THE BELFAST ADDRESS. 467 



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-acting, 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 beneficence 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 



