Chapter X: Part 10

“ * * [The decombination of the matter on which mind rests] is this a reason why mind must be annihilated? Is the temporary reverting of the mind, and of the sense out of which that mind developes, to their original component elements, a reason for thinking that they cannot again at another later period, and in another higher globe, be again recombined, and with more splendour than before? * * The New Testament does not after death here promise us a soul hereafter unconnected with matter, and which has no connexion with our present mind—a soul independent of time and space. That is a fanciful idea, not founded on its expressions, when taken in their just and real meaning. On the contrary, it promises us a mind like the present, founded on time and space; since it is, like the present, to hold a certain situation in time, and a certain locality in space. But it promises a mind situated in portions of time and of space different from the present; a mind composed of elements of matter more extended, more perfect, and more glorious: a mind which, formed of materials supplied by different globes, is consequently able to see farther into the past, and to think farther into the future, than any mind here existing: a mind which, freed from the partial and uneven combination incidental to it on this globe, will be exempt from the changes for evil to which, on the present globe, mind as well as matter is liable, and will only thenceforth experience the changes for the better which matter, more justly poised, will alone continue to experience: a mind which, no longer fearing the death, the total decomposition, to which it is subject on this globe, will thenceforth continue last and immortal.”—HOPE, _on the Origin and Prospects of Man_, 1831.

{331} Dublin Review, Aug. 1840. The Guarantee Society has since been established, and is likely to become a useful and prosperous institution.

{333} The ray, which is considered the lowest in the scale of fishes, or next to the crustaceans, gives the first faint representation of a brain in certain scanty and medullary masses, which appear as merely composed of enlarged origins of the nerves.

{335} If mental action is electric, the proverbial quickness of thought—that is, the quickness of the transmission of sensation and will—may be presumed to have been brought to an exact measurement. The speed of light has long been known to be about 192,000 miles per second, and the experiments of Wheatstone have shewn that the electric agent travels (if I may so speak) at the same rate, thus shewing a likelihood that one law rules the movements of all the “imponderable bodies.” Mental action may accordingly be presumed to have a rapidity equal to one hundred and ninety-two thousand miles in the second—a rate evidently far beyond what is necessary to make the design and execution of any of our ordinary muscular movements apparently identical in point of time, which they are.

{346} Phrenological Journal, xv. 338.

{347} A pampered lap-dog, living where there is another of its own species, will hide any nice morsel which it cannot eat, under a rug, or in some other by-place, designing to enjoy it afterwards. I have seen children do the same thing.