HUMAN LONGEVITY. 103 



and are common to every country and clime, from the arctic 

 circle to the equator. 



There needs no argument to prove that this must be so ; 

 and that the feeling is j ustified by being natural and inevitable. 

 The word Life, when thus used to express the totality to 

 every man of his present being, is itself of deep significance. 

 While marking the longer or shorter space which each one 

 occupies in the endless line of time,, it includes those many 

 wonderful changes of mind and body those diverse yet con- 

 tinuous stages of existence by which, without forfeiture of 

 personal identity, childhood, manhood, and old age are all 

 included within one span. Philosophy in every age has been 

 occupied and perplexed by this great problem of the origin, 

 progress, and end of life. Metaphysicians and moralists alike 

 have lost themselves in the enquiry. Physiologists and phy- 

 sicians, by taking other routes, and noting the close connection 

 of vital and physical laws, have seemed to approach nearer to 

 its solution ; yet all are met in the end by barriers which no 

 research can surmount, and upon which speculation wastes 

 itself in words without meaning. 



Look, as a single case, to that profound problem to which 

 we have just referred; the preservation of unity of con- 

 sciousness, under the successive natural changes of state, and 

 the numberless accidents and strange fluctuations which 

 compose the life of man. The phrase of Rochefoucauld, ( On 

 est quelquefois aussi different de soi-meme que des autresj 

 is a feeble and superficial expression of those diversities of 

 condition which occur in each single being, between the 

 cradle and the grave. Yet the line of personal identity is 

 kept entire, though thus knotted arid tangled in every part 

 of its length; though feelings are altered and memories 

 have passed away. If reason cannot reach these things, faith 

 may find in them some index to a higher identity beyond the 

 term of life on earth. 



