“And for my soul, what can it do for that,
Being a thing immortal?”
HAMLET.
CAST. We have risen with the lark to salute you, Astrophel. And you have
really slept in Tintern Abbey? Yet not alone; “I see queen Mab hath been
with you,” and brushed you with her wing as you lay asleep.
ASTR. Throughout the live-long night, sweet Castaly, I have revelled in
a world of dreams. My couch and pillow were the green grass turf. No
wonder that tales of the times of old should crowd on my memory, that
elfin lips should whisper in my ear—
CAST. “The soft exquisite music of a dream.”
IDA. Talk not of dreams so lightly, dear Castaly; the visions of sleep
are among the most divine mysteries of our nature: these transient
flights of the spirit in a dream, unfettered as they seem by the will,
are, to my own mind, among the most exalted proofs of its immortality.
Is it not so, Evelyn?
EV. The mystery which you have glanced at, Ida, is the most sublime
subject in metaphysics. Yet in our analysis of the phenomena of
intellect, it is our duty to discard, with reverential awe, many of the
notions of the _pseudo psychologists_ in allusion to that self-evident
truth, that requires not the support of such arguments.
In tracing the mystery of a dream to its association with our immortal
essence, reason will at length be involved in a maze of conjecture. True
philosophy will never presume to _explain_ the mystical union of spirit
and of flesh; she would be bewildered even in their _definitions_, and
would incur some peril of forming unhallowed conclusions. Even the
_nature_ of the rational soul will involve him in endless conjecture,
whether it be _fire_, as Zeno believed; or _number_, according to
Xenocrates; or _harmony_, according to Aristoxenus; or the lucid
fire—the Creator of all things, of the Chaldean astrologers.
He who aspires to a solution of the mystery, may wear out his brain in
the struggle, as Philetas worked himself to death in a vain attempt to
solve the celebrated “Pseudomenos,” the paradox of the stoics; or, like
the gloomy students of the German school, he might conclude his
researches with a question like this rhapsody—unanswerable.
“But thou, my spirit, thou that knowest this, that speakest to thyself,
what art thou? what wast thou ere this clay coat was cut for thee? and
what wilt thou be when this rain-coat, this sleeping-frock, fall off
thee like a garment torn to pieces? Whence comest thou? where goest
thou? Ah! where from and to, where darkness is before and behind thee?
Oh ye unclothed, ye naked spirits, hear this soliloquy—this
soul-speech. Know ye that ye be? Know ye that ye were, that ye are as we
are or otherwise, in eternity? Do ye work within us, when a holy
thrilling darts through us like lightning, where not the skin trembles
but the soul within us? Tell us, oh tell us, what then is death?”
Now, if we reflect on the psychology of the Greeks, can we discern their
distinctions of νους, πνευμα, ψυχη, σωμα, of soul or spirit—of
spiritual body, or of idol and of earthly body; or of θυμος, ψυχη, and
νους, ψυχη, and so forth?
This fine distinction may be reduced to one simple proposition:—that
soul and mind are the same, under different combinations: mind is soul
evinced through the medium of the brain; soul is mind emancipated from
matter. This principle, if established, might associate the anomalies of
many sophists; the existence of two minds, the sensitive and
intellectual, taught by the Alexandrian philosophers, or the tenets of
Bishop Horsley, in his sermon before the Humane Society, the separation
of the life of _intellect_ from _animal_ life; and it might reconcile
the abstract reasoning of medical philosophy, with the pure but
misdirected arguments of the theological critic.
We believe the spirit to be the essence of life and immortality; and it
signifies not whether our words are those of Stahl—that it presided
over the animal body; or those of Galen and Aristotle—that it directed
the function of life. It is enough that we recognize the πνοη ξωης, or
that _breath of life_, which the Creator breathed into none _but_ man;
and the εικων θεου, the _image of God_, in which he was created. In this
one proposition all the points of this awful question are comprehended.
And it is on this _combined_ nature that we must reason, ere we
discourse on _sleep_ and _dreams_.
