195 
The wand of Prospero seems only bat to foreshadow the eventual 
fiat of the Great Magician of nature, by whose admirable skill 
and intelligence this fair creation has been brought into visible 
existence. And we can well anticipate the time when our last 
act shall come ; when the curtain must fall ; when “ our revels 
here shall be ended,” and when we shall truly find behind the 
scenes, that; the real “ actors were all spirits ” ; when 
i( The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
The solemn temples, the great globe itself, 
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve ; 
And, like some unsubstantial pageant faded, 
Leave not a rack behind : We are such stuff 
As dreams are made of, and our little life 
Is rounded with a sleep.’' 
13. But, to conclude : for our subject requires us, if but for 
a moment, to return to our argument once more. Amidst the 
continual changes in material things which we see around us, 
do we really find no other kind of thing, also in existence, more 
stable in its character, more real and apparently enduring? 
Let us regard the Microcosm, or little world of man,— .ourselves. 
Our hair grows and is cut off, the material particles of our bodies 
waste and are evaporated, and fresh materials are taken in by 
us as food, and partly assimilated by our bodies, again to be 
thrown off and evaporated, and partly cast away as incongruous 
and incapable of assimilation ; and, to such an extent does this 
process of continual change take place, that physiologists have 
calculated, that in seven years' time the whole matter or visible 
portion of our bodies is utterly different from wbqt it once was! 
But dqes our identity undergo any change the while ? Are we 
not the same men because the matter, (not the invisible non- 
entity so called, which we have already disposed of, but the 
matter we see and feel around us,) the flesh that clothes our 
inner-self or spirit, is not the same? Bo we,— the true man, the 
thinking soul, for it is what thinks that really is, (<< cogito, 
ergo sum ), Bo we, I ask, lose anything really pertaining to 
ourselves, to the rational soul or understanding mind, when our 
fleshly covering is thus changing and leaving us for ever? Or 
does our unchanging mind gain power or any increase from 
matter; does it feed, upon the material elements which supply 
oiu bodily wants, in the processes of eating and digestion? Or, 
will any man deny the existence of this invisible part, which 
thinks, and reasons, and remembers, and wills, and retains its 
identity ; and maintain but the existence of the continually 
changing, decaying, corporeal frame, in which the spirit 
temporarily resides ? It is true our spirits are invisible. I 
