 66, No. 407, September, 1849

SEWARD

No! But of that first period, through which they have made some display of themselves as living agents. They have reached this term. And look at them – now.

NORTH

Ay – look at them – now. Wonder on wonder! For now a miraculous instinct guides and compels the creature – who has, as it were, completed one life – who has accomplished one stage of his existence – to entomb himself. And he accordingly builds or spins himself a tomb – or he buries himself in his grave. Shall I say, that she herself, his guardian, his directress, Great Nature, coffins him? Enclosed in a firm shell – hidden from all eyes – torpid – in a death-like sleep —not dead– he waits the appointed hour, which the days and nights bring, and which having come – his renovation, his resuscitation is come. And now the sepulture no longer holds him! Now the prisoner of the tomb has right again to converse with embalmed air and with glittering sunbeams – now, the reptile that was– unrecognisably transformed from himself – a glad, bright, mounting creature, unfurls on either side the translucent or the richly-hued pinions that shall waft him at his liking from blossom to blossom, or lift him in a rapture of aimless joyancy to disport and rock himself on the soft-flowing undulating breeze.

SEWARD

My dearest sir, the Greek in his darkness, or uncertain twilight of belief, has culled and perpetuated his beautiful emblem. Will the Christian look unmoved upon the singular imaging, which, amidst the manifold strangely-charactered secrets of nature, he finds of his own sealed and sure faith?

NORTH

No, Seward. The philosophical Theologian claims in this likeness more than an apt simile, pleasing to the stirred fancy. He sees here an Analogy – and this Analogy he proposes as one link in a chain of argumentation, by which he would show that Reason might dare to win from Nature, as a Hope, the truth which it holds from God as revealed knowledge.

SEWARD

I presume, sir, you allude to Butler's Analogy. I have studied it.

NORTH

I do – to the First Chapter of that Great Work. This parallelism, or apprehended resemblance between an event continually occurring and seen in nature, and one unseen but continually conceived as occurring upon the uttermost brink and edge of nature – this correspondency, which took such fast hold of the Imagination of the Greeks, has, as you know, my dear friends, in these latter days been acknowledged by calm and profound Reason, looking around on every side for evidences or intimations of the Immortality of the Soul.

BULLER

Will you be so good, sir, as let me have the volume to study of an evening in my own Tent?

NORTH

Certainly. And for many other evenings – in your own Library at home.

TALBOYS

Please, sir, to state Butler's argument in your own words and way.

NORTH

For Butler's style is hard and dry. A living Being undergoes a vicissitude by which on a sudden he passes from a state in which he has long, continued into a new state, and with it into a new scene of existence. The transition is from a narrow confinement into an ample liberty – and this change of circumstances is accompanied in the subject with a large and congruous increment of powers. They believe this who believe the Immortality of the Soul. But the fact is, that changes bearing this description do indeed happen in Nature, under our very eyes, at every moment; this method of progress being universal in her living kingdoms. Such a marvellous change is literally undergone by innumerable kinds, the human animal included, in the instant in which they pass out from the darkness and imprisonment of the womb into the light and open liberty of this breathing world. Birth has been the image of a death, which is itself nothing else than a birth from one straightened life into another ampler and freer. The ordering of Nature, then, is an ordering of Progression, whereby new and enlarged states are attained, and, simultaneously therewith, new and enlarged powers; and all this not slowly, gradually, and insensibly, but suddenly and per saltum.

TALBOYS

This analogy, then, sir, or whatever there is that is in common to birth as we know it, and to death as we conceive it, is to be understood as an evidence set in the ordering of Nature, and justifying or tending to justify such our conception of Death?

NORTH

Exactly so. And you say well, my good Talboys, "justifying or tending to justify." For we are all along fully sensible that a vast difference – a difference prodigious and utterly confounding to the imagination – holds, betwixt the case from which we reason, birth– or that further expansion of life in some breathing kinds which might be held as a second birth– betwixt these cases, I say, and the case to, which we reason, Death!

TALBOYS

Prodigious and utterly confounding to the imagination indeed! For in these physiological instances, either the same body, or a body changing by such slow and insensible degrees that it seems to us to be the same body, accompanies, encloses, and contains the same life – from the first moment in which that life comes under our observation to that in which it vanishes from our cognisance; whereas, sir, in the case to which we apply the Analogy – our own Death – the life is supposed to survive in complete separation from the body, in and by its union with which we have known it and seen it manifested.

NORTH

Excellently well put, my friend. I see you have studied Butler.

TALBOYS

I have – but not for some years. The Analogy is not a Book to be forgotten.

NORTH

This difference between the case from which we reason, and the case to which we reason, there is no attempt whatever at concealing – quite the contrary – it stands written, you know, my friend, upon the very Front of the Argument. This difference itself is the very motive and occasion of the Whole Argument! Were there not this difference between the cases which furnish the Analogy, and the case to which the Analogy is applied – had we certainly known and seen a Life continued, although suddenly passing out from the body where it had hitherto resided – or were Death not the formidable disruption which it is of a hitherto subsisting union – the cases would be identical, and there would be nothing to reason about or to inquire. There is this startling difference – and accordingly the Analogy described has been proposed by Butler merely as a first step in the Argument.

TALBOYS

It remains to be seen, then, whether any further considerations can be proposed which will bring the cases nearer together, and diminish to our minds the difficulty presented by the sudden separation.

NORTH

Just so. What ground, then, my dear young friends – for you seem and are young to me – what ground, my friends, is there for believing that the Death which we see, can affect the living agent which we do not see? Butler makes his approaches cautiously, and his attack manfully – and this is the course of his Argument. I begin with examining my present condition of existence, and find myself to be a Being endowed with certain Powers and Capacities – for I act, I enjoy, I suffer.

TALBOYS

Of this much there can be no doubt; for of all this an unerring consciousness assures me. Therefore, at the outset, I hold this one secure position – that I exist, the possessor of certain powers and capacities.

NORTH

But that I do now before Death exist, endued with certain powers and capacities, affords a presumptive or primâ facie probability that I shall after death continue to exist, possessing these powers and capacities —

BULLER

How is that, sir?

NORTH

You do well to put that question, my dear Buller – a primâ facie probability, unless there be some positive reason to think that death is the "destruction" of Me, the living Being, and of these my living Faculties.

BULLER

A presumptive or primâ facie probability, sir? Why does Butler say so?

NORTH

"Because there is in every case a probability that all things will continue as we experience they are, in all respects, except those in which we have some reason to think they will be altered."

BULLER

You will pardon me, sir, I am sure, for having asked the question.