CAST. I condole with you, Astrophel; you must forget the splendour of
your dreams, and listen to their dull philosophy.
ASTR. We may indeed sympathize with each other, Castaly; we are
threatened with another abstruse exposition of the mind, although we are
already sated with the contrasted hypotheses of our deepest
philosophers: the _cogitation_ or self-reasoning of Descartes, (the
essence of whose “Principia” was “_Cogito, ergo sum_;” and it is an
adoption of Milton’s Adam, “That I _am_, I know, because _I think_:”
forgetting that the very _ego_ which thinks, is a proof of prior
existence;) and of Malebranche, who believed they existed because they
thought; the abstract _spiritualism_ of Berkley, who believed he existed
merely because others thought of him; the _consciousness_ of Locke; the
_idealism_ of Hume; the _material psychology_ of Paley; the _mental
corporeality_ of Priestley; and the absolute _nonentity_ of Pyrrho.
EV. I leave these hypotheses to speak for themselves, Astrophel; my own
discourse will be wearying enough without them.
Over the intricate philosophy of mind, Creative Wisdom has thrown a
veil, which we can never hope to draw aside. True, the beautiful
mechanism of its _organ_, the brain, is apparent; and we can draw some
analogies from inspection of the brain of a brute, and its progressive
development in _fœtal_ life, in reference to comparative simplicity and
complexity; but its phenomena are not, like most of the organic
functions of the body, _demonstrable_.
Now, although we know not the _mode_ of this mutual influence, the
_seat_ of mind is a subject of almost universal belief; not that
Aristotle, and Ætius, and John Locke, are our oracles on this point,
although they have even identified the _spot_, terming the _ventricles_
the mind’s presence-chamber, while Descartes decided on the _pineal
gland_. It is, however, into the _brain_ that the nerves of all the
senses enter, or from which they emanate: the senses constitute the
_media_ by which the mind gains its knowledge of the world, and
therefore we regard the brain as its seat.
We believe that the mind may possess _five_ faculties; perception,
association, memory, imagination, and judgment, and their focus or
concentration is in the brain. We may argue long on the _earthly_ nature
of mind, contrasted with that of matter; yet, in the end, we commonly
thus define it: _a combination of faculties, and their sympathy with the
senses_.
That to different parts of this organ are allotted different functions
cannot be doubted, when we look at its varied structure, its intricate
divisions, its eccentric yet uniform cavities, its delicate and almost
invisible membranes; and, indeed, physiological experiments are proof of
it.
ASTR. Then there is some truth in the whimsical localities in the
“Anatomy of Melancholy,” and the pictures of the tenants and apartments
of the brain in the ingenious romance of the “Purple Island” of
Fletcher.
EV. Although I grant that these eccentric writers evince much reading, I
am not sure that their impersonations (like the “Polyolbion” of
Drayton,) do not tend to confuse, rather than elucidate, a natural
subject.
Of a plurality of organs in the brain, I have been convinced, even from
my own knowledge and dissections. I have seen that very considerable
portions of the _cerebrum_ may be removed, the individual still
existing. The _vital_ functions may continue, the _animal_ functions are
deranged or lost. The most extensive injuries of the brain, too, are
often discovered, which were not even suspected; and the converse of
this is often observed,—the diseases of the brain being commonly found
in an _inverse ratio_ to the severity of the symptoms. When chronic
tumours and _cysts_ of water are _gradually_ formed, the extreme danger
is averted by the balancing power of the circulation of the brain’s
blood; without which its incompressibility would subject it to constant
injury.
In _tubercles_ of the brain, it is curious that _memory_ is the faculty
chiefly influenced; it is sometimes rendered dull, while the fancy is
vivid,—often more perfect and retentive.
