NOTES. 293 



of God of its first author as those of mind ? Has not even mat- 

 ter confessedly received from God the power of experiencing, in con- 

 sequence of impressions from the earlier modifications of matter, cer- 

 tain consciousnesses called sensations of the same ? Is not, there- 

 fore, the wonder of matter also receiving the consciousnesses of other 

 matter called ideas of the mind a wonder more flowing out of and in 

 analogy with all former wonders, than would be, on the contrary, the 

 wonder of this faculty of the mind not flowing out of any faculties of 

 matter? Is it not a wonder which, so far from destroying our hopes 

 of immortality, can establish that doctrine on a train of inferences 

 and inductions more firmly established and more connected with each 

 other than the former belief can be, as soon as we have proved that 

 matter is not perishable, but is only liable to successive combinations 

 and decombinations ? 



" Can we look farther back one way into the first origin of matter 

 than we can look forward the other way iuto the last developments of 

 mind ? Can we say that God has not in matter itself laid the seeds 

 of every faculty of mind, rather than that he has made the first 

 principle of mind entirely distinct from that of matter? Cannot 

 the first cause of all we see and know have fraught matter itself, 

 from its very be y inn in </, irith all the attributes necessary to develop 

 into mind as well as he can have from the first made the attributes 

 of mind wholly different from those of matter, only in order after- 

 wards, by an imperceptible and incomprehensible link, to join the 

 two together? 



" * * [The decombiuation of the matter on which mind rests] 

 is this a reason why mind must be annihilated ? Is the temporary 

 reverting of the mind, and of the sense out of which that mind de- 

 velops, to their original component elements, a reason for thinking 

 that they cannot again at another later period and in another higher 

 globe, be again recombined, and with more splendour than before '.' 

 * * The New Testament does not, after death here, promise us a 

 soul hereafter unconnected with matter, and which has no connexion 

 with our present mind a soul independent of time and space. That 

 is a fanciful idea, not founded on its expressions, when taken in their 

 just and real meaning. On the contrary, it promises us a mind like 

 the present, founded on time and space ; since it is, like the present, 

 to hold a certain situation in time, and a certain locality in space ; 

 but it promises a mind situated in portions of time and of space dif- 

 ferent from the present : a mind composed of elements of matter more 

 extended, more perfect, and more glorious : a mind which, formed of 

 materials supplied by different globes, is consequently able to see 

 farther into the past, and to think farther into the future, than any 

 mind here existing: a mind which, freed from the partial and uneven 

 combination incidental to it on this globe, will be exempt from the 

 changes for evil to which, on the present globe, mind as well as 

 matter is liable, and will only thenceforth experience the changes for 

 the better which matter, more justly poised, will alone continue to 

 experience : a mind which, no longer fearing the death, the total 



