APPENDIX.

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THE following extract from a paper on The Christian Conscience," in Good Words, Jan. 1868, by Dr Alford, the Dean of Canterbury, will show how different a view may be taken of the subject, and suggest occasion for the exercise of the reader's judgment.

"It seems to me that, in these days, our thoughts on the Christian Conscience want reviewing and clearing. Its origin, its description, its operation, and present extent of influence on public and private opinion and action may perhaps profitably be made matter for an essay.

"The good that I would, I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do,' (Rom. vii. 19.) Who are these two-the I that desires-the I that acts? Not two persons for it is one and the same Paul that both desires and acts. Nor can we say that both are the simple and consistent doings of one and the same person. There is a complication, there is a conflict, there is a coercion. A desire to act in one way arises within: this desire is thwarted, and action is hindered. A reluctance to act in another way is felt the reluctance is overborne, and action takes place. And this is not as when the body

:

refuses the bidding of the will; when energy is suspended by lassitude, or the desire of quiet broken by nervous excitement. Those conflicts, those defeats, are temporary: but this is enduring. Those are between the flesh and the will this is within the will itself. For in this description, there are two wills. We will one way, we act another way. But no man can be properly said to act without willing: the motion of conscious action is voluntary, abstinence from that motion is voluntary also. So that within the man is a will saying, 'I will,' and protesting against the will which is carried out in action: sitting, so to speak, bound, and witnessing its own defeat. And when we come to inquire about this deposed, this frustrated will, there can be no question that it is the nobler, the higher of the two, though it be thus defeated. For it bears testimony for good and against evil whereas its victorious adversary thwarts the good, and carries out the evil.

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So then we find ourselves in the presence of these two phenomena in man: a higher will, a nobler consciousness, testifying to good, protesting against evil, but overborne ; and a lower will, a less noble consciousness, putting aside the good, choosing the evil, and commonly prevailing. And we may observe that both these are resident in the inner man, not belonging the one to the inner, the other to the outer. However the lower will may become entangled with, and enslaved by, the bodily emotions, it is yet a decision given not in or by the body, but in and by the mind.

"But now let us go a step further, and let us suppose that in some given case the higher will obtains the mastery, and that the word of command which the mind gives to the body to act or not to act, proceeds not from the

lower will but from the higher; or, if necessarily from the lower, then from the lower subordinated to and absorbed into the higher. Let us suppose, in other words, a state of things which would be expressed by The good that I would do, that do I: and the evil which I would not do, that do I not.' Manifestly, this is no impossible supposition, but one which is often, though not ordinarily, realised in fact.

"What have we now obtained? Why this: that my practical will, the ruler of the acts which I do, and the non-acts which I refuse to do, lies open to two distinct influences—one drawing it upward, in the direction of good and to the avoidance of evil, the other drawing it downwards, in a direction which may lead to the adoption of evil, and to the avoidance of good. And there can be no question that this, my practical will, emanates directly from, and is the expression of, my personality: that it is the exponent of myself. But let us advance a step further in this preliminary examination. This practical will, of which we have spoken, is the result of thought, is the issue of determination. Are thought and determination peculiar to man? Certainly not. Every kind of organised animal life, in its measure and after its kind, possesses them. The practical will may be as limited as in the oyster, or as free as in the eagle; but it is equally in obedience to it, that conscious animal action takes place. In man, of all animals, its capacities are greatest; but its nature is not distinct. In man, with all its intellectual powers and wide-reaching susceptibilities, it is but the animal soul; in the lowest organised being, with all its narrowness and dulness, it is the animal soul still. The Greeks, in their wonderfully accurate language, expressed by the same

term, (vx, psyché,) the soul of man which he has to save, and the life of the reptile which man crushes under his foot. And it would have been immensely for our profit if we had done the same. For then we should have understood what very few now do understand, the true nature, the true place, of this our intellectual and emotional being. We then should have read in our Bibles not only 'Whosoever will save his life shall lose it; and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it;' but also, (for the same word is used,) 'For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own life? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his life?' For it is this life of man that carries his practical will, with all those motions of intellect and feeling which set it at work: it is the life, which is mysteriously bound up with the body, and which is reft from it at death: it is this life, which if a man spend upon God and upon good, he shall save to life eternal. Infinite misunderstanding, infinite mischief, has arisen from confounding this animal soul of man with his immortal part. We hear frequently, in fact it is the usual and still commonly-received notion, that man is compounded of two parts, the mortal body, and the immortal soul. Whole sermons, whole treatises, proceed on this view of man. Books of argument have been written to prove the immortality of the soul; and have been for the most part written in vain. The reasons alleged have been acute enough in themselves, but capable of the easiest refutation. The soul, it was maintained, was immortal, because it was indivisible, or because of some of the functions which it performs independently of the body in which it dwells. It was easy to see that this, if it proved anything, proved too much. For how is my animal soul more indi

visible than the animal soul of my dog?

And what

faculty have I that, after his kind, he has not? No consideration of this sort in fact proved more than the pretty conceit of our metaphysical poet,—

"Thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof

That they were born for immortality.'

There is absolutely no reason for believing, if man is compounded only of body and soul, that he continues to exist after this present life. The powers and faculties of the soul decay with the decay of the soul. The same blow which ends the corporeal organism, ends also the existence of animal self-consciousness, which, as far as we know from any inductive argument, is bound up with that organism.

"Even the witness of nature herself was against this twofold division of man. We do not, we cannot, account ourselves a mere higher form of the brute, as on this theory we must do. For according to it we differ from the brute only in degree of intelligence and higher bodily endowment, and not in any matter of kind at all. Whereas it is the impregnable conviction of our race, unaffected by any adverse theories of philosophers, that between the lowest intelligent man, and the highest intelligent animal, there is a gulf fixed, impassable by any mere intensification or depreciation of existing faculties.

"And wherein does the difference consist, that places man on the one side of this gulf, and the brute on the other? man on the heavenward side, the brute on the earthward? Wherein, but in this, that whereas man and the brutes have body and soul in common, man has a third and higher part, which none of the brutes possesses?