Brain, however, can no more be considered as mind itself, than _retina_
sight, or than the sealing-wax can be identical with the electricity
residing in it. For if we look at the brain of a brute, we see how
closely it resembles our own; then, if we reflect on human intellect and
brute instinct, we must all believe at once that there is some diviner
thing breathed into us than the _anima brutorum_ of Aristotle, something
more than the mere vitality,—
“Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus
Mens agitat molem.”
Brain is therefore the _habitat_ of mind, the workings of which cannot
be indicated without it; for, as the material world would be intact
without a sense, so there can be no mortal evidence of mind without a
brain, which is indeed the sense of the spirit. Thus, without adopting
the creed of the _Hyloist_, the _moderate_ materialist,—that the mind
cannot have, during the life of the body, even a momentary existence
independent of matter,—I believe, that when this matter is in a state
of repose, mind is perfectly passive to _our cognizance_.
IDA. It is with diffidence, Evelyn, that I enter this arena with a
physician, learned in the body; but is there no danger in this doctrine?
does it not imply the office of a _gland_,—that brain is the _origin_
of soul, and that its function was the _secretion of thought_.
EV. Such is the timid error of the mere metaphysician, Ida. There is no
such danger; for, remember, if there _be_ secretion, it is the _soul_
which _directs_. Many a thought is referred to things which we cannot
bring into contact with our consciousness,—_except by the brain_.
Dr. Gall writes of a gentleman, whose forehead was far more elevated on
the right side than the left; and he deeply regretted that with this
left side he could never think. And Spurzheim, of an Irish gentleman,
who has the left side of the forehead the least developed by four
lines,—he also could not think with that side, as indeed I have before
hinted.
I may tell you the brain is _double_, and _one_ healthy _hemisphere_ is
sufficient, as the organ of mind, if pain or encroachment of the
opposite, when diseased, does not destroy life, and this especially when
it is a _chronic_ change, or exists from birth; so that I have often
seen one hemisphere of the brain a pulpy bag of water, and yet vitality
and many signs of intellect may still exist; nay, even if the _whole_
brain be reduced to one _medullary_ bag, _animal_ life shall for some
time be preserved.
To oppose this blending of mind and matter, Lord Brougham (in his
Natural Theology) likens the marble statue hewn into beauty, to the
perfect arrangement of organization in a being. While I admire the idea,
I may observe that he forgets this truth,—that the maker of the one was
a mere _statuary_, without even the fabulous power of Prometheus, or
Pygmalion, or Frankenstein; the other, the _Creator_ of all things, who
_breathed a breath of life into the shape he had made fitted to receive
it_. My lord thus halts at the threshold of discovery: mind is not the
_product_ of organization, but it works _by_ and _through_ it; and
therefore, for its _earthly_ uses, cannot be independent of the
qualities of matter. We may as well agree with Plato, in endowing the
soul with “a plastic power, to fashion a body for itself, to enter a
shape and make it a body living.” I remember Plutarch (in his Quæst.
Platon.) makes him say, that the soul is older than the body, and the
source of its existence, and that the intellect is in this soul. But
where is the sacred evidence of this? for, even in our _antenatal_
state, we live, and yet there is probably no consciousness; there is
vitality, at least, without the _consciousness_ of an intellect.
ASTR. As the creation of light was _before_ that of the sun, its
reservoir, so the creation of the soul might be before the brain, in
which the Creator _subsequently_ placed it.
EV. For this there _is_ sacred evidence, Astrophel. There _was_ light,
ere the sun was created as its reservoir; but the soul was breathed into
the body, which was already then created.
ASTR. This is a specimen of your special pleading, Evelyn, allied to
that perilous error of Priestley, that supposed function and structure
to be identical, because they are influenced by the same disease, and
seem to live and die, flourish and decay, _together_. Democritus also
has written his belief that, “as the smell of a rose exists in the
bloom, and fades as that dies, so the soul of an animal is born with its
birth, and dies with its death.” You have conceded to me (and we must
all be conscious of) the great difficulty of conceiving the _nature_ of
_spirit_; but, if we are required to prove its existence, we may answer,
by analogy, that we cannot always palpably prove the existence of
_matter_, although we _know it_ to exist. The _electric fluid_ may
remain for an indefinite period invisible, nay, may never meet the
sight,—it may even traverse a space without any evidence but that of
its wonderful influence, and at length be collected in a jar.
