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

We know that this Eye and its apparatus of nerves no longer shall serve for seeing– we know that these muscles and their nerves shall no longer serve for moving– we know that this marvellous Brain itself no longer shall serve, as we are led to believe that it now serves, for thinking– we know that this bounding heart never again shall throb and quicken, with all its leaping pulses, with joy – that pain of this body shall never again tire the mind, and that pain of this mind shall never again tire this body, once pillowed and covered up in its bed of imperturbable slumber. And there ends our knowledge. But that this Mind, which, united to these muscles and their nerves, sent out vigorous and swift motions through them – which, united to this Brain, compelled this Brain to serve it as the minister of its thinkings upon this Earth and in this mode of its Being – which, united to this Frame, in it, and through it, and from it, felt for Happiness and for Misery – that this Mind, once disunited from all these, its instruments and servants, shall therefore perish, or shall therefore forego the endowment of its powers, which it manifested by these its instruments – of that we have no warranty – of that there is no probability.

TALBOYS

Much rather, sir, might a probability lie quite the other way. For if the structure of this corporeal frame places at the service of the Mind some five or six senses, enabling it, by so many avenues, to communicate with this external world, this very structure shuts up the Mind in these few senses, ties it down to the capacities of exactness and sensibility for which they are framed. But we have no reason at all to think that these few modes of sensibility, which we call our external senses, are all the modes of sensibility of which our spirits are capable. Much rather we must believe that, if it pleased, or shall ever please, the Creator to open in this Mind, in a new world, new modes of sensation, the susceptibility for these modes is already there for another set of senses. Now we are confined to an eye that sees distinctly at a few paces of distance. We have no reason for thinking that, united with a finer organ of sight, we should not see far more exquisitely; and thus, sir, our notices of the dependence in which the Mind now subsists upon the body do of themselves lead us to infer its own self-subsistency.

NORTH

What we are called upon to do, my friends, is to set Reason against Imagination and against Habit. We have to lift ourselves up above the limited sphere of sensible experience. We have to believe that something more is than that which we see – than that which we know.

TALBOYS

Yet, sir, even the facts of Mind, revealed to us living in these bodies, are enough to show us that more is than these bodies – since we feel that We are, and that it is impossible for us to regard these bodies otherwise than as possessions of ours– utterly impossible to regard them as Ourselves.

NORTH

We distinguish between the acts of Mind, inwardly exerted – the acts, for instance, of Reason, of Memory, and of Affection – and acts of the Mind communicating through the senses with the external world. But Butler seems to me to go too far when he says, "I confess that in sensation the mind uses the body; but in reflection I have no reason to think that the mind uses the body." But, my dear friends, I, Christopher North, think, on the contrary, that the Mind uses the Brain for a thinking instrument; and that much thought fatigues the Brain, and causes an oppressive flow of the blood to the Brain, and otherwise disorders that organ. And altogether I should be exceedingly sorry to rest the Immortality of the Soul upon so doubtful an assumption as that the Brain is not, in any respect or sort, the Mind's Organ of Thinking. I see no need for so timid a sheltering of the argument. On the contrary, the simple doctrine, to my thought, is this – The Mind, as we know it, is implicated and mixed up with the Body —throughout– in all its ordinary actions. This corporeal frame is a system of organs, or Instruments, which the Mind employs in a thousand ways. They are its instruments– all of them are – and none of them is itself. What does it matter to me that there is one more organ – the Brain – for one more function – thinking? Unless the Mind were in itself a seeing thing – that is, a thing able to see – it could not use the Eye for seeing; and unless the Mind were a thinking thing, it could not use the Brain for thinking. The most intimate implication of itself with its instruments in the functions which constitute our consciousness, proves nothing in the world to me, against its essential distinctness from them, and against the possibility of its living and acting in separation from them, and when they are dissolved. So far from it, when I see that the body chills with fear, and glows with love, I am ready to call fear a cold, and love a warm passion, and to say that the Mind uses its bodily frame in fearing and in loving. All these things have to do with manifestations of my mind to itself, Now, whilst implicated in this body. Let me lift myself above imagination – or let my imagination soar and carry my reason on its wings – I leave the body to moulder, and I go sentient, volent, intelligent, whithersoever I am called.

