682 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



[November 



guidance ? Who will say that there is no 

 plan or system in this thing ? Is it not also 

 plain, that we are connected with the past 

 and future in adamantine chains, and that 

 the species of independency and separation 

 from external nature, which we attribute to 

 ourselves, is a mere figment? 



And if matter is thus imperishable,* then 

 gravity, heat, light, electricity, (those forces 

 which control matter,) are also eternal. 

 And why should not mind be immortal — 

 mind, the highest force in the Universe, 

 which now guides the lightnings, and to 

 form and advance which is the design of 

 this vast system of sea and land, air and 

 skies ? It is natural for a noble mind to 

 desire immortality. But if man is not im- 

 mortal, then a nation weeps in vain for its 

 mighty dead, and erects its noblest ceno- 

 taphs. Where will they be when the per- 

 petual beat of ocean shall have shattered to 

 ashes these continents and the Alps and the 

 Andes, those majestic monuments of Nature 

 lie entombed under its rolling waters? 

 Matter and the forces which govern it are 

 eternal, and human life (I mean that life 

 which we have in common with plants), is a 

 mere integral")* portion of eternity- yet, 

 why doubt the immortality of that higher 

 manifestation of life called mind, when it 

 can sweep over the vastness of Nature and 

 unfold the principles of things? If the 

 value of man is to be estimated by the 

 duration of his frail and perishable body, 

 then is he of less importance than the tree 

 which he fells for timber, for that frequently 



* There is not now, and, in the author's 

 opinion, never was, a chaos, or state of things 

 in which the atoms of material hodies were 

 heterogeneously disposed. All tiie researches of 

 science tend to show that matter has always 

 been subject to law. It is not impossible for 

 the matter of our earth to have existed in some 

 other form anterior to its attraction together 

 about the earth's centre, and when the earth 

 shall have answered the purposes of its Creator, 

 when she shall grow weary in her diurnal 

 march, and the ocean roll its last billow, the 

 winds breathe their last gasp, may not the 

 matter of the earth, like that of the beauti- 

 ful trees and flowers which have disappeared 

 from its surface, still be in existence, and re- 

 appear again in some other form to beautify the 

 heavens and go through another grand cycle of 

 change'? 



t Integral, the sum of a series of differentials 

 or infinitely small quantities. The moments of 

 human life are in differentials, and human life 

 itself is that sum or integral. 



outlives him and his successive generations. 

 Oh, let us not think thus meanly of ourselves ! 

 The mind is the man; and " one living mind 

 is worth more than a dead Universe/' Never 

 can I sympathize with those who seek to in- 

 spire man with low, reptile feelings, and try 

 to shame him out of his trust in his Creator ! 

 What moral good can ever result to the 

 human race from the advocacy of such senti- 

 ments? 



I see the sun now sinking in the west. 

 He is casting his parting rays on our land- 

 scapes. How beautiful the light reflected 

 from the clouds in his neighborhood. An- 

 other beat of the great pendulum of the 

 Universe! Whence that thought ? It rises 

 from my appreciation of the advance of 

 Nature. The landscapes are now enveloped 

 in the earth's shadow. It is night. Why 

 did that sunset give me so much pleasure ? 

 Because the sun was made to tninister to 

 my gratification. I am then of more im- 

 portance than that sun. Yet it shone 

 myriads of ages before I came to regard its 

 splendors, and it will shine on my lowly 

 grave. That icill contain my body, BUT 

 not ME. Others shall look on thy setting 

 beauties, thou glorious sun, and read these 

 lines when I am gone, and oh ! may they 

 inspire in them my own unfaultering faith 

 in Providence and immortality! 



As the tree is connected with the mate- 

 rial world, and receives impressions from 

 without, which mould its character, so with 

 the organism of man. He is bound by in- 

 separable ties to the material creation. 

 Locke, in his "Essay on the Human Un- 

 derstanding," has shown us the nature of 

 this connection: that sensation links us with 

 matter, is the germ of intellect, and the 

 avenue of human knowledge. 



Notwithstanding the unbounded liberty 

 which the mind of man seems to possess, it 

 is in reality confined within very narrow 

 limits; for when we carefully analyze our 

 ideas, simple and complex; *ve can trace 

 them without an exception to past impres- 

 sions made on our organization. We can 

 form no conception of anything without re- 

 ference to ideas previously acquired by the 

 senses. I may conceive of a golden moun- 

 tain, but it is obvious that if I had not pre- 

 viously acquired, by impressions from exter- 

 nal Nature, the ideas of mountain and gold, 

 it would have been impossible to have form- 

 ed the combination. 



We are very frequently compelled to re- 