As light, existing in remote stars, has not yet reached our earth, so
the electricity is now residing in myriads of bodies, which will never
be elicited; and thus (if I may extend the simile) the principle of
life, whatever it be, may have an independent existence during life, may
leave the body and yet not perish. Is not this a fine illustration of
the living of the soul without the body; for here even a grosser matter,
yet invisible, is evinced by its passage from one thing to another,
although it is inert when involved in the substance?
IDA. May I not fear that the errors of philosophy, grounded on the
difficulty of conceiving the nature of a self-existent spirit, will not
stop until they lapse into the belief of annihilation?
For there are many suspicious sentiments even in the pages of
well-meaning writers; such are the dangerous sentiments which Boswell
has ascribed to Miss Seward: “There is one mode of the fear of death
which is certainly absurd, and that is the dread of annihilation, which
is only a pleasing sleep without a dream.”
There may be nothing terrible in the condition of annihilation, yet the
moral effect is deplorable; indeed, to doubt the eternal existence is to
argue that man’s life is but a plaything of the Deity. The notion of
annihilation is so abhorrent, that he who believes it dooms himself
indeed to a miserable existence; for the crowning solace of a Christian
life is holy hope, and belief in the priceless gift of immortality.
“Know’st thou th’ importance of a soul immortal?
Behold this midnight glory—worlds on worlds!
Amazing pomp: redouble this amaze!
Ten thousand add; and twice ten thousand more;
Then weigh the whole; one soul outweighs them all,
And calls th’ astonishing magnificence
Of unintelligent creation poor.”
Would that Priestley had read wisely that prophetic truth in
Ecclesiastes: “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and
the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.”
EV. I do not approve his latitude of thought, yet it were severe to
think this, even of Priestley, merely because he disbelieved _separate_
spiritual existence; for Aristotle also asserts, that “the soul could
not exist _without the body_, and yet that it was not the body, but a
part of it.” Zeno, and the Stoics, termed that which was called a spirit
_material_; and not only Ray and Derham, but even Paley, and Johnson,
disbelieved the separate existence. The archdeacon’s opinion, that we
should have a _substantial_ resurrection, is founded on New-Testament
evidence, and expressed in his discourse on a future state. The
apostle’s simile of the wheat implies a _death_ of the grain: it dies,
but there is no _remodelling_, for it is the _germ_ that lives and
grows; so, although the body may not be restored, there is a development
of _its_ germ in the transit or resurrection of _its_ spirit. The sage
thought also the simile of St. Paul should be taken _literally_, and not
_figuratively_: and yet he qualifies it thus: “We see that it is not to
be the same body, for the Scripture uses the illustration of grain sown
(which in its exact sense implies an offspring, and not a resurrection),
and we know that the grain which grows is not the same with what is
sown. You cannot suppose that we shall rise with a diseased body; it is
enough if there be such a sameness as to distinguish identity of
person.”
Blumenbach believed that when the soul revived, after death, the brain
would equally revive; and there is, indeed, nothing very irrational in
all this, for death is, even to our senses, not an annihilation, but
only a new combination of matter. The Greek sceptics thought that the
teeth would remain perfect, if all else was decomposed and lost; and the
rabbins conferred this perpetuity on _one_ bone of the _spinal column_,
which they called LUZ. These strange notions of the mystic union may
explain to us that diversity of custom, in various nations, as to the
disposal of the dead. While the Irish papists, with a superstitious
reverence for inanimate clay, celebrate their wakes with rites often as
licentious as they are profane; the cannibal _Calatiæ_ thought it more
respectful to _eat_ the bodies of _their_ departed friends, at least so
writes Herodotus; and the filial love of other Indian tribes invites the
children to strangle their aged parents, as they sit in their fresh-made
graves.
