ADDRESS, Ixxix 
Ninety years subsequent to Gassendi the doctrine of bodily instruments, 
as it may be called, assumed immense importance in the hands of Bishop 
Butler, who, in his famous ‘ Analogy of Religion,’ developed, from his own 
point of view, and with consummate sagacity, a similar idea. The Bishop 
still influences superior minds; and it will repay us to dwell for a moment on 
his views. He draws the sharpest distinction between our real selves and our 
bodily instruments. He does not, as far as I remember, use the word soul, 
possibly because the term was so hackneyed in his day as it had been for many 
generations previously. But he speaks of “living powers,” “perceiving” 
or ‘percipient powers,” ‘moving agents,” “ ourselves,” in the same sense 
as we should employ the term soul. He dwells upon the fact that limbs 
may be removed, and mortal diseases assail the body, the mind, almost 
up to the moment of death, remaining clear. He refers to sleep and to swoon, 
where the “living powers” are suspended but not destroyed. He considers 
it quite as easy to conceive of existence out of our bodies as in them; that 
we may animate a succession of bodies, the dissolution of all of them having 
no more tendency to dissolve our real selves, or “ deprive us of living faculties 
—the faculties of perception and action—than the dissolution of any foreign 
matter which we are capable of receiving impressions from, or making use of 
for the common occasions of life.” This is the key of the Bishop’s position ; 
*‘ our organized bodies are no more a part of ourselves than any other matter 
around us.” In proof of this he calls attention to the use of glasses, which 
* prepare objects ” for the “ percipient power” exactly as the eye does. The 
eye itself is no more percipient than the glass, is quite as much the in- 
strument of the true self, and also as foreign to the true self, as the glass is. 
“And if we see with our eyes only in the same manner as we do with 
glasses, the like may justly be concluded from analogy of all our senses,” 
Lucretius, as you are aware, reached a precisely opposite conclusion ; and 
it certainly would be interesting, if not profitable, to us all, to hear what he 
would or could urge in opposition to the reasoning of the Bishop. As a brief 
discussion of the point will enable us to see the bearings of an important 
question, I will here permit a disciple of Lucretius to try the strength of 
the Bishop’s position, and then allow the Bishop to retaliate, with the view of 
rolling back, if he can, the difficulty upon Lucretius. 
The argument might proceed in this fashion :— 
“Subjected to the test of mental presentation (Vorstelung) your views, 
most honoured prelate, would present to many minds a great, if not an in- 
superable difficulty. You speak of ‘living powers,’ ‘percipient or perceiving 
powers,’ and ‘ourselves ;’ but can you form a mental picture of any one of these 
apart from the organism through which it is supposed to act? ‘Test yourself 
honestly, and see whether you possess any faculty that would enable you to 
form such a conception. The true self has a local habitation in each of us; 
thus localized, must it not possess a form? Ifso, what form? Have you 
ever for a moment realized it? When a leg is amputated the body is 
divided into two parts; is the true self in both of them or in one? Thomas 
Aquinas might say in both; but not you, for you appeal to the conscious- 
ness associated with one of the two parts to prove that the other is foreign 
matter. Is consciousness, then, a necessary element of the true self? If 
so, what do you say to the case of the whole body being deprived of con- 
sciousness? If not, then on what grounds do you deny any portion of the 
true self to the severed limb? It seems very singular that, from the 
beginning to the end of your admirable book (and no one admires its 
sober strength more than I do), you never once mention the brain or 
