In the recesses of the human soul there is a world of thought which, for the want of determinate and fit symbols, never assumes any fixed form, such as might beneficially constitute a part of the intellectual and moral wealth, or augment the wisdom and virtue of the man.-P. 105. Discarding, then, the present inexact, and scanty, and impliable machinery of language, our author opens two suppositions, either of which may be reasonably entertained relative to the means of communication in a higher economy. The first is that of a language primarily adapted to things abstract and intellectual, and drawn from the world of mind, nor in any such way convertible as to give rise to ambiguities of expression and confusion of thought, but which, like mathematical language, should be faultless, infallible, and liable to no mutations. The second supposition that offers itself on this point is, that "the method of expression by arbitrary signs should be altogether superseded, and that, in the place of it, the mind should be endowed with a power of communication by a direct and plenary conveyance of its own state, at any moment, to other minds, the veil of personal consciousness being drawn aside, as it were, and the entire intellect being spread out to view." Thus would thought be conveyed without the cumbrous machinery of a system of signs adapted to sensible objects, and derived from the material world, by an immediate revelation of the inmost mind, in some such manner as our emotions are often conveyed by the varying expression of the countenance, or the fine modulations of the voice; or at least we may, hope that in a better state of existence, our minds shall have the privilege of a purely intellectual language, and be furnished with "an engine of expression homogeneous with themselves, plastic in quality, and commensurate with their faculties!" The ninth chapter of our author's ingenious theory introduces us to the ninth point of advantage belonging to the contrast between animal organization and spiritual life. Our author shall declare what it is for himself. The present animal body, although justly considered as the instrument and auxiliary of the mind, is very far from being merely such; but on the contrary, has its proper interests, and its peculiar impulses and instincts; and these are of so peremptory a sort as often to prevail absolutely over those of the mind. But now we assume it as probable that the future corporeal structure, whether it be ethereal or palpable, shall be the INSTRUMENT OF THE MIND, and nothing else, that it shall have no purely organic welfare to provide for; and in a word, that it shall, in the strictest sense, be the servant of the intellectual and moral nature; just as the hand, the foot, or the eye, is the servant of the body.-P. 114. Such a corporeal frame as is here imagined would be indestructible, and indivisible, vital without waste, needing no pabulum, and exempt from all fear of dissolution, all cravings of appetite, all sensual propensions, and all the sundry evils which "flesh is heir to." Yea, this spiritual body shall be so purely the instrument of intellect, "that it will barely, if at all, enter into the consciousness as a separate existence." Our author qualifies this statement by some ingenious doubts. How he can reconcile the conflicting positions, we know not; nor have we room to discuss these subordinate considerations, especially when graver topics challenge our notice, in the tenth chapter of the "Physical Theory" before us, wherein it is shown that each of the preceding points of supposed advantage of the spiritual body, stands evenly balanced between happiness and suffering, as a means of augmenting, indifferently, the one or the other. The body will, indeed, be put in symmetry with the mind; but those augmentations of our powers, which are to be looked for in another life, may be either the means of enjoyment, or the means of misery, according as our moral condition shall determine. We have "obolized" many beautiful and eloquent passages for the purpose of quotation in our pages, but must content ourselves with the conclusion at which our author arrives, entreating our readers to consult the original for themselves. Our conclusion then is (as stated at the commencement of this digressive chapter) that although we may reasonably anticipate certain enhancements of the powers of human nature to take place in a future stage of its progress, yet that none of these additions or improvements necessarily involves an increase of happiness; but on the contrary, is in itself as likely to bring with it an intensity of suffering. The question, therefore, whether we are to be MORE HAPPY in another world, than at present, or less so, must be determined by reasons that are to be sought for altogether from a different quarter. Any PHYSICAL THEORY of another life must leave this anxiety just where it found it.—P. 142. Beside the inward constitution of the future human body, it is natural to ask, what will be its exterior conformation? To this point our author addresses himself in his eleventh chapter. He teaches us that "the die of human nature, as to its form and figure, is to be used again in a new world." The fair and faultless paradisiacal model of human beauty and majesty, which stood forward as the most illustrious instance of creative wisdom-the bright gem of the visible world-this form too, which has been borne and consecrated by incarnate deity-that it shall at length regain its forfeited honours, and once more be pronounced, "very good;" so good as to forbid its being superseded; on the contrary, that it shall be reinstated, and allowed, after its long degradation, to enjoy its birthright of immortality.-Pp. 143, 144. Nevertheless, the future mode of human existence will, probably, display" harmony of principles" rather than "complexity of parts ;" so that while the organization of our present bodies is admirable, chiefly on account of the complexity of its parts, the delicacy of its construction, and the elaborateness of its adaptations, the spiritual corporeity will, probably, be "homogeneous in its elements, perfectly simple in its construction, and uniform in its structure; a pure, undiversified, uncompounded corporeity." Do we inquire, in the spirit of Nicodemus, "How can these things be?" Do we ask, "How are the dead raised up?" How shall human nature pass from animal to spiritual corporeity? The twelfth chapter of the " Theory of another Life" will show us that this transition is a natural, not a miraculous process. We stay not here accurately to define the nature of miracles, or nicely to point out the boundaries between special interpositions of Providence and the ordinary occurrences of life; but it may be permitted us to remark, that all events are ultimately referable to the power of God, both natural and supernatural so that when we class our future transition from animal to spiritual corporeity amongst events of natural occurrence, we exclude not the agency of Divine government, for such a change must spring from Divine power; and, if it be future, our belief of it must rest upon Divine testimony. Keeping these truths in mind, our author is led by analogous considerations drawn from the vegetable and animal world, and by the undeveloped powers of man, his rational and moral consciousness, and