It is certainly more consolatory to associate our thoughts with the
_immortal_ part of a lost friend; to believe the _spirit_ to be in
celestial keeping, and that it still hovers around us. The collapse and
change of features prove that the _body_ is then but as the dust from
which it was first formed. I would not wish, like Socrates, to have my
limbs scattered over the earth, because
“Cœlo tegitur qui non habet urnam;”
but, as the body _must_ be consumed, were it not better and safer, as
the Greeks did, to _burn_ the dead, to resolve the corpse, as soon as
possible, into its constituent elements. I shall ever remember with
horror the scenes which I witnessed in Naples, when a _pile of bodies_,
collected from the chapels by the dead carts, which go round the city at
night, was thrown by irreverent hands into the public cemetery of the
Campo Santo.
The fiat of the Creator MAY at once produce a reconstruction of the
body, however widely scattered its particles, and the return of the soul
to the brain, from which it had once departed; but is it not somewhat
irrational to think that we should again be endowed with organs, without
the functions and passions to which they are subservient?
IDA. It may be a bliss to gaze even on the _shadows_ of those we love.
There is a beautiful allegory of this solemn question told in the
“Spectator,” which, as Addison approves, it cannot be profanation to
admire. It is the Indian legend of “Marraton and Yaratilda,” in which
the devoted husband comes unawares on Paradise, and sees the shadowy
_forms_ of his wife and children, without their _substance_. The story
exquisitely blends the fond wish of Marraton to die, that he may be
again admitted to the holy communion of those so fondly loved; for
Paradise is painted in the mind’s eye even of the heathen, although, in
his dearth of revelation, he associates the joys of his elysium with the
sensual pleasures of terrestrial life. The Indian dreams of his dogs,
believing that the greatest hunters shall be in the highest favour with
Brahma; the proselytes of the prophet die in a vision of their houri’s
beauty; and the warriors of Odin already drink the honey-water from the
skulls of their enemies, served up to them by the beautiful “Valkhas” of
the “Valhalla.” Thus even the creed of infidels is not atheism. What
thinks Evelyn?
EV. As you do, Ida. As to the atheist, one, perchance, may have _lived_,
if we rightly interpret the sentiments of Diogenes, and Bion, and
Lucian, and Voltaire; but, I believe, one never _died_. My solemn duty
has summoned me to the death-bed of more than one reputed infidel, who
have in health reasoned with fluency and splendour, and have penned
abstruse theses on life and the world’s creation. But, when danger lay
in their path of life, their stoic heroism fled, and left them abject
cowards. They looked not even on the lightning’s flash without
trembling, and the vision of death was a sting to the conscience. I have
seen many a death-bed like that of Beaufort, who made “no signal of his
hope,” not because he disbelieved a God, but because a conviction of his
sin left him without a hope and faith in the promises.
Of course there cannot be an _Euthanasia_ where irreligion has marked a
life, but, believe me, there would be no _fear_ of death in an atheist.
ASTR. The mythologist and pagan may cite their tables, and worship their
idols in the recesses of their pagodas and choultries; but some idea of
the Deity has been unfolded to the mind of all. Even the eastern princes
have had some glimpses of the true faith, and shahs and caliphs were
once engaged in building their Nestorine or Christian churches.
The profane Chinese has, it is true, called his realm the _celestial
empire_; Fohi, who is believed to have reigned three thousand years
before Christ, established his “Iconolatria” or “idolatry,” and Si Lao
Kiun struck at the establishment of _polytheism_, but the purer theology
of Confucius prevailed over his rival.
The Deity, indeed, is the essence of every creed, for all believe in a
great spirit as well as an immortal mind and a paradise. Like the
reasonings of natural philosophy, our notions and epithets of the great
Creator certainly differ, but in all there is faith in his perfection.
