54 OF HEALTH AND HUMAN NATURE. 



Nor does this assertion imply that the resurrection from the 

 dead is impossible or even improbable. The physical enquirer, 

 finding the mind a power of the brain, and abstaining from 

 hypothesis, must conclude that, in the present order of tilings, 

 when the brain ceases to live the power necessarily ceases, — that, 

 in the language of scripture, Dust we are and unto dust we all 

 return, — that our being is utterly extinguished and we go back 

 to the insensibility of the earth whence we were taken. * Our 

 consciousness of personality can afford no reason for imagining 

 ourselves immortal and distinct from earth, more than brutes, 

 for this the fly possesses equally with the philosopher about 

 whose head it buzzes, f The moral government of the world, 

 the sublime reach of our acuteness, the great improvableness of 

 our characters, — 



" Our innate pleasing hope, our fond desire, 



Our longing after immortality, 



Our secret dread and inward horror of falling into nought," J 



completely harmonise with a life hereafter, but fall so short of 

 proof as to have left the wisest of antiquity, — Solomon, Socrates, 

 Cicero, &c. in uncertainty, § when they saw how death reduced 

 us to our pristine elements. The hope of immortality which 

 such reflections, and possibly also the tradition of Enoch's 

 translation, inspired, j| assisted by the desire of explaining every 

 thing in some way or other, first, I apprehend, made men 

 attempt to find, in the imagined ethereal essence of the soul, a 



* Miscellaneous Tracts, fyc. by Richard Watson, D.D. F.R.S. Lord Bishop 

 of Liandaff. Sermon ill. p. 399 sq. 



f Heathens have, very consistently with this reason for immortality, given it 

 to the fancied souls of animals : Ulysses is made by Homer to behold the shade 



of Orion— 



©»if as 0/u.S uXiurra, xar' «70o5iXov XttfMtn* 



Tst curat xxrixtpym «y oImtoXokti* ofivat. Oily ss. A. 571. 

 X Addison, Cato. See a full enumeration in Mr. Dugald Stewart's Outline*, 

 \c. p. 235 si}. 



§ Bishop Watson, 1. c. Sermon vi. p. 504 sq. 

 || Bishop Watson, I.e. 499. 