his intellectual sentiments and faculties, and his universal aspirations after another existence, to consider the future change which awaits our present organization, as "a simple fact, and as forming a natural epoch in the history of man, whom, when it occurs, we shall understand to be a creature destined, from the first, to metamorphoses, and for extended progression." Not only, then, are we assured that a future life awaits the human family, but there is great reason to believe that our future renovation is involved in the original constitution of our nature, and shall be at length effected by physical laws, and take place, by God's appointment, in due season, as a preordained result from established principles in the great economy of the universe. Nor must we think that our passage from this to another mode of existence will interfere with our moral consciousness, or destroy our individual character, (ch. 13); for our " physical and moral nature are so thoroughly independent one of the other, as that the greatest imaginable revolution passing upon the former, shall leave the latter simply what it was." (P. 170.) We shall change our place, but not our dispositions ;* "the unjust shall be unjust still; the filthy shall be filthy still; the righteous shall be righteous still; and he that is holy, shall be holy still." To imagine that when we awake up in another world, we shall find a miracle to have been wrought unconsciously upon our tempers, and desires, and affections, is to expect the effect of grace when the moral means of grace shall have been withdrawn, and the day of salvation shall have passed finally away, and the only accepted season of mercy shall have been wickedly abused by us! The intensity "Cœlum, non animum, &c."-Horat. Epist. 1, 11, 27. Rev. xxii. 11. of our emotions may be infinitely increased, but the character of our affections shall be the same. The " correspondence between the present and the future employment of the active principles of human nature," (the subject of our author's 14th chapter) we approach with considerable misgivings and grave doubts. We deem this one the least tenable of his positions ; and though it reminds us strongly of the Mantuan bard, "Quæ gratia currûm Armorumque fuit vivis, quæ cura nitentes Pascere equos, eadem sequitur tellure repostos,"----Æn. vi, 653, we think our readers will be surprised to hear that— All the practical skill we acquire in managing affairs, all the versatility, the sagacity, the calculation of chances, the patience and assiduity, the promptitude and facility, as well as the higher virtues, which we are learning every day, may well find scope in a world such as is rationally anticipated, when we think of heaven as the stage of life that is next to follow the discipline of earth. Pp. 189, 190. We confess we are better pleased with silence than with such sheer freaks of wild conjecture upon topics which it has not pleased the Almighty to reveal to us, being content with the persuasion that God will, in a higher state of our existence, make the exaltation of our happiness correspond with the exaltation of our nature! The "Physical Theory of another Life,"-embracing the conditions of corporeity, whether animal or spiritual, the prerogatives of the latter as compared with animal organization, the balanced probability of happiness or misery hereafter, the probable point of contrast between the animal and spiritual body in the principle of their construction, the transition of man from one state of physical existence to another, the survivance of individual character and consciousness, and the correspondence between the present and the future employment of the active principles of human nature,-might well have been brought to a close here. But this view of his subject did not satisfy our ingenious and indefatigable author. We wish heartily that it had been otherwise; and so, if we do not greatly err, will the majority of his readers. We could well have spared his conjectures, and his introduction to his conjectures, concerning the correlative construction and reciprocal destinies of the material and the spiritual universe, as detailed in chapters 15, 16, 17, and 18, of his treatise, because the unbounded licentiousness of his imagination provokes us even to laughter, and tends greatly, much as we admire his eloquence, his ingenuity, and his piety, to shake our confidence in the general soundness of the principles and conclusions developed in the volume under review. "Quousque tandem abutêre patientiâ nostrâ? Quem ad finem sese effrænata jactabit * Baxter's Saint's Rest, pt. iii. v. 2, 3, 4, 5. audacia?" are questions which involuntarily suggest themselves to our minds, in perusing the conjectures to which our author has ventured to lend the authority of his influence. He conjectures (we use his own words) that While the planets are the places of animal organization, and the schools of initiation to all rational orders, the sun, of each such system, is the abode and home of the higher and ultimate spiritual corporeity, and the centre of assembly for those who have passed their preliminary era upon the lower ranges of creation.-P. 208. Will our talented author forgive us if we take his own estimate of this fancy, and say in his own phrase, "whatever may be the pretensions of this hypothesis, WE HOLD IT CHEAP ?" We place, (again, will our author forgive us?) we place precisely the same value upon his second conjecture, when he "insists upon the abstract possibility of the existence, on all sides of us, of an invisible element, sustaining its own species of being; some, perhaps, as slenderly endowed with rational faculties as are the insect tribes of earth, and others, in gradation, rising to the highest pitch of intelligence and moral dignity; some accountable and immortal, others ephemeral, and prompted only by instincts!" At least we will arrogate the privilege of saying, that our author has expended a very disproportionate mass of learning and ingenuity in a vain endeavour to maintain a fond hypothesis. "Materiem superabat opus." The Rosicrusian doctrine of shadowy spirits, sylphs, gnomes, and salamanders, rescued from merited contempt by the fascinating poetry of the bard of Twickenham, is once more revealed to our astonished eyes in the deep lore and metaphysical pages of a profound philosopher!!! "What though no credit doubting wits may give ? The fair and innocent shall still believe,' Nor doubt unnumbered spirits round' them 'fly, The state of disembodied spirits, our author's hypothesis touching ghosts, and his general doctrines of physiology, and his lucubrations on dæmoniacal possessions and satanic influence, novel and curious as some of them appear, we have no space for; nor can we do more than briefly state his third conjecture, which supposes that The visible universe, replete every where with various forms of animal life, is to fill one period only in the great history of the moral system, and that it is destined, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, to disappear, and to return to its nihility, giving place to new elements, and to new and higher expressions of omnipotence and intelligence.-P. 266. This is an unexceptionable chapter, full of sound remarks, wise distinctions, and philosophical acumen. The same verdict may be given Rape of the Lock, 39. |