The first element of accurate knowledge is number—the foundation and the measure of all he knows of the material world.
I believe these views of the Athanasian Creed are by no means singular,—that they are indeed very generally held, although very rarely asserted. If such is the case, it were wise to take the opportunity which the new Commission for the revision of the Liturgy presents, to remove from the Rubric doctrines so thoroughly destructive of all true religion, and about which the author, doubtless in mockery, so complacently tells us, that whosoever does not believe them “without doubt, he shall perish everlastingly.”
The true value of the Christian religion rests, not upon speculative views of the Creator, which must necessarily be different in each individual, according to the extent of the knowledge of the finite being, who employs his own feeble powers in contemplating the infinite: but it rests upon those {405} doctrines of kindness and benevolence which that religion claims and enforces, not merely in favour of man himself, but of every creature susceptible of pain or of happiness.
〈IDENTITY DEPENDS ON MEMORY.〉
A curious reflection presents itself when we meditate upon a state of rewards and punishments in a future life. We must possess the memory of what we did during our existence upon this earth in order to give them those characteristics.
In fact, memory seems to be the only faculty which must of necessity be preserved in order to render a future state possible.
If memory be absolutely destroyed, our personal identity is lost.
Further reflection suggests that in a future state we may, as it were, awake to the recollection that, previously to this our present life, we existed in some former state, possibly in many former ones, and that the then state of existence may have been the consequences of our conduct in those former stages.
It would be a very interesting research if naturalists could devise any means of showing that the dragon-fly, in its three stages of a grub beneath the soil—an animal living in the water—and that of a flying insect—had in the last stage any memory of its existence in its first.
Another question connected with this subject offers still greater difficulty. Man possesses five sources of knowledge through his senses. He proudly thinks himself the highest work of the Almighty Architect; but it is quite possible that he may be the very lowest. If other animals possess senses of a different nature from ours, it can scarcely be possible that we could ever be aware of the fact. Yet those animals, having other sources of information and of pleasure, might, though despised by us, yet enjoy a corporeal as well as an intellectual existence far higher than our own.