Xam Ti is the great spirit of the Chinese, as Woden is the god of the
Gothic races, and Brahma, or Alla, or the Kitchi Manitou, or even the
sun, the source of light, and heat, and joy to the creation, are the
deities of other nations. Nor may we wonder more that the Ghebir, and
the Peruvian, and the Natches should worship their orb of fire, than
that the Irish should, on the morning of their _Beltane_, light their
peat fires to the sun.
The doctrines of the Brahmins all attest their creed of _theism_, if we
interpret aright the evidence of the learned _Pundits_ of Benares,
especially in the Gentoo code; and the records of Abul Fazel in the
“Baghvat Geeta,” an episode in the poem of the “Mahabarat,” written to
prove the unity. The devout Christian will deem this creed a woful
error, but he will confess his admiration of their sublime notion of the
divine attribute, which Colonel Dow has thus imparted to us: “As God is
immaterial, he is above all conception; as he is invisible, he can have
no form; but from what we behold of his works, we may conclude that he
is eternal, omnipotent, knowing all things, and present everywhere.”
I will grant that the oriental notions of cosmogony, or the creation of
the world, are a blot on their scripture page: because the pagan
theologians were shorn of the light of Christianity, they were prone to
refer creation to natural causes within their own comprehension, and
their ideas were fabulous and impure. Thus, among the Hindoos and
Egyptians, there is a mass of obscenity adduced to account for the
development of the globe, in the associations of _Vishnu_ and _Siva_,
and _Osiris_ and _Isis_; and the temples of Elephanta and Elora are
adorned with symbolic paintings of this incarnation of Vishnu. Yet, with
all this error, there is in the “Vedas” or Hindoo scriptures, a not
remote analogy to the Bible itself; and, granting that the cosmogony of
Phœnicia is little more than a mysterious romance; yet, whether the
great cause be the _demiurgic spirit_ uniting with desire, or the being
“That” of the Hindoos, the essence of all these mysteries still combines
the grand scheme of the creation,—the formation of a beautiful world
from a chaos of wide and dark waters.
IDA. You are wandering very far eastward, Astrophel: I will propose this
question to Evelyn.
If it is so evident that the brain and mind, although not identical,
exist in a most intimate union, may we not undervalue their relative
influence by adducing the energy of intellect and brilliancy of
conception possessed by many in advanced life? Remember the green old
age of Plato, and Cicero, and Newton, and Johnson, and, above all,
Goëthe, whose last work was brilliant as his first. And all this,
coincident with that love of Infinite Wisdom that exists, (as we read in
the “Consolations of a Philosopher,”) “even in the imperfect life which
belongs to the earth, _increases with age_, outlives the perfection of
the corporeal faculties, and, at the moment of death is felt by the
conscious being.” Does this imply decay?
EV. The retentive powers of old age, are the _exception_ to a rule,
which the ultra spiritualist assumes as a _general_ rule, in attempting
to disprove the growth and decay of mind, according to the age of the
body. But as _lives_ are of different duration and _constitutions_ vary,
so may _mental powers_ indicate different degrees of vigour. If mind
_in_creases, no doubt it _de_creases; and I have known many, who retain
every faculty but _memory_, which is the first to decay and indicate
failing power; and so also is it with idiots, in whose _memory_,
usually, the greatest defects appear; the faculty of counting numbers
reaches only to three, and of letters to C, the third letter in the
alphabet.
Ida will grant that there is no more impressive lesson of humility than
the dwindling and decay of genius, when, in the words of the Athenian
misanthrope—
“Nature, as it grows again toward earth,
Is fashion’d for the journey, dull and heavy.”
Reflect on the painful end of Sheridan and other brilliant wits of their
day; that
“From Marlborough’s eyes the streams of dotage flow,
And Swift expires a driveller and a show;”
and we may almost wish that biography should begin at each end, and
finish in the middle, or zenith of a life.
IDA. If the fact be so, I grant the lesson to our pride, Evelyn; and we
may dwell with fervent admiration on the divinity of that mind, which
can ennoble and consecrate our body, so fraught as it is with basest
passions, and so decayable withal.