TALBOYS

It seems a timidity unworthy of Butler to make the distinction. Such a distinction might be used to invalidate his whole doctrine.

NORTH

It might – if granted – and legitimately. But the course is plain, and the tenor steadfast. As a child, you think that your finger is a part of yourself, and that you feel with it. Afterwards, you find that it can be cut off without diminishing you: and physiologists tell you, and you believe, that it does not feel, but sends up antecedents of feeling to the brain. Am I to stop anywhere? Not in the body. As my finger is no part of Me, no more is my liver, or my stomach, or my heart —or my brain. When I have overworked myself, I feel a lassitude, distinctly local, in my brain —inside of my head– and therewithal an indolence, inertness, inability of thinking. If reflection – as Butler more than insinuates – hesitatingly says – is independent of my brain and body, whence the lassitude? And how did James Watt get unconquerable headaches with meditating Steam-engines?

TALBOYS

It is childish, sir, to stagger at degrees, when we have admitted the kind. The Bishop's whole argument is to show, that the thing in us which feels, wills, thinks, is distinct from our body; that I am one thing, and my body another.

NORTH

Have we Souls? If we have – they can live after the body – cannot perish with it; if we have not – wo betide us all!

SEWARD

Will you, sir, be pleased to sum up the Argument of the First Chapter of the Analogy?

NORTH

No. Do you. You have heard it – and you understand it.

SEWARD

I cannot venture on it.

NORTH

Do you, my excellent Talboys – for you know the Book as well as I do myself.

TALBOYS

That the Order of Nature shows us great and wonderful changes, which the living being undergoes-and arising from beginnings inconceivably low, to higher and higher conditions of consciousness and action; – That hence an exaltation of our Powers by the change Death, would be congruous to the progress which we have witnessed in other creatures, and have experienced in ourselves; – That the fact, that before Death we possess Powers of acting, and suffering, and enjoying, affords a primâ facie probability that, after Death, we shall continue to possess them; because it is a constant presumption in Nature, and one upon which we constantly reason and rely, speculatively and practically, that all things will continue as they are, unless a cause appear sufficient for changing them; – But that in Death nothing appears which should suffice to destroy the Powers of Action, Enjoyment, and Suffering in a Living Being; – For that in all we know of Death we know the destruction of parts instrumental to the Uses of a Living Being; – But that of any destruction reaching, or that we have reason to suppose to reach the Living Being, we know nothing; – That the Unity of Consciousness persuades us that the Being in which Consciousness essentially resides is one and indivisible – by any accident, Death inclusive, indiscerptible; – That the progress of diseases, growing till they kill the mortal body, but leaving the Faculties of the Soul in full force to the last gasp of living breath, is a particular argument, establishing this independence of the Living Being – the Spirit – which is the Man himself – upon the accidents which may befall the perishable Frame.

NORTH

Having seen, then, a Natural Probability that the principle within us, which is the seat and source of Thought and Feeling, and of such Life as can be imparted to the Body, will subsist undestroyed by the changes of the Body – and having recognised the undoubted Power of the Creator – if it pleases Him – indefinitely to prolong the life which He has given – how would you and I, my dear Friends, proceed – from the ground thus gained – and on which – with Butler – we take our stand – to speak farther of reasons for believing in the Immortality of the Soul?

SEWARD

I feel, sir, that I have already taken more than my own part in this conversation. We should have to inquire, sir, whether in His known attributes, and in the known modes of His government, we could ascertain any causes making it probable that He will thus prolong our existence – and we find many such grounds of confidence.

NORTH

Go on, my dear Seward.

SEWARD

If you please, sir, be yours the closing words – for the Night.

