162 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



conception, a theory of the material universe is capable 

 of scientific statement. 



Ninety years subsequent to Gassendi the doctrine 

 of bodily instruments, as it may be called, assumed 

 immense importance in the hands of Bishop Butler, 

 who, in his famous ' Analogy of Beligion/ developed, 

 from his own point of view, and with consummate 

 sagacity, a similar idea. The Bishop still influences 

 many superior minds; and it will repay us to dwell for 

 a moment on his views. He draws the sharpest dis- 

 tinction between our real selves and our bodily instru- 

 ments. 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 generations pre- 

 viously. 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, the mind, almost up to 

 the moment of death, remaining clear. He refers to 

 sleep and to swoon, where the ' living powers ' are sus- 

 pended but not destroyed. He considers it quite as 

 easy to conceive of existence out of our bodies as in 

 them; that we may animate a succession of bodies, the 

 dissolution of all of them having no more tendency to 

 dissolve our real selves, or ' deprive us of living facul- 

 ties 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 organised 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, 



