and effect made universal. Every moral or immoral action which a man performs produces its result. If he does right he goes up, if wrong he goes down. When a man dies the whole results of his life are summed up in a new being, who takes his place by the law of Karma. He does not pass into another body, but another being appears as the consequence of his conduct. So the Buddhist metaphysicians say that what we call transmigration is really metamorphosis.

But this fine-spun doctrine belongs to the metaphysics, not to the religion of Buddhism. Even Hardy himself tells us that "it is almost universally repudiated." In historical composition, in narrative, and in conversation, the common idea of transmigration is always presented. We meet with innumerable passages like the following: "These four, by the help of Buddha, went after death to the celestial world. 'I myself was the wise merchant of this transaction.""

This Buddhist doctrine of no soul is, therefore, no exception to the general law. The Buddhists, like the rest of mankind, believe in the personal ego, and its continued existence hereafter. Whatever their metaphysics may demand, their faith is in the continued existence of the individual through many births and deaths till he reach Nirvána. One of the most learned writers on Buddhism, Samuel Beal, takes this view in his introduction to "The Romantic History of Buddha."

We have seen how belief in a personal self arises through consciousness. Observation of organized life leads to a like conclusion. We observe in all animals and plants an organization in which matter is governed, molded, renewed, correlated, and brought into unity by some power not perceptible to the senses. There is a cause which operates steadily and constantly on every part of the organization, bringing all under the use of the unit,—a law of growth in the plant, of sensation in the animal, of thought in the man. While the vital vortex is going on, all the physical laws to which the molecules of the body are otherwise subject are neutralized and overcome. The law of gravity is neutralized and overcome in the plant which grows upward. The law of inertia is overcome in animals, who can originate motion. The chemical laws are overcome in plants and animals, which resist change and decay. If the phrase vital principle is objected to, no one can deny the existence of a vital unity, which is unexplained by the senses. We are obliged to suppose some cause of all this, and a common

cause of this correlation. Men have decided to call it life or soul.

Not only has the existence of the soul been received in all religions (with the apparent exception of Buddhism), but also it has been the basis of all philosophies which deserve that

name.

According to Pythagoras the soul is an emanation of the world soul, and so partakes of the divine nature. At death it leaves this body to take another, and so goes through the circle of appointed forms. The soul in man is a self-moving principle. Ovid describes this Pythagorean view of transmigration in verses thus translated by Dryden:

Souls cannot die. They leave a former home
And in new bodies dwell, and from them roam.
Nothing can perish, all things change below,
For spirits through all forms may come and go.
Good beasts shall rise to human forms; and men
If bad, shall backward turn to beasts again.

Thus, through a thousand shapes, the soul shall go,
And thus fulfill its destiny below.

The human soul, according to Plato, is essentially rational. It is pure mind, but associated with a lower animal soul, composed of energy or active power, and desire or passive affection.

The immortality of the soul is argued in the beautiful dialogue of "Phædo," one of the most charming works in all literature. According to Socrates, in this dialogue, the soul is the ego, the mind which thinks, loves, and acts, and when death comes, it is not the mind which dies, but the body. At the close of this long dialogue, one of the disciples of Socrates asks him what he wishes them to do with him after his death. He smiles and says: "Anything you please, if you can catch me.

According to the Stoics, the soul is an emanation of the Deity, an inborn breath of God, extending through the body.

According to Aristotle, all living things have a soul; the plant has a soul which enables it to grow; it is a constructive force. The vital force of the animal adds to this, sensation, desire, locomotion; in man, the faculty of reason is added.

Materialism assumes that what we call soul is the result of bodily organization. (1) Because all we know is sensible phenomena. (2) Because the state of the mind conforms constantly to the condition of the body. All we know, it says, is

sensible phenomena, outward facts, and the grouping of these facts into laws. But the simple answer of common sense to this statement is that we know mind better than we know body; that thought, love, and purpose are not sensible phenomena, and yet we are certain of their existence. All we know of matter we know through the senses; it is that which is hard and soft, extended in space, which has shape, color, and so forth. All we know of mind is different. Moreover, the mind has a unity and identity not found in matter; it is simple, indivisible unity; whereas matter is capable of division. It is one and the same soul which thinks, feels, remembers, hopes, chooses, laments, imagines. It is the same soul which existed last year and exists now. But matter is always changing, never the same. Moreover, there is a principle of life which correlates all parts of a living body, and keeps them working together. Great objection has been made to calling this the vital principle, on the ground that this assumes the existence of the soul before it is proved. But the eminent naturalist, Quatrefages, says he must use some such word to describe the vital vortex, for the fact exists. The equilibrium of life is not maintained by the molecular motion of the atoms, for these act independently of each other. The unity of organic life is maintained by some power not in the material particles themselves. Call it soul, or vital principle, or by any other name, its existence is certain. You cannot explain life in terms of matter and motion. The gulf between an atom of inorganic matter and the lowest form of life has never been passed over by human thought.

