20 



TEE POPULAR SCIEXCE MONTELY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



where an inferior nature would have been most 

 at fault ; in his conduct toward Saul, in the blame- 

 less reputation of himself and his baud of outlaws 

 in the wilderness of Judah, in his repentance un- 

 der the rebuke of Nathan, and in his noble bear- 

 ing on the revolt of Absalom, when calm faith in 

 God and humble submission to his will appear 

 in combination with masterly command over cir- 

 cumstances, and swift wisdom in resolution and 

 action. His unfailing insight into character, and 

 his power of winning men's hearts and touching 

 their better impulses, appear in innumerable traits 

 of the history (e. g., 2 Samuel xiv. 18-20; iii. 

 31-37; xxiii. 15-17). His knowledge of men 

 was the divination of a poet rather than the ac- 

 quired wisdom of a statesman, and his capacity 

 for rule stood in harmonious unity with the lyri- 

 cal genius that was already proverbial in the time 

 of Amos (Amos vi. 5). To the later generations 

 David' was preeminently the Psalmist. The He- 

 brew titles ascribe to him seventy-three psalms ; 

 the Septuagint adds some fifteen more ; and later 

 opinion, both Jewish and Christian, claimed for 

 him the authorship of the whole Psalter (so the 

 Talmud, Augustine, and others). That the tradi- 

 tion of the titles requires careful sifting is no 

 longer questionable, as is admitted in such cases 

 as Psalms Ixxxvi., lxix., cxli., even by the cau- 

 tious and conservative Delitzch. The biographer 

 must, therefore, use the greatest circumspection 



in drawing from the Psalter material for the study 

 of David's life and character. On the other hand, 

 the tradition expressed in the titles could -not have 

 arisen unless David was really the father of He- 

 brew psalmody. As a psalmist, he appears in 2 

 Samuel xxii., xxiii., in two poems, which are either 

 Davidic or artificial compositions written in his 

 name. If we consider the excellent information 

 as to David, which appears throughout the books 

 of Samuel, the intrinsic merits and fresh natural- 

 ness of the poems, and the fact that Psalm xviii. 

 is an independent recension of 2 Samuel xxii., the 

 hypothesis that these pieces are spurious must 

 appear very forced, though it has received the 

 support of some respectable critics, especially 

 Kuenen, who maintains that the religion of David 

 is far below the level of the Psalter. If we reject 

 this position, which can hardly be made good 

 without doing great violence to the narrative of 

 the books of Samuel, we cannot well stop short 

 of the admission that the Psalter must contain 

 Davidic psalms, some of which at least may be 

 identified by judicious criticism, such as has been 

 exercised by Ewald with singular insight and 

 tact in his " Dichter des Alten Buudes." Ewald 

 claims for David Psalms iii., iv., vii., viii., xi., 

 (xv.), xviii., xix., xxiv., xxix., xxxii., ci., and prob- 

 ably this list should rather be extended than cur- 

 tailed. (Compare Hitzig's "Psalmen," Leipsic, 

 1863.) 



A MODERN "SYMPOSIUM." 



THE SOUL AND FUTUFtE LIFE. 



LORD SELBORNE.— I am too well satisfied 

 with Lord Blackford's paper, and with much 

 that is in the other papers of the September 

 number, 1 to think that I can add anything of im- 

 portance to them. The little I would say has 

 reference to our actual knowledge of the soul 

 during this life — meaning by the soul what Lord 

 Blachford means, viz., the conscious being which 

 each man calls " himself." 



It appears to me that what we know and can 

 observe tends to confirm the testimony of our 

 consciousness to the reality of the distinction be- 

 tween the body and the soul. From the neces- 

 sity of the case, we cannot observe any manifes- 

 tations of the soul except during the time of its 

 association with the body. This limit of our ex- 

 1 Supplement No. VI. 



perience applies, not to the " ego " of which 

 alone each man has any direct knowledge, but to 

 the perceptible indications of consciousness in 

 others. It is impossible, in the nature of things, 

 that any man can ever have had expeiience of 

 the total cessation of his own consciousness ; 

 and the idea of such a cessation is much less nat- 

 ural and 7imch more difficult to realize than that 

 of its continuance. We observe the phenomena 

 of death in others, and infer, by irresistible in- 

 duction, that the same thing will also happen to 

 ourselves. But these phenomena carry us only 

 to the dissociation of the "ego" from the body, 

 not to its extinction. 



Nothing else can be credible if our conscious- 

 ness is not ; and I have said that this bears tes- 

 timony to the reality of the distinction between 



