NORTH.
We know that this Eye and its apparatus of nerves no longer shall serve for seeing—we know that these muscles and their nerves shall no longer serve for moving—we know that this marvellous Brain itself no longer shall serve, as we are led to believe that it now serves, for thinking—we know that this bounding heart never again shall throb and quicken, with all its leaping pulses, with joy—that pain of this body shall never again tire the mind, and that pain of this mind shall never again tire this body, once pillowed and covered up in its bed of imperturbable slumber. And there ends our knowledge. But that this Mind, which, united to these muscles and their nerves, sent out vigorous and swift motions through them—which, united to this Brain, compelled this Brain to serve it as the minister of its thinkings upon this Earth and in this mode of its Being—which, united to this Frame, in it, and through it, and from it, felt for Happiness and for Misery—that this Mind, once disunited from all these, its instruments and servants, shall therefore perish, or shall therefore forego the endowment of its powers, which it manifested by these its instruments—of that we have no warranty—of that there is no probability.
TALBOYS.
Much rather, sir, might a probability lie quite the other way. For if the structure of this corporeal frame places at the service of the Mind some five or six senses, enabling it, by so many avenues, to communicate with this external world, this very structure shuts up the Mind in these few senses, ties it down to the capacities of exactness and sensibility for which they are framed. But we have no reason at all to think that these few modes of sensibility, which we call our external senses, are all the modes of sensibility of which our spirits are capable. Much rather we must believe that, if it pleased, or shall ever please, the Creator to open in this Mind, in a new world, new modes of sensation, the susceptibility for these modes is already there for another set of senses. Now we are confined to an eye that sees distinctly at a few paces of distance. We have no reason for thinking that, united with a finer organ of sight, we should not see far more exquisitely; and thus, sir, our notices of the dependence in which the Mind now subsists upon the body do of themselves lead us to infer its own self-subsistency.
NORTH.
What we are called upon to do, my friends, is to set Reason against Imagination and against Habit. We have to lift ourselves up above the limited sphere of sensible experience. We have to believe that something more is than that which we see—than that which we know.
TALBOYS.
Yet, sir, even the facts of Mind, revealed to us living in these bodies, are enough to show us that more is than these bodies—since we feel that We are, and that it is impossible for us to regard these bodies otherwise than as possessions of ours—utterly impossible to regard them as Ourselves.
NORTH.
We distinguish between the acts of Mind, inwardly exerted—the acts, for instance, of Reason, of Memory, and of Affection—and acts of the Mind communicating through the senses with the external world. But Butler seems to me to go too far when he says, "I confess that in sensation the mind uses the body; but in reflection I have no reason to think that the mind uses the body." But, my dear friends, I, Christopher North, think, on the contrary, that the Mind uses the Brain for a thinking instrument; and that much thought fatigues the Brain, and causes an oppressive flow of the blood to the Brain, and otherwise disorders that organ. And altogether I should be exceedingly sorry to rest the Immortality of the Soul upon so doubtful an assumption as that the Brain is not, in any respect or sort, the Mind's Organ of Thinking. I see no need for so timid a sheltering of the argument. On the contrary, the simple doctrine, to my thought, is this—The Mind, as we know it, is implicated and mixed up with the Body—throughout—in all its ordinary actions. This corporeal frame is a system of organs, or Instruments, which the Mind employs in a thousand ways. They are its instruments—all of them are—and none of them is itself. What does it matter to me that there is one more organ—the Brain—for one more function—thinking? Unless the Mind were in itself a seeing thing—that is, a thing able to see—it could not use the Eye for seeing; and unless the Mind were a thinking thing, it could not use the Brain for thinking. The most intimate implication of itself with its instruments in the functions which constitute our consciousness, proves nothing in the world to me, against its essential distinctness from them, and against the possibility of its living and acting in separation from them, and when they are dissolved. So far from it, when I see that the body chills with fear, and glows with love, I am ready to call fear a cold, and love a warm passion, and to say that the Mind uses its bodily frame in fearing and in loving. All these things have to do with manifestations of my mind to itself, Now, whilst implicated in this body. Let me lift myself above imagination—or let my imagination soar and carry my reason on its wings—I leave the body to moulder, and I go sentient, volent, intelligent, whithersoever I am called.