510 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



are (/*eT<x/3oA?) ■na.vrav y\vKVTarov Sia irov7]piav 

 Tivd), or as it would do, I suppose, if we had no 

 memory of the immediate past. Imagine all this 

 as the very least that may be hoped, if our own 

 powers of conception are as slight in respect to 

 the nature of what is to be as our bodies are in 

 relation to the physical universe. And remem- 

 ber that, if practical duties are necessary for the 

 perfection of life, the universe is not so small but 

 that in some corner of it its Creator might always 

 find something to do for the army of intelligences 

 whom he has thus formed and exalted. 



All this, I repeat, may be a dream, but to 

 characterize it as "the eternity of the tabor" 

 shows surely a feebleness of conception or care- 

 lessness of representation more worthy of a ready 

 writer than of a serious thinker. And to place 

 before us as a rival conception the fact that some 

 of our good deeds will have indefinite conse- 

 quences — to call this scanty and fading chain of 

 effects, which we shall be as unable to perceive 

 or control as we have been unable to anticipate — 

 to call this a " posthumous activity," " an eter- 

 nity of spiritual influence," and a " life beyond 

 the grave," and finally, under the appellation of 

 " incorporation into the glorious future of our 

 race," to claim for it a dignity and value parallel 

 to that which would attach to the Christian's ex- 

 pectation (if solid) of a sensible life of exalted 

 happiness for himself and all good men, is surely 

 nothing more or less than extravagance founded 

 on misnomer. 



With regard to the promised incorporation, I 

 should really like to know what is the exact pro- 

 cess, or event, or condition, which Mr. Harrison 

 considers himself to understand by the incorpora- 

 tion of a consensus of faculties with a glorious 

 future ; and whether he arrived at its apprehen- 

 sion by way of " positive knowledge," or by way 

 of " scientific logic." 



Mr. Harrison's future life is disposed of by 

 Prof. Huxley in a few words : " Throw a stone 

 into the sea, and there is a sense in which it is 

 true that the wavelets which spread around it 

 have an effect through all space and time. Shall 

 we say that the stone has a future life ? " 



To this I only add the question whether I am 

 not justified in saying that Mr. Harrison does not 

 adequately distinguish between the nature of a 

 fiddle and the nature of a tune, and would con- 

 tend (if consistent) that a violin which had been 

 burned to ashes would, notwithstanding, continue 

 to exist, at least as long as a tune which had 

 been played upon it survived in the memory of 

 any one who had heard it — the co?isensus of its 



capacities being, it would seem, incorporated into 

 the glorious future of music. 



Hon. RODEN NOEL.— Death is a phenome- 

 non ; but are we phenomena ? 



The question of immortality seems, philosoph- 

 ically speaking, very much to resolve itself into 

 that of personality. Are we persons, spirits, or 

 are we things ? Perhaps we are a loose collec- 

 tion of successive qualities ? That seems to be 

 the latest conclusion of positive and Agnostic 

 biological philosophy. The happy thought which, 

 as Dr. Stirling suggests, was probably thrown out 

 in a spirit of persiflage by Hume has been adopted 

 in all seriousness by his followers. Mr. Harrison 

 is very bitter with those who want to explain 

 mental and moral phenomena by physiology. 

 But, as Prof. Huxley remarks, he seems in many 

 parts of his essay to do the same thing himself. 

 What could Biichner, or Carl Vogt, say stronger 

 than this? "At last, the prick of a needle, or a 

 grain of mineral, will in an instant lay to rest 

 forever man's body and its unity, and all the 

 spontaneous activities of intelligence, feeling, 

 and action, with ivhich that compound organism 

 was charged" (No. III., p. 239). Again, he says, 

 the spiritual faculties are " directly dependent on 

 physical organs " — " stand forth as functions of 

 living organs in given conditions of the organism." 

 Again: "At last the man Newton dies, that is, 

 the body is dispersed into gas and dust " (No. 

 IV., p. 311). Mr. Harrison, then, though a posi- 

 tivist, bound to know only successive phenomena, 

 seems to know the body as a material entity pos- 

 sessed of such functions as conscience, reason, 

 imagination, perception — to know that Newton's 

 body thought out the " Principia," and Shake- 

 speare's conceived "Hamlet." Indeed, Agnosti- 

 cism generally, though with a show of humility, 

 seems rather arbitrary in its selection of what 

 we shall know, and what we shall not ; we must 

 know something; so we shall know that we have 

 ideas and feelings, but not the personal identity 

 that alone makes them intelligible, or we shall 

 use the word, and yet speak as if the idea were 

 a figment; we shall know qualities, but not sub- 

 stance; "functions" and "forces," but not the 

 some one or something of which they must be 

 functions and forces to be conceivable at all. 

 YA, naturam expellas furca, etc. Common-sense 

 insists on retaining the fundamental laws of hu- 

 man thought, not being able to get rid of them ; 

 and hence the haphazard, instead of systematic 

 and orderly, fashion in which the new philosophy 

 deals with universal convictions, denying even 

 that they exist out of theology and metaph/sique. 



