tion. The best of scientific men teach with regard to life, or vital force, that it is not the result of material combinations, but that such combination is necessary to its manifestation. " We recognize that these [vital] phenomena," says Professor Nichol- son, " are never manifested except by certain forms of matter, or, it may be, by but a single form of matter. We conclude, there- fore, that there must be an intimate connection between vital phenomena and the ■ matter of life ; ' but we can go no further than this, and the premises do not in any way warrant the asser- tion that life is the result of living matter, or one of its proper- ties." "The more philosophical view as to the nature of the connection between life and its material basis, is the one which regards vitality as something superadded and foreign to the mat- ter by which vital phenomena are manifested. Protoplasm is es- sential as the physical medium through which vital action may be manifested ; just as a conductor is essential to the manifesta- tion of electric phenomena, or just as a paint-brush and colours are essential to the artist. Because metal conducts the electric current, and renders it perceptible to our senses, no one thinks of therefore asserting that electricity is one of the inherent proper- ties of a metal, any more than one would feel inclined to assert that the power of painting was inherent in the camel's hair or in the dead pigments. Behind the material substratum, in all cases, is the active and living force ; and we have no right to assume that the force ceases to exist when its physical basis is removed, though it is no longer perceptible to our senses. It is, on the contrary, quite conceivable theoretically that the vital forces of an organism should suffer no change by the destruction of the physical basis, just as electricity would continue to subsist in a world composed universally of non-conductors. In neither case could the force manifest its presence, or be brought into any perceptible relation with the outer world ; but in neither case should we have the smallest ground for assuming that the power was necessarily non-extant." 1
This view when transferred to the soul, or mental phenomena, may be applied in three different forms to the doctrine of the state of man after death. First, God may be regarded as the universal mind-force which manifests itself through the human brain as electricity does through a conductor. When the brain is
1 Introduction to the Study of Biology, by H. AUeyne Nicholson, M. D., D. Sc, Ph. D., F. R. S. E., F. G. S., etc., Professor of Natural History and Botany in University College, Toronto, etc., etc. Edinburgh and London, 1872, pp. 8 and 11.
732 PART IV. Ch. I. — STATE OF SOUL AFTER DEATH.
disintegrated, the mind-force remains, but not the individual man. Secondly, we may assume the realistic doctrine of generic human- ity, manifesting itself in connection with proper corporeal organ- izations. Here again, it would seem to follow that when any individual human body is dissolved, the generic human life re- mains, but not the man. This is nearly the doctrine of Olshau- sen, before referred to. He held that the individuahty of man depends on the body ; so that without a body there can be no soul ; that the only existence of the soul of man possible between death and the resurrection must be the scattered dust of its human frame. Thirdly, we may take the doctrine of Swedenborg, who taught that man has two bodies, an exterior and interior, a mate- rial and spiritual, and that it is the former only that dies ; the lat- ter remains as the organ of the soul. Or, as others believe, the new, or spiritual, or resurrection body is provided at the moment of death, so that the soul passes from its earthly to its heavenly tabernacle in a moment. In none of these forms, however, is this theory of the absolute dependence of the soul for its power of self-manifestation properly applicable to the doctrine of the sleep of the soul after death. It is nevertheless probable that those who advocated this doctrine, in different periods in the his- tory of the Church, had some such theory underlying their views.
Eusebius * mentions a small sect of Christians in Arabia who held that the soul remained unconscious from death to the res- urrection. At the time of the Reformation there was such a revival of that doctrine that Calvin deemed it expedient to write an essay devoted to its refutation. Socinus also taught that the soul after death perceived and received nothing out of itself, al- though it remained self-conscious and self -contemplative. Arch- bishop Whately 2 says that, so far as the Scriptures are concerned, it is an open question whether the soul remains in a conscious state after death or not. In the third lecture he gives reasons which favour the view of continued consciousness ; and in the fourth, those which seem to teach the opposite doctrine. To the understanding, he says, there is no difference between the two views ; although to the imagination, the difference is great. In the consciousness of the soul of the believer, in either case, en- trance into heaven would instantaneously succeed death. An in-
i JScclesiastica Historia, vi. xxxvii. ; edit. Cambridge, 1720, p. 299. 2 A View of the Scripture Revelations concerning a Future State, by Richard Whatelyv D. D., Archbishop of Dublin. Philadelphia, 1856.