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his normal condition, memory and every other quality of intelligence return, and become as clear and strong as ever. Where was the mind during his state of unconsciousness? Did it still exist in the body, or was it out of the body? Its principles must have existed somewhere, or else a new creation is necessitated to bring back a return of memory and the other intellectual attributes.

Again, take a person in a profound sleep. He may be perfectly unconscious of everything around him, but is the action of the mind suspended or dormant while he is in this condition? Dreams show that the mind itself may be still active, while to all outward appearance the man has no consciousness. Through the condition of sleep his mental connection with the outer world seems completely severed; but the mind itself may not be even sleeping, as its activity in dreams abundantly indicates. This shows that there is a perfectly active mental condition when no man can see any manifestations of mind.

Who can look at the mass of humanity, and see its individuality of character, and behold one man, from youth to old age, in mental and moral respects different from every other man, and not see that there is a kind of personal identity in his actuality, which we call character, that cannot be accounted for by any mere physical causes? Physiologists may dissect as carefully as possible, and find no material difference in the quality of the brain, heart, and muscles; but distinct and definite characteristics cleave to the man from youth to old age which neither chemistry nor any other physical cause can account for. When one dies a distinct individuality is stamped out. Of what does this individuality consist? Explain it, if you can, by merely physical science. What trace of character can you find by

INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER.

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dissection, except in the shape or quality of the brain, which an invisible entity has taken as its organ of communication with the outer world? What is this something which we call mind, or intelligence? What makes the different moral characters and dispositions which are distinguishing characteristics of various individuals of society?

Who can tell what makes one man's disposition, thoughts, and desires so different from those of every other man? Explain this if you can without acknowledging in him the existence of an invisible and intelligent force entirely distinct from the like force which exists in any other individual of the human race.

Many believe this force to be a soul, or something inseparably connected with a soul. Those who deny the existence of a soul leave us in the dark concerning these distinguishing qualities in human character.

CHAPTER XIII.

SOUL AND MIND.

THE principle of Atavism must be admitted to exercise a very strong influence upon particular men, and even races of men. How often we see a very marked trait developed in a man when you can scarcely find a semblance of that trait in father, mother, grandfather, or grandmother, but by looking back several generations you will find the trait strongly developed in some ancestor, and it has jumped over several generations, and now all at once it crops out in a very marked manner.

We all know the tendency of various diseases to descend from father or mother to son or daughter, as, for instance, scrofula or consumption, or in mental tendency to insanity, and in fact to many other peculiarities. The sins of the parents are visited upon the children to the third and fourth generation," and we might even say to the tenth generation.

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All know that there is an invisible and distinguishing something pertaining to every individual man, and the question is, how this came to be in him. To say that it is

inherited does not in the least inform us how these invisible and peculiar kinds of forces came to be originally implanted

in man.

We may deny the existence of that which we cannot see; but it may be as reasonable for a blind man to deny that light exists because he never beheld it, as it is for man to

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deny the existence of an intelligent cause of human intelligence and human individuality. Intelligence is not a myth, neither can the cause of intelligence be other than a reality. Our denials of this will not in the least change actual facts which pertain to human existence, or alter the mysterious connection which exists between the invisible entity which we call mind or intelligence, and our physical organization. To me it seems to be folly to assert the positive non-existence of an entity like the soul because its existence cannot be demonstrated by physical science, when in actual fact the matter under consideration is beyond and entirely outside the domains of the physical sciences. To claim as some do that all of the acts of the mind or the soul are properly under physical laws is begging the whole question; for the physicist must first show that the soul (if it exists) is composed of a material substance in order to bring it under physical laws.

We are told that the idea of an immaterial essence is unthinkable; and some go even farther, and assert that what is unthinkable is also impossible. This is a mere assertion, and I deny its truth, and on this point my assertion is a positive one; while the evidence upon which the other assertion rests is entirely of a negative character.

What is unthinkable to one may not be so to another of a different grade or order of intelligence. It would be the highest folly and self-conceit for a near or short sighted man to assume that a certain object could not exist because it is not manifest to his vision, when a far-seeing man could readily see the object. I think there is as real a difference in the range of the intellectual vision in different men as there is in the power of their physical vision; and the reason why some are so confident that certain invisible essences or

entities or powers cannot exist is probably because of some peculiarity of their mental or moral vision.

Of unthinkable things, take, for instance, certain matters pertaining to space. We cannot comprehend the idea of space being limited; for, if we attempt to do this, we must think of what is beyond this limit. Neither can we comprehend the idea of unlimited space. But space exists, and it must be either with or without limit, notwithstanding, in either case, the idea of placing any definite limit is unthinkable. Time, also, must either have had a beginning, or it did not have one. But how there could be such a thing as a beginning of time is incomprehensible; and yet we cannot comprehend its opposite, viz., that time can be without a beginning. Is there, therefore, no such thing as time?

If it is answered that time is necessarily limited, it being only a part of eternal duration, and hence must have a beginning and end, this answer gives merely a verbal turn; for it gives no idea of the length of time's duration or of how it merges into eternity. But if one will still insist upon this difference between the words time and eternity, then let us shift the word, and use eternity instead of the word time, and ask whether we can conceive of a beginning or end of eternity. Is there then no eternity?

We cannot prove our personal identities; yet what sane man doubts his personal identity? Notwithstanding all the sophistries used in attempting to show that we do not know that we are the same individuals we were ten years since, our consciousness, with memory added, tells us that we are the same; and these testimonials concerning our personal identities are stronger than a thousand scientific sophisms. Upon this point Dr. Reid (as quoted by Jackson, p. 184) writes as follows:

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