193 
The Chairman. — There is the passage in which Dives calls for a drop of 
water, which relates to the body. 
Mr. Titcomb. — Yes, but that belongs to the language of poetry, and 
is more like a metaphor than a representation of conversation would be. 
One will bear argument ; the other will not. Then Our Lord is described 
after death, in a very disputed passage, as going to preach to the spirits in 
prison,* those spirits in the time of Noah having been disobedient. If that 
be interpreted as representing the setting forth by Christ Himself to those 
spirits — a statement of what He had done for man, in the place of disembodied 
souls — I do not know how the Psyche, the ethical part of man, would not be 
there as well as the Pneuma. Otherwise, how could preaching have been of 
any use ? There must have been an appeal to reason and to the affections, 
or otherwise preaching would have had no basis. Then there is the passage 
quoted in the paper, but got over very slightly and superficially, where 
St. John describes the souls under the altar crying out, “ How long, 0 Lord, 
how long ? ” Is not that a representation of what is ethical, and involving 
memory ? Then, lastly, there is that oft-repeated text “ What shall it profit 
a man if he gain the whole world and lose his soul ? ” Are we to think that 
mortal life is of such great account as that ? The passage must refer to that 
which will survive after death ; thus we have the Psyche or soul surviving 
death. And having gone so far, we come to a point that has not yet been 
touched upon, — how far the psychology presented to us by the brute creation 
is analogous to our own. I do not know how it ought to be imported into 
this discussion, but, taking the interpretation of Psyche which is given in 
Mr. English’s paper, I should lay it down that one of its weakest points is 
the necessary inference that man’s Psyche, dying with him, is very little better 
than the Psyche of brutes. It is indisputable that the dog, for instance, has 
mental properties and moral properties, which approximate to our own. It 
may be a new idea to some present, but there are ethics, so to speak, in the 
affections, habits, and instincts of the brute creation. A dog may love its 
master — it has memory ; and it almost has veneration. It is a very difficult 
question, but there is a Psyche or soul which is perishable, and which is the 
analogue to the Psyche in this paper. The doctrine of which I complain 
lowers the human Psyche to the level of the brute Psyche ; of course there 
being a vast interval between the two, but their nature being the same. 
As the soul is the life of the body, so I take it the spirit is the life of the soul. 
You reach the soul through the body, but you only reach the spirit through the 
* Biblical exegesis is without the scope of the objects of this Institute, 
otherwise I would give at length the difficulties which result from attaching 
such a meaning to the verse in question. Pearson, in a most elaborate argu- 
ment, holds that the Spirit of Him “ who is from everlasting,” strove with 
the spirits of those who lived before the Flood (Gen. vi. 3), and that He 
used Noah as His instrument in preaching righteousness to them (2 Pet. ii. 5) ; 
that the spirits of those who rejected His word were now in prison 
(awaiting the sentence of the last day). Most commentators support this 
view. See also Parkhurst. — Ed. 
