Theological Considerations. 1005 



ity of the soul. If the mind is simply an aggregate of phenomena, the 

 sum of the motions of something, of course it ceases or dies whenever the 

 substance of which it is the motion ceases to act. And this must be 

 true whether we consider the soul material or immaterial. The motions 

 constituting mind cannot be supposed to exist after the dissolution of 

 the thing that moves, any more than the waving of a flag, or the tick- 

 ing of a watch continues as such after the flag and watch have been de- 

 stroyed. The effects of all of our acts go on in other forms of motion, 

 because being a part of the sum of all physical energy, the} r cannot be 

 lost. But for the very reason that our acts do thus pass into other 

 forms of motion, they cease to be our acts. If the movements that 

 have been made b} r our hands no longer exist as such, neither is it possi- 

 ble that the movements that have constituted our minds from day to day 

 any longer exist. And as any future movement of the hands depends 

 upon the continued integrity of the hands themselves, so any future 

 manifestation of mind depends upon the continued integrity of the or- 

 ganism whose motion it is. As we have seen that mental phenomena, 

 during life, depend constant!} 7 and absolutely upon the integrity of the 

 brain tissues, and that when a portion of the brain is destroyed or dis- 

 eased a certain definite sort of mental action thereupon ceases to be 

 performed, the conclusion appears obvious and inevitable, that when 

 the brain is all gone, there is an end to all possibility of any further 

 mental action. When the body and brain are dissolved, it certainly 

 looks as if the machinery for the production of mind were totally de- 

 stroyed. A disinterested observer could hardly reach any other con- 

 clusion. But we are none of us disinterested; and when a conclusion 

 is greatly against our wishes, and our habit of thought, we natural^ 

 struggle against it. And so while appearances are decidedly against 

 the theory of immortality, the sanguine believer in that doctrine will 

 find reasons for disregarding them. For example, the ether which is 

 concerned in mental operations, and which is supposed to conform, in 

 the shapes it takes, to the cells and tissues with which it is involved, 

 and the motion of which constitutes chiefly, or exclusively, all conscious- 

 ness and thought, might be supposed to grow into a greater or less de- 

 gree of consistency, density, and persistency, during life, so as to 

 maintain its thus acquired constitution, through and subsequent to the 

 catastrophe of corporeal dissolution. Tt might be supposed that this 

 psychic post mortem person would still be in active communication with 

 other such persons, and with others still in the body, by means of the 

 telepathic sense, which would supply the loss of the ordinary corporeal 

 senses. (See chap. 79). This sense might be supposed to become 

 vastly more effectual, from the fact that the distances between the com- 

 municating persons could be reduced to zero, and thus the power, both 



