Obrázky stránek
PDF
ePub

body during life; but the body itself remains, and we know what becomes of it. How does this tally with your supposition, under which the body (that is the victim) disappears at the same moment with the powers of life?"...:

"I understand you," said Evelyn; "and your observation requires the fullest answer. Perhaps you will be surprised if I say, that for all that, mine is the true picture, yours the fallacious one, Most true it is, in mine I have supposed, for the sake of illustration, the mortal part to be carried off in my ship, in the same manner as all authors, sacred and profane, all prophets, poets, painters, and every mind warmed with genius, have imagined the mere negation death, to be an actual person, a king crowned with terrors. But it is evident, that by the persons of my victims, I mean the soul, which, being invisible, intangible, and, in short, imperceptible to sense, it is impossible to demonstrate, to that sense at least, what may be its fate."

"In your illustration, then," observed Tremaine, "your visible being is put for an invisible one."

"It is," answered Evelyn;" and, as I contend, it sufficiently refutes the charge that the illustration itself is fallacious."

"Mine is, at least, the simpler," rejoined Tremaine; "it rests itself upon the absolute demonstration of the senses, while yours is conjecture only. To conjecture, mine can never be subject; its material

1

nature, its oneness, (if I may so call it,) protects it from that."

"Be not too sure," observed Evelyn, pointedly. Tremaine looked surprised.

T

"I have said," continued his friend, "yours was the fallacious picture; and it is so in this, that you assume, in respect to the clockwork you have supposed, that the whole of it is material, and obvious to sense, as you have charged me with having supposed the soul."

"And is it not so ?"

"No! for you forgot the most important part of it, the primum mobile that sets it going."

"Not so," answered Tremaine, with eagerness. "I know that it goes not of itself, and must have a weight, or spring, or some great mechanical power, to give it its impetus; but all this experiences the same palpable destruction with the rest of the machine."

"Aye; but what gives impetus to the mechanical power itself?" asked Evelyn, folding his arms, and fixing his eyes in scrutiny upon his friend. Tremaine hesitated.

"Pursue this," continued Evelyn," and you will find that even in your material machine, something immaterial, but of amazing force, something quite as unobvious to sense as the soul, and only, like the soul, to be known by its effects, must cause, in reality, every one of its operations, Your weight is

nothing but the attraction of gravity; your spring the attraction of cohesion; yet, whence these are, or how they operate, no man that ever lived, or probably ever will live, can tell."

Tremaine was obviously struck.

"You will at least not say," pursued Evelyn, "that these attractions, even if material, are visible, or tangible, or perceptible to sense. You cannot, therefore, include them among the fragments which you say you see mouldering to nothing, or actually mixing into other substances before your eyes."

Tremaine owned he had not considered this, and that the argument was of the greatest consequence against his own conclusions. "Still, however,' added he, "that they irrefragably support yours, I do not see.'

[ocr errors]

"I reason upon it thus," said Evelyn. "In the human frame, as in your clockwork, more is necessary to cause its action than what is obvious to sense. In your illustration, it is the attractions you have supposed; under mine, it is thought, volition, mind -in short, the soul. Even in yours, the destruction of the machine does not, as you at first supposed, demonstrate the destruction of the moving power; mine, therefore, may remain, (at least it is open to proof that it may so remain,) after it has ceased to act in the body. It is departed, but whither, no one knows, any more than whence it came, how it came, or in

what manner its union with the body is formed. You tell me it is material. Great part of your clockwork certainly is so but if material, should we not see it upon the breaking up of the machine, in the same manner as you say we do the clockwork? Or if we see only the wheels, the organization of the clockwork, and not the real power that gives it motion, may it not so be with that mysterious union of soul and body, constituting the human being ?".

Tremaine paused for a minute, when, rallying, he continued,

"After all, may we not suppose life to be merely that configuration, that organization of matter, which fits it exactly to be acted upon, in the way it is, by the different attractions, fermentations, and whatever it is that first produces motion? and that when this organization is worn out or interrupted, the aptitude to receive this motion ceasing, life is at an end?"

"This is not absolutely impossible," returned Evelyn;" but, from your own hypothesis, whatever the adaptation of the parts, the power originally giving the motion is, you see, immaterial. But even if it were material, how can any adaptation, configuration, or organization of mere matter, account for thought, will, judgment, and, above all, conscious

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

"Because," said Evelyn, "it is a rule in physics, applicable to all matter, as you well know, that no configuration, or, if you prefer it, organization, can produce any thing not originally in the things themselves that are organized. It may, indeed, alter their form, but all it can do is to give it a different appearance, and produce a different degree of effect, when combined and organized, from what it had in its simple state, before the combination was made. Thus figure will produce figure still, when combined with figure, though different from what it was before; but it will produce nothing else, save only figure. Motion will produce only motion; colour, colour; smell, smell; but all the combinations you can imagine of figure, motion, colour, and smell, can only produce a new machine, in which there can be no absolutely new quality that was not there before. There may be a different figure, motion, colour, and smell, and that is all. The new organization will not, for example, produce taste or sapidity, if there was nothing sapid in any of the ingredients, (latent, indeed, but) capable of being excited by motion. I need not to you, add, that an organ is a mere instrument, and that organization, however great a word, is, in reality, nothing but an ordering or placing of instruments. Show me that any combination of instruments, however ingenious, can produce motion, without any impulse imparted to it-for example,

« PředchozíPokračovat »