6 BEING AND FACULTIES OF MAK. 



restored Life absolutely departed, or arrested in the dead 

 tlie slow but certain progress of decay. The physical and 

 metaphysical portions. of our body, once really separated, 

 cannot be reunited by this or any other physical agency. 



Life, Mind, and Feeling are thus obviously not inherent 

 in electricity, nor in any other Material element of which 

 nature is composed. The question hence has frequently 

 been asked, what can we know of the external world, see- 

 ing that our minds cannot properly know what they are 

 not in actual and tangible contact with ? This question 

 has been much complicated by the controversial mode in 

 which it has been stated and dealt with, and also by the 

 unwarrantable but unchecked assumptions which have 

 from time to time formed, and still in a large measure 

 form, part of the propositions laid down and admitted on 

 both sides by those who canvass such questions. The 

 Greek physicist laid down the proposition, that nothing 

 "but matter can touch or be touched ;* and from this apho- 

 rism, too hastily assumed as an axiom on the mere faith 

 of its own plausibility, it was fallaciously inferred that 

 everything must be material. When Bishop Berkeley 

 laid down the counter-proposition that feeling, or the 

 sense of touch, is not an attribute of matter, because, as 

 must be apparent, it nowhere exists inherently or insepa- 

 rably in matter he confronted the previous proposition 

 with an aphorism equally plausible, and, from the reason 

 just given in support of it, more unquestionably axiomatic ; 

 but then, so fallible is human reasoning, and so eager is 

 man to rush at ultimata and premature conclusions, that 

 Berkeley at once felt himself warranted in drawing this 

 inference : As feeling is not material, and as we can know 

 nothing but what we feel or experience, therefore the 

 existence of matter cannot be proved, and we are war- 

 ranted in concluding that there is no such demonstrable 



* This proposition is the basis of the philosophy of Epicurus. 



