THE BELFAST ADDRESS. 407 
not act in this distempered way without the intervention 
of the immortal reason? If it can, then it is a prime mover 
which requires only healthy regulation to render it reason- 
ably self-actiTig, and there is no apparent need of your 
immortal reason at all. If it cannot, then the immortal 
reason, by its mischievous activity in operating upon a 
broken instrument, must have the credit of committing 
every imaginable extravagance and crime. I think, if you 
will allow me to say so, that the gravest consequences are 
likely to flow from your estimate of the body. To regard 
the brain as you would a staff or an eyeglass to shut your 
eyes to all its mystery, to the perfect correlation of its 
condition and our consciousness, to the fact that a slight 
excess or defect of blood in it produces the very swoon to 
which you refer, and that in relation to it our meat, and 
drink, and air, and exercise, have a perfectly transcend- 
ental value and significance to forgot all this does, I 
think, open a way to innumerable errors in our habits of 
life, and may possibly, in some cases, initiate and foster 
that very disease, and consequent mental ruin, which a 
wiser appreciation of this mysterious organ would have 
avoided." 
I can imagine the bishop thoughtful after hearing this 
argument. He was not the man to allow anger to mingle 
with the consideration of a point of this kind. After due 
reflection, and having strengthened himself by that honest 
contemplation of the facts which was habitual with him, 
and which includes the desire to give even adverse reason- 
ings their due weight, I can suppose the bishop to proceed 
thus: " You will remember that in the " Analogy of Reli- 
gion," of which you have so kindly spoken, 1 did not 
profess to prove anything absolutely, and that I over and 
over again acknowledged and insisted on the smallness of 
our knowledge, or rather the depth of our ignorance, as 
regards the whole system of the universe. My object was 
to show my deistical friends, who set forth so eloquently 
the beauty and^eneficence of Nature and the Ruler thereof, 
while they had nothing but scorn for the so-called absurd- 
ities of the Christian scheme, that they were in no better 
condition than we were, and that, for every difficulty found 
upon our side, quite as great a difficulty was to be found 
upon theirs. I will now, with your permission, adopt a 
similar line of argument. You are a Lucretian, and from 