The second objection of materialism to the existence of an immaterial soul is that the condition of the body affects the soul, inevitably and always. A little improper food taken into the system affects the mind; a drop of blood extravasated in the brain destroys the power of thought; as the body grows old, the mind weakens; as the brain fibers decay, memory goes; without phosphorus, no thought, is not then thought the result of the body? To this, however, the answer is conclusive. All these facts only prove that while the soul is in this body, the body is its necessary organ of communication with the outward world. Just as a carpenter cannot work when his tools are dull; as the most accomplished musician cannot charm our souls when the strings of his piano are out of tune, or broken; so the soul cannot communicate with us when the body is dis

ordered. It is highly probable that we could not think if the proper amount of phosphorus was not supplied to the brain. But this is no such great discovery. Not "phosphorus " alone, but a good many other chemical elements have always been known to be necessary. Without oxygen, no thought; without hydrogen and carbon, no thought. All this merely means that while the soul remains in its present environment, it needs a healthy bodily organization with which to do its work.

SELF-CULTURE.

BY WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING.

[WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING, American Unitarian clergyman, one of the chief founders of his sect in America, was born at Newport, R. I., April 7, 1780; died at Bennington, Vt., October 2, 1842. An edition of his sermons, addresses, and other productions was published in 1848.]

In looking at our nature, we discover among its admirable endowments the sense or perception of Beauty. We see the germ of this in every human being, and there is no power which admits greater cultivation; and why should it not be cherished in all? It deserves remark, that the provision for this principle is infinite in the universe. There is but a very minute portion of the creation which we can turn into food and clothes, or gratification for the body; but the whole creation may be used to minister to the sense of beauty. Beauty is an all-pervading presence. It unfolds in the numberless flowers of the spring. It waves in the branches of the trees and the green blades of grass. It haunts the depths of the earth and sea, and gleams out in the hues of the shell and the precious stone. And not only these minute objects, but the ocean, the mountains, the clouds, the heavens, the stars, the rising and setting sun, all overflow with beauty. The universe is its temple; and those men who are alive to it cannot lift their eyes without feeling themselves encompassed with it on every side. Now this beauty is so precious, the enjoyments it gives are so refined and pure, so congenial with our tenderest and noblest feelings, and so akin to worship, that it is painful to think of the multitude of men as living in the midst of it, and living almost as blind to it as if, instead of this fair earth

and glorious sky, they were tenants of a dungeon. An infinite joy is lost to the world by the want of culture of this spiritual endowment. Suppose that I were to visit a cottage, and to see its walls lined with the choicest pictures of Raphael, and every spare nook filled with statues of the most exquisite workmanship, and that I were to learn that neither man, woman, or child ever cast an eye at these miracles of art, how should I feel their privation; how should I want to open their eyes, and to help them to comprehend and feel the loveliness and grandeur which in vain courted their notice. But every husbandman is living in sight of the works of a diviner artist; and how much would his existence be elevated, could he see the glory which shines forth in their forms, hues, proportions, and moral expression! I have spoken only of the beauty of nature, but how much of this mysterious charm is found in the elegant arts, and especially in literature? The best books have most beauty. The greatest truths are wronged if not linked with beauty, and they win their way most surely and deeply into the soul when arrayed in this their natural and fit attire. Now no man receives the true culture of a man, in whom the sensibility to the beautiful is not cherished; and I know of no condition in life from which it should be excluded. Of all luxuries this is the cheapest and most at hand; and it seems to me to be the most important to those conditions where coarse labor tends to give a grossness to the mind. From the diffusion of the sense of beauty in ancient Greece, and of the taste for music in modern Germany, we learn that the people at large may partake of refined gratifications which have hitherto been thought to be necessarily restricted to a few.

What beauty is, is a question which the most penetrating minds have not satisfactorily answered; nor, were I able, is this the place for discussing it. But one thing I would say: the beauty of the outward creation is intimately related to the lovely, grand, interesting attributes of the soul. It is the emblem or expression of these. Matter becomes beautiful to us, when it seems to lose its material aspect, its inertness, finiteness, and grossness, and by the ethereal lightness of its forms and motions seems to approach spirit; when it imagines to us pure and gentle affections; when it spreads out into a vastness which is a shadow of the Infinite; or when in more awful shapes and movements it speaks of the Omnipotent. Thus