absence of any proved power of death to destroy us, he estimates highly) amounts to "a very considerable degree of probability.”

Credibility, however, as he holds, is sufficient for all the purposes of religion, and this is reasonable; for in a matter which may profoundly concern us, such credibility binds us to move onwards, and to weigh all the elements of the case as the argument of the "Analogy," in the course of its development, may present them.

Thus the argument of continuance based upon existence is made to play a capital part. Is it strong enough to sustain the weight so laid upon it?

This question, as it seems to me, can hardly be answered without introducing other considerations. May it not be held that the likelihood of this or that entity's continuance cannot be measured until after first measuring the arguments for its present existence? We may presume (always proceeding upon the postulate that there is an Author of nature) upon the continuance of a rose bud in one way, but upon the continuance of a decaying rose only in a different and much more limited way. If things exist only for an end, the strength of the argument for their continuance will surely depend, in each case, upon their stage of advancement towards the attainment of that end. If they have upon them the mark of a design, together with marks that it is not yet fulfilled, the argument of likelihood for their continuance is strong. Such is the case with man. But then Butler's evolution of his subject has not reached a point at which he can make use of this argument. And it seems open to doubt whether simple continuance, apart from purpose, affords a solid standingground from which to project this or that existence into the fu

Butler may be right in throwing the burden of proof upon those who refuse to admit as probable the continuance in the future of that which now exists; but this burden need not in every case be a very heavy burden.

The establishment of the apparent independence of the "living being" upon death is, however, of itself a great result; and its greatness grows upon us in proportion as that living being is richly equipped with faculty. Every attentive reader, in considering Butler's management of this subject, must remark how slightly, in presenting to us his "living agent," he puts forward the ethic and pathetic, or shall I say the moral and affectional, sides

of our nature. Here we have an army of faculties, which greatly enhance the force of his reasonings from the nature of the living agent. And Dr. Eagle, a recent commentator on Butler, has well observed that our moral feelings and emotions are not subject to deterioration or abatement with the lapse of years, down to the latest, in the same manner and degree as are the powers of memory, perception, and reflection. Once only, in discussing this subject, does Butler name, in connection with reason and memory, "the affections which they excite."*

Let us now turn to the argument from natural immortality, which includes a fortiori the question of survival, and with regard to which we may be naturally led to inquire how it is that Butler, having said so much, has not said still more.

His references to natural immortality are found in the twentyfirst and thirty-first sections of his first chapter. In the first of these he speaks of a natural immortality of brutes, and observes that it does not imply their being endowed with any capacities of a rational or moral description. In the second, he propounds to us that there may, in the future or unseen world, be a state of existence for us new and yet natural; and he conceives in general that this cannot reasonably be denied. He then proceeds to designate persons or circumstances such as in a particular manner exclude the denial: speaking thus-" especially whilst the probability of a future life, or the natural immortality of the soul, is admitted upon the evidence of reason."

With regard to the first of these passages, touching the immortality of brutes, Butler does not admit it to be a consequence of his teaching with respect to the living powers, or living being, as existing in man. With regard to the second, it is to be observed that when he has occasion to refer to immortality as it stands under the Christian dispensation, he says that "life and immortality are eminently brought to light by the gospel," and that "the great doctrine of a future state" is confirmed by the gospel. The whole argument of the first chapter is an argument for the survival of the soul, in which no distinction is drawn between simple survival and immortality; so that it may have been meant to serve as an argument for immortality. And yet, in the passage which I have quoted from the first chapter (in section 31), his language as it stands is ambiguous. It may

* Anal. I., i., 26. Analogy II., i,, 9.

mean the denial cannot take place compatibly with the dogma of natural immortality, and therefore not among such persons as happen to hold it. Or it may mean to take for granted a natural immortality, and to urge that, as this is an established principle, his proposition cannot possibly be contested. Which of the two is his meaning? I have arrived at the conclusion that it is the first. If this is so, he makes no assertion of natural immortality. I have arrived at the conclusion that he does not intend to make any positive assertion either for or against it, but to hold his judgment in reserve. He may have leant to it in his inner mind he may have felt reluctant to oppose himself to an opinion which may be taken to have been universal in his time. But it is plain that he has stopped short of an absolute categorical assertion of it and he could, as I conceive, have had no reason for stopping short of such an assertion, except an unwillingness to be committed to it, either from his general mistrust of propositions founded only on abstract reasoning, or from his believing this particular proposition to have been insufficiently established. Had he been prepared to propound it, he would surely have altered the whole argument of his first chapter; for, if the natural immortality of the soul be an established proof, it must at once take precedence of all those elaborate presumptions, which he has adopted for the basis of his reasoning in favor of a future life. He argues for a future life as hope, as credibility, as likelihood; but he does not venture to propound it as a thing of dogma or as a certainty. Had he felt himself in a condition so to propound it, his whole attitude in the first chapter would have been changed. That dogma would have been the head and front of the discussion; and all his rebuttals of adverse presumption, and his modest pleas for favorable inference, needed at most only to appear as an army of auxiliaries, preparing and making straight the way for the acceptance of that doctrine.

