A treatise on medical jurisprudence / by Francis Wharton and Moreton Stillé ; the medical part revised and corrected, with numerous additions by Alfred Stillé.

  • Francis Wharton
Date:
1860
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on medical jurisprudence / by Francis Wharton and Moreton Stillé ; the medical part revised and corrected, with numerous additions by Alfred Stillé. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    BOOK I.] CONNECTION BETWEEN BODY AND SOUL. [§ 84 panion for his spirit, and a man born into the world consisteth of these two. Now, the life of the most aged person is but short, and many far ignobler creatures of a longer duration. Some of the fowls of the air, several of the fishes of the sea, many of the beasts of the field, divers of the plants of the earth, are of a more durable constitution and outlive the sons of men. And can we think that such material and mortal, that such inunderstanding souls, should by God and nature be furnished with bodies of so long permansion, and that our spirits should be joined unto flesh so subject to corruption, so suddenly dissolvable, were it not that they lived but once, and so enjoyed that life for a longer season, and then went soul and body to the same destruction, never to be restored to the same subsistence? But when the soul of man, which is immortal, is forced from its body in a shorter time, nor can by any means continue with it half the years which many other creatures live, it is because this is not the only life belonging to the sons of men, and so the soul may at a shorter warning leave the body which it shall resume again. (??i) To this may be added the authority of Isaac Taylor, who, in his Physical Theory of another Life, after pointing out how completely the question whether the human soul is ever actually or entirely separated from matter is passed over by St. Paul, as an inquiry altogether irrelevant to religion, continues: Let it be then distinctly kept in view that although the essential independence of mind and matter, or the abstract possibility of the former existing apart from corporeal life, may well be considered as tacitly implied in the Christian's scheme, yet that an actual incorporeal state of the human soul, at any period of its course, is not involved in the principles of our faith any more than is explicitly asserted. This doctrine concerning what is called the immortality of the soul should ever be treated simply as a philosophical specu- lation, and as unimportant to our Christian profession.(??) We are unable, says Pascal, to conceive what is mind; we are unable to perceive what is matter; still less are we able to conceive how these are united; yet this is our proper nature. Such, says President Edwards, the first metaphysician of his country, and perhaps the first of his age, seems to be our nature, and such the laws of the union of soul and body, that there never is, in any case whatsoever, any lively and vigorous exercise of the will or inclination of the soul without some effect upon the body in some alteration of the motion of its fluids, and especially of the animal spirits. And, on the other hand, from the same laws of the union of the soul and body, the constitution of the body and the motion of its fluids may promote the exercise of the affections, but yet it is not the body but the mind only that is the proper seat of the affections. The body of man is no more capable of being really the subject of love or hatred, joy or sorrow, fear or hope, than the body of a tree, or than the same body of man is capable of thinking and understanding. As it is the soul only that has ideas, so it is the soul only that is pleased or displeased with its ideas. As it is the soul only that thinks, so it is the soul only that loves or hates, rejoices (m) Pearson on the Creed, ed. 1853, p. 558. 00 Carpenter, Mind and Matter, by J. G. Millingen, M. D., M. A., pp. 128, 129,130.
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