NORTH

The implanted longing in every human bosom for such permanent existence – the fixed anticipation of it – and the recoil from annihilation – seem to us intimation vouchsafed by the Creator of His designs towards us; – the horror with which Remorse awakened by sin looks beyond the Grave, partakes of the same prophetical inspiration. We see how precisely the lower animals are fitted to the places which they hold upon the earth, with instincts that exactly supply their needs, with no powers that are not here satisfied – while we, as if out of place, only through much difficult experience can adapt ourselves to the physical circumstances into which we are introduced – and thus, in one respect, furnished below our condition, are, on the other hand, by the aspirations of our higher faculties, raised infinitely above it – as if intimating that whilst those creatures here fulfil the purpose of their creation, here we do not – and, therefore, look onward; – That whilst our other Powers, of which the use is over, decline in the course of nature as Death approaches, our Moral and Intellectual Faculties often go on advancing to the last, as if showing that they were drawing nigh to their proper sphere of action; – That whilst the Laws regulating the Course of Human Affairs visibly proceed from a Ruler who favours Virtue, and who frowns upon Vice, yet that a just retribution does not seem uniformly carried out in the good success of well-doers, and the ill success of evil-doers – so that we are led on by the constitution of our souls to look forward to a world in which that which here looks like Moral Disorder, might be reduced into Order, and the Justice of the Ruler and the consistency of His Laws vindicated; – That in studying the arrangements of this world, we see that in many cases dispositions of Human affairs, which, upon their first aspect, appeared to us evil, being more clearly examined and better known, resulted in good – and thence draw a hope that the stroke which daunts our imagination, as though it were the worst of evils, will prove, when known, a dispensation of bounty – "Death the Gate of Life," opening into a world in which His beneficent hand, if not nearer to us than here, will be more steadily visible – no clouds interposing between the eyes of our soul and their Sun; – That the perplexity which oppresses our Understanding from the sight of this world, in which the Good and Evil seem intermixed and crossing each other, almost vanishes, when we lift up our thoughts to contemplate this mutable scene as a place of Probation and of Discipline, where Sorrows and Sufferings are given to school us to Virtue – as the Arena where Virtue strives in the laborious and perilous contest, of which it shall hereafter receive the well-won and glorious crown; – That we draw confidence in the same conclusions, from observing how closely allied and agreeing to each other are the Two Great Truths of Natural Religion, the Belief in God and the Belief in our own Immortality; so that, when we have received the idea of God, as the Great Governor of the Universe, the belief in our own prolonged existence appears to us as a necessary part of that Government; or if, upon the physical arguments, we have admitted the independent conviction of our Immortality, this doctrine appears to us barren and comfortless, until we understand that this continuance of our Being is to bring us into the more untroubled fruition of that Light, which here shines upon us, often through mist and cloud; – That in all these high doctrines we are instructed to rest more securely, as we find the growing harmony of one solemn conviction with another – as we find that all our better and nobler Faculties co-operate with one another – and these predominating principles carry us to these convictions – so that our Understanding then first begins to possess itself in strength and light when the heart has accepted the Moral Law; – But that our Understanding is only fully at ease, and our Moral Nature itself, with all its affections, only fully supported and expanded, when both together have borne us on to the knowledge of Him who is the sole Source of Law – the highest Object of Thought – the Favourer of Virtue – towards whom Love may eternally grow, and still be infinitely less than His due – till we have reached this knowledge, and with it the steadfast hope that the last act of this Life joins us to Him – does not for ever shut us up in the night of Oblivion; – And we have strengthened ourselves in inferences forced upon us by remembering how humankind has consented in these Beliefs, as if they were a part of our Nature – and by remembering farther, how, by the force of these Beliefs, human Societies have subsisted and been held together – how Laws have been sanctioned, and how Virtues, Wisdom, and all the good and great works of the Human Spirit have, under these influences, been produced; – Surely Great is the Power of all these concurrent considerations brought from every part of our Nature – from the Material and the Immaterial – from the Intellectual and Moral – from the Individual and the Social – from that which respects our existence on this side of the grave, and that which respects our existence beyond it – from that which looks down upon the Earth, and that which looks up towards Heaven.

notes

1

A damper is a cake of flour baked without yeast, in the ashes.

2

"I have frequently," says Mr Wilkinson, in his invaluable work upon South Australia, at once so graphic and so practical, "been out on a journey in such a night, and, whilst allowing the horse his own time to walk along the road, have solaced myself by reading in the still moonlight."

3

Mémoires d'Outre Tombe. Par M. le Vicomte de Chateaubriand. 4 vols. Paris, 1846-9.

4

"Il y a peu des femmes, même dans le haut rang, dont je n'eusse fait la conquête si je l'avais enterprise." – Biogiaphie Universelle, xxxix. 136.

5

Alluding to the name l'Infame, given by the King of Prussia, D'Alembert, and Diderot, in their correspondences, to the Christian religion.

6

Dante.