Now, if Butler has not bound himself hand and foot to the metaphysical principle of the soul's essential immortality, of an immortality for the soul inherent in its nature as soul, it was not because he lived in a world to which that doctrine was in any manner new or strange. On the contrary, it was, and it had been for many ages, a standing doctrine of popular, and, within limits it may even be said, also of authoritative, theology. Nor was recognized philosophy in disaccord with theology. I will

quote one instance which may serve to show how deeply the persuasion was rooted in the general sentiment at least of Western Christendom. At the Reformation, when so much of doctrine long unassailed was shaken down to its foundation, and Michael Servetus was prosecuted in Geneva, under the inspiration of Calvin, for heresy in respect to the Trinity, this question also was brought upon the carpet. Servetus was, or supposed himself to be, accused of denying the natural immortality of the soul. His reply was given thus:

"If ever I said that, and not only said it but published it, and infected the whole world, I would condemn myself to death."*

At a period when there was a disposition in philosophy to exalt time and space almost to the dignity of the uncreated, it was little likely that the natural immortality of the soul, supported as to a wide extent it was by the authority of tradition, would be repellent to the general mind. It had indeed received in England, at the epoch of Butler's activity, new and weighty consecration. First, this had come from the Cambridge Platonists, who set the argument very high. Before proceeding to adduce proofs of the doctrine, John Smith writes as follows:

"The immortality of the soul doth not absolutely need any demonstration to clear it; but might be assumed rather as a principle or postulatum, seeing the notion of it is apt naturally to insinuate itself into the being of the most vulgar sort of men. . . . "All nations have consented in this belief, which hath almost been as vulgarly received as the belief of a Deity."

It has been more questioned by "unskilful philosophers than by the unsophisticated mind of man: and has such a consensus gentium as Cicero rightly holds "enough to conclude a law and maxim of nature by." This stress John Smith lays on the consent of the general mind, though he thinks it includes an idea of the soul's materiality, and, it may be, its traduction too, as wide as the belief itself. And he takes as his common basis or principle this hypothesis, that no substantial and indivisible thing ever perisheth." For a moment only, as it seems, he declares himself indeed content with that idea of Plato which, in the Timæus, introduces the Deity addressing the angels (or véon coi) in these words, "You shall hold your immortality by a patent

66

• Guizot, Great Christians of Fance, Chap. xix.

See the volume of correspondence between Clarke and Leibnitz. : Smith's Select Discourses. IV., Chap., ii.

of mere grace from myself"; yet he remembers that Plato also falls back upon the dictum of Plotinus, "that no substance shall ever perish." Even mathematical considerations are pressed into the argument for the soul's immortality, which is enforced with great persistence, and in a fashion not much according to the mind of Butler.

The doctrine of indivisibility, as precluding death and entailing immortality, was commended to Butler for acceptance by an authority nearer to him alike in time and in association than Smith, namely Dr. Samuel Clarke. The acceptance is, however, qualified, not absolute. The claim for immortality from indivisibility, he says, has been argued, "and for anything appearing to the contrary, justly." His own ultimate judgment on the question seems to be held in reserve. For this reserve, as for all the notable inflections of his thought, he must, without doubt, have had grave reasons. If Butler really held himself back from the full adoption of the popular and established opinion, such an abstention presents to us an instance both of circumspection, and of a mental courage founded on solid originality, which may be said to form a landmark in the history of opinion. It may warrant an attempt to map out the position of the question, as it would present itself to Butler's eye.

It may perhaps be well to begin by reminding the reader that the idea involved in the term immortality is not single, but manifold. I have already referred to two of the distinctions which we have to keep before the mind.

(1.) A vitality surmounting the particular crisis of death is one thing an existence without end is another.

(2.) We may speak of an immortality of the disembodied spirit, and may combine it with or disjoin it from a survival or resurrection of the body. In the second case it is of the entire man; in the first it is of part only of the man, although of the chief part.

(3.) The new life to which death is to introduce the human being, may be active, intelligent, moral, spiritual, and may be placed in an environment accordant with all these. Or it may be divested of any one of these characteristics, or of them all.

(4.) The life of the unseen world may be conceived as projected into the future only, as it is presented to us by Divine *In chapters III.-VII.