IDENTITY OF PERSONS. 



wear and tear of the parts is proportional to the force and con- 

 tinuance of their motions. 



76. Although the rapidity with which the materials of the 

 body are thus changed varies in comparing one individual with 

 another, according to their varying habitudes and occupations, it 

 appears that a total change of the material constituents of the 

 body takes place within an interval much shorter than was 

 supposed by the early physiologists. According to some autho- 

 rities, the average length of this interval does not exceed thirty 

 days. It is, however, generally agreed that it is a very brief 

 period.* 



77. This then being the case, let us again ask what is it that 

 was identical in the Duke of Wellington dying at Walmer in Sept. 

 1852, with the Duke of Wellington commanding at Waterloo in 

 June, 1815 ? Assuredly it was not possible that there should 

 have been_a singje particle of matter common to his body on the 

 two occasions. The interval consisting of thirty-seven years and 

 two months, the entire mass of matter composing his body must 

 have undergone a complete change several hundred times yet 

 no one doubts that there was something there which did not 

 undergo a change except in its relation to the mutable body, and 

 which possessed the same thought, memory, and consciousness, 

 and constituted the personal identity of the individual ; and since 

 it is as demonstrable as any proposition in geometry that that some- 

 thing which thus abode in the body, retaining the consciousness 

 of the past, could not have been an atom, or any number of atoms, 

 of matter, it must necessarily have been something not matter t 

 that is to say, sDmething spiritual. 



Habituated for so long a period to the rigorous logic of physics 

 and mathematics, I confess I can see nothing in its results more 

 conclusive than this proof of the existence of a spiritual essence 

 connected with the human organisation. At this point, however, 

 the support which the physical inquirer can offer to the theologian 

 terminates. If there is nothing in the disorganisation of the 

 human body and the phenomena of death to demonstrate the 

 simultaneous destruction of the spiritual principle, the existence 

 of which is thus established, there is, on the other hand, nothing 

 to prove its continued existence, and for that we are thrown upon 

 the resources of revelation, and this might indeed have been 

 foreseen ; for if the continued existence of the spirit, or, in other 

 words, a future state, were capable of demonstration by the 



* We are not aware of any dissentient from the complete periodical 

 change of matter composing the body, except Professor Milne Edwards, 

 who, without absolutely denying the principle, thinks that it has not been 

 satisfactorily demonstrated. 



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