which he speaks with no respect. His belief is, that a new and better map will be made some day by infinite painstaking. He asserts simply that the keys on which the anthems of intellect are played are in the frontal portion of the brain, and that this anthem is at its best when the rows of keys are the most numerous, on which our invisible musician with Gyges' ring plays. What of the immortality of instinct? A great distinction exists between those organisms that are mere automata, or have life, but no free-wills or consciences, and the higher animals, which have both the automatic and the influential nervous mechanism. The plant and the automaton have life, but not souls in the full sense of the word. But do not facts require us to hold that the immaterial part in animals having higher than automatic endowments is external to the nervous mechanism in them as well as in man? What are we to say if we find that straightforwardness may lead us to the conclusion that Agassiz was not unjustifiable when he affirmed, in the name of science, that instinct may be immortal, and when he expressed, in his own name, the ardent hope that it might be? Go to Agassiz' grave in mount Auburn yonder, and, at the side of the Swiss boulder which marks the spot, stand alone and read these words of his, and meanwhile send your thoughts onward into the eternities and immensities, whither, no doubt, he sent his, when he wrote in the face of the world this majestic inquiry. These are the closing sentences of one of the most remarkable passages in perhaps the most remarkable of his works,-his "Essay on Classification:" "Most of the arguments of philosophy in favour of the immortality of man apply equally to the permanency of the immaterial principle in other living beings. May I not add that a future life in which man should be deprived of that great source of enjoyment, and intellectual and moral improvement, which result from the contemplation of the harmonies of an organic world, would involve a lamentable loss? and may we not look to a spiritual concert of the combined worlds and all their inhabitants in presence of their Creator, as the highest conception of paradise?" 1 "It was seventy years ago, In the pleasant month of May And read what is still unread And whenever the way seemed long Or his heart began to fail, She would sing a more wonderful song, Or tell a more marvellous tale." LONGFELLOW, On the Fiftieth Birthday of Agassiz. 1 Louis Agassiz, Contributions to the Nat. Hist. of the U. S., vol. i. p. 66; Essay on Classification, close of part i chap. 1, sect. xvii. G What sings she now to this great soul which has passed into that paradise of which his worthiest conception was, that it should be a concert of the combined worlds? One cannot but recollect in the sublimity of this passage that this man was born in sight of the Alps. Of French descent, of Swiss birth, of German education, of American activity, Agassiz is now of the house not made with hands; and so large was he that, even when in the flesh, he appeared by forecast to be a citizen, not of America, or of Europe, but of the supreme theocracy, in whose presence he hoped to see a concert of the combined worlds and all their inhabitants. Richter used to say that the interstellar spaces are the homes of souls. Tennyson sings most subtly his trust: "That nothing walks with aimless feet; That not a worm is cloven in vain ; IN MEMORIAM, liii. Is it not worth while for us, standing here at Agassiz' tomb, with Richter on our right, and Tennyson on our left, to pause a moment, and on their wings, so much stronger than ours, to look abroad a little into this highest conception of paradise? A concert of combined worlds! The Seven Stars have their planets; Orion in this infinite azure is attended by his retinue of worlds; the lightest feather of the Swan which flies through the Milky Way represents uncounted galaxies; in the north, Ursa Major guards realms of life so broad, that thought faints in passing across but one of the eyelashes of the eternal constellation as it paces about the pole unwearied; Aquarius, Boötes, Sagittarius, Hercules, each holds in his far-spread palm of sidereal fire innumerable inhabitants. What if Agassiz and Richter and Cuvier and Milton and Shakspeare, and that host which no man can number, are studying at this moment a concert of all the life of Orion and the Seven Stars, Ursa Major, and the rest, and of that forgotten speck which we, on this lonely shore of existence, call earth? The loftiest exhibition of organic life of all kinds from all worlds, and in the presence of their Creator! Would it not be an immeasurable loss to be without this concert of combined worlds? Would it not be a diminution of supreme bliss not to have union with God through these, the most majestic of His works below ourselves? Shall we, too, not hope that this highest conception of paradise may be the true one? Richter would say, if he stood here, that he hopes it may be. Tennyson says, as he stands here, that he wishes it may be. Must not we, remembering the long line of acute souls who have believed in the possibility that instinct is immortal, say, that, if it be so, it is best that it should be so? Whether it is so or not, I care not to assert: what I do affirm is. that the argument for immortality, by striking against the possibility that instinct may be immortal, is not wrecked, but glorified. When we close our short careers, some questions that we debate as matters of high philosophy will be personal to you and to me. As we lie where Webster lay, face to face with eternity, and its breath on our cheeks, there will come to us, as it cannot come now, the query whether the relation of our souls to our bodies is that of harmony to a harp, or of the harper to the harp. The time is not distant when it will be worth something to us to remember that they who walk late on the deck of the Santa Maria have seen a light rise and fall ahead of us. The externality and independence of the soul in relation to the body are known now under the microscope and scalpel better than ever before in the history of our race. Exact science, in the name of the law of causation, breathes already through her iron lips a whisper, to