Many of the arguments for the immortality of man cannot indeed be used for our dumb relations, the animals. We cannot argue from their universal faith in a future life; nor contend that they need an immortality on moral grounds, to recompense their good conduct and punish their wickedness. We might indeed adduce a reason implied in our Saviour's parable, and believe that the poor creatures who have received their evil things in this life will be comforted in another. Moreover, we might find in many animals qualities fitting them for a higher state. There are animals, as we have seen, who show a fidelity, courage, generosity, often superior to what we see in man. The dogs who have loved their master more than food, and starved to death on his grave, are surely well fitted for a higher existence. Jesse tells a story of a cat which was being stoned by cruel boys. Men went by, and did not interfere; but a dog, that saw it, did. He drove away the boys, and then took the cat to his kennel, licked her all over with his tongue, and his conduct interested people, who brought her milk. The canine nurse took care of her till she was well, and the cat and dog remained fast friends ever after. Such an action in a man would have been called heroic; and we think such a dog would not be out of place in heaven.
Yet it is not so much on particular cases of animal superiority that we rely, but on the difficulty of conceiving, in any sense, of the destruction of life. The principle of life, whether we call it soul or body, matter or spirit, escapes all observation of the senses. All that we know of it by observation is that, beside the particles of matter which compose an organized body, there is something else, not cognizable by the senses, which attracts and dismisses them, modifies and coördinates them. The unity of the body is not to be found in its sensible phenomena, but in something which escapes the senses. Into the vortex of that life material molecules are being continually absorbed, and from it they are perpetually discharged. If death means the dissolution of the body, we die many times in the course of our earthly career, for every body is said by human anatomists to be changed in all its particles once in seven years. What then remains, if all the particles go? The principle of organization remains, and this invisible, persistent principle constitutes the identity of every organized body. If I say that I have the same body when I am fifty which I had at twenty, it is because I mean by "body" that which continues unaltered amid the fast-flying particles of matter. This life principle makes and remakes the material frame; that body does not make it. When what we call death intervenes, all that we can assert is that the life principle has done wholly and at once what it has always been doing gradually and in part. What happens to the material particles, we see: they become detached from the organizing principle, and relapse into simply mechanical and chemical conditions. What has happened to that organizing principle we neither see nor know; and we have absolutely no reason at all for saying that it has ceased to exist.
This is as true of plants and of animals as of men; and there is no reason for supposing that when these die their principle of life is ended. It probably has reached a crisis, which consists in the putting on of new forms and ascending into a higher order of organized existence.
[APROPOS OF TYNDALL][21]
We have all read in our "Vicar of Wakefield" the famous speech made by the venerable and learned Ephraim Jenkinson to good Dr. Primrose: "The cosmogony, or creation of the world, has puzzled philosophers in all ages. Sanchoniathon, Manetho, Berosus, and Ocellus Lucanus have all attempted it in vain," etc. But we hardly expected to have this question of cosmogony reopened by an eminent scientist in an address to the British Association. What "Sanchoniathon, Manetho, Berosus, and Ocellus Lucanus have all attempted in vain" Professor Tyndall has not only discussed before a body of men learned in the physical sciences, but has done it in such a manner as to rouse two continents to a new interest in the question. One party has immediately accused him of irreligion and infidelity, while another has declared his statements innocent if not virtuous. But the question which has been least debated is, What has the professor really said? or, Has he said anything?
The celebrated sentence which has occasioned this excitement is as follows:—
"Abandoning all disguise, the confession that I feel bound to make before you is, that I prolong the vision backward across the boundary of the experimental evidence, and discern in that matter which we in our ignorance, and notwithstanding our professed reverence for its Creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium, the promise and potency of every form and quality of life."
Does he, then, declare himself a materialist? A materialist is one who asserts everything which exists to be matter, or an affection of matter. What, then, is matter, and how is that to be defined? The common definition of matter is, that which is perceived by the senses, or the substance underlying sensible phenomena. By means of the senses we perceive such qualities or phenomena as resistance, form, color, perfume, sound. Whenever we observe these phenomena, whenever we see, hear, taste, touch, or smell, we attribute the affections thus excited to an external substance, which we call matter. But we are aware of other phenomena which are not perceived by the senses,—such as thought, love, and will. We are as certain of their existence as we are of sensible phenomena. I am as sure of the reality of love as I am of the whiteness of chalk. By a law of our mind, whenever we perceive sensible phenomena, we necessarily attribute them to a substance outside of ourselves, which we call matter. And by another law, or the same law, whenever we perceive the phenomena of consciousness, we necessarily attribute them to a substance which we call soul, mind, or spirit. All that we know of matter, and all that we know of soul, is their phenomena, and as these are entirely different, we are obliged to assume that matter and mind are different. None of the qualities or attributes of matter belong to mind, none of those of mind to matter.