664 T^^ POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



to determine the sizes of the atoms, or rather to fix the limits between 

 which their sizes lie ; while only last year the discourses of William- 

 son and Maxwell illustrate the present hold of the doctrine upon the 

 foremost scientific minds. What these atoms, self-moved and self- 

 posited, can and cannot accomplish in relation to life, is at the present 

 moment the subject of profound scientific thouglit. I doubt the legiti- 

 macy of Maxwell's logic ; but it is impossible not to feel the ethic 

 glow with which his lecture concludes. There is, moreover, a Lucre- 

 tian grandeur in his description of the steadfastness of the atoms : 

 " Natural causes, as we know, are at work, which tend to modify, if 

 they do not at length destroy, all the arrangements and dimensions 

 of the earth and the whole solar system. But though in the course 

 of ages catastrophes have occurred and may yet occur in the heavens, 

 though ancient systems may be dissolved and new systems evolved 

 out of their ruins, the molecules out of which these systems are built, 

 the foundation-stones of the material universe, remain unbroken and 

 unworn." 



Ninety years subsequent to Gassendi the doctrine of bodily instru- 

 ments, as it may be called, assumed immense importance in the hands 

 of Bishop Butler, who, in his famous " Analogy of Religion," devel- 

 oped, from his own point of view, and with consummate sagacity, a 

 similar idea. The bishop still influences superior minds; audit will 

 repay us to dwell for a moment on his views. He draws the sharpest 

 distinction between our real selves and our bodily instruments. He 

 does not, as far as I remember, use the word soul, possibly because 

 the term was so hackneyed in his day, as it had been for many gen- 

 erations previously. But he speaks of " living powers," " perceiving " 

 or " percipient powers," " moving agents," " ourselves," in the same 

 sense as we should employ the term soul. He dwells upon the fact 

 that limbs may be removed and mortal diseases assail the body, while 

 the mind, almost up to the moment of death, remains clear. He re- 

 fers to sleep and to swoon, where the " living powers " are suspended 

 but not destroyed. He considers it quite as easy to conceive of an 

 existence out of our bodies as in them ; that we may animate a suc- 

 cession of bodies, the dissolution of all of them having no more ten- 

 dency to dissolve our real selves, or " deprive us of living faculties — 

 the faculties of perception and action — than the dissolution of any 

 foreign matter which we are capable of receiving impressions from, or 

 making use of, for the common occasions of life." This is the key of 

 the bishop's position : " Our organized bodies are no more a part of 

 ourselves than any other matter around us." In proof of this he calls 

 ;attention to the use of glasses, which " prepare objects " for the " per- 

 ■cipient power " exactly as the eye does. The eye itself is no more 

 percipient than the glass, and is quite as much the instrument of the 

 true self, and also as foreign to the true self, as the glass is. " And 

 if we see with our eyes only in the same manner as we do with 