which, as it grows louder, the blood of the ages will leap with new inspiration. Before that iron whisper, all objections to immortality are shattered. If, in the name of physiology, we remove all objections, you will hear your Webster, when he comes to you, and says that a Teacher attested by the ages as sent with a supreme Divine mission brought life and immortality to light. There is no darkness that can quench the illumination which now rises on the world. No ascending fog from the shallows of materialism can put out the sun of axiomatic truth. Ay, my friends, in the oozy depths of the pools where the reptiles lie among the reeds in the marshes of materialism, there arises a vapour which, as it ascends higher, that sun will irradiate, will stream through with his slant javelins of scientific clearness, until this very matter which we have dreaded to investigate shall take on all the glories of the morning, and become, by reflected light, the bridal couch of a new Day, in a future civilisation. X. DOES DEATH END ALL? BAIN'S MATERIALISM.' "Wem die heiligen Todten gleichgültig sind, dem werden es die Lebendigen auch.' JEAN PAUL RICHTER, Titan, cycle 47. CHARLES DICKENS, toward the close of his "American Notes," says, that, when in the United States on his first visit, he was often forced by sheer amazement to ask why dishonesty, conjoined with high intellectual capacity, received so much reverence from Americans. "Is it not a very disgraceful circumstance," Dickens would inquire, "that such a man as So-and-so should be acquiring a large property by the most infamous and odious means, and, notwithstanding all the crimes of which he has been guilty, should be tolerated and sheltered by your citizens? He is a public nuisance, is he not?"-" Yes, sir."-" A convicted liar?"-"Yes, sir."-"He has been kicked and cuffed and caned?"—"Yes, sir." "And he is utterly dishonourable, debased, and profligate?"-"Yes, sir.""In the name of wonder, then, what is his merit?" -"Well, sir, he is a smart man." Dickens says he held this dialogue a hundred times.2 In Dickens' name I once told this anecdote to a learned German, who replied in the spirit of the renowned German candour, and in his own name, bringing his hand down upon the table with an emphasis that made the glasses ring, "That word 'smart' will break America's neck yet, unless you break the word's neck." Every gentleman's political sympathies I wish to treat always with as much respect as I treat my own; but as to my own I say, Perish ny political party, if it succeeds by fraud ! 1 The fifty-fifth lecture in the Boston Monday Lectureship, delivered in Tremont Temple. 2 American Notes, chap. xviii, We are suddenly entering, in our hundredth year, upon an as yet almost unnoticed, but subtly suggestive exhibition of one great weakness in our political system, namely, that, in close elections, gigantic political spoils tempt to gigantic political frauds. In presence of Centennial guests we are now in the midst of a war of affidavits; and it appears that the combatants are about equally able. It is no empty sign of our times that contestants for political primacy, in a territory greater than Cæsar ever ruled over cannot satisfy each other that each means to be fair. The far-seeing, fateful Muse of history, holding her pen in readiness to record what is yet to be in America, and looking on the present and coming size and fatness of party political spoils in the United States, whispers to our people anxiously the words of Shakspeare's Coriolanus : "My soul aches To know, when two authorities are up, There are now eighty thousand minor offices filled by party patronage in the United States. While the principle, that to political victors belong political spoils, governs our politics, eighty thousand men will be turned out of office, and eighty thousand put in, with every change of the national administration. You know that Washington turned out but eight men, Adams only four, Jefferson thirty-nine, but not one of them for political reasons, Madison nine, Munroe five, and the younger Adams only two, but Jackson six hundred and ninety. Our population, as a whole, is doubling every thirty years. Soon we shall have two hundred thousand or three hundred thousand to be turned out or put in whenever a President is elected. Will the republic bear that strain? You will not, you say, vote for Washington's and Jefferson's rule,-to appoint the able, promote the worthy, and never remove the worthy for merely partisan reasons. You fear that there might grow up, under such a practice, an aristocracy of office-holders. It does not seem to occur to the astute opponents of civil-service reform that such an aristocracy, as it would not be turned out or put in by party patronage, and not be changed with the administrations, would serve both political parties, and so be no aristocracy at all. Let the nation adhere for a century longer to Jackson's accursed principle, that to political victors belong all political spoils, and what must be the effect? What if closely contested national elections occur? The spoils of party patronage are already becoming so great in the United States as to constitute, with large and often controlling portions of both political parties, wholly irresistible temptations to fraud. But the spoils grow vaster and fatter with fearful speed. Only civil-service reform can remove this enormous coming mischief. It can do so only by taking patronage from party, and giving it to the people. Gigantic party political spoils, gigantic party political frauds,—these are cause and effect. They imperil the peace of the republic. They must do so more and more as our population grows. Ultimately in America there will be either civil-service reform or civil war. THE LECTURE. Plato represents Socrates as saying that he had looked at many authorities, and, among others, at the nature of things, but dared not look long at the latter for fear his eyes would be dazzled.1 It is the radiance of the nature of things, or axiomatic, self-evident truth, which must frighten back to Chaos the vampire Doubt. On some sickly veins of our moaning and sceptical age that vampire broods as a nightmare; but no nightmare can bear the noon. 1 Phædon. Mrs. |