long been unable to speak in their conscious moments, goes far to prove it. A large part, therefore, of thought which was once voluntarily acquired, lies secreted in the form of knowledge, of which much passes from our consciousness, though we have no warrant to say that it passes from the mind. This latent thought, or, as I should say, knowledge, is the stuff that dreams are made of. It is certain that nothing arises in the mind in sleep which has not entered it while waking. It may be wrought up into new and abnormal combinations, but the elements all lie within the circle of past thought and knowledge. For instance, none but a mathematician would be tormented by the nightmare of travelling to London on an asymptote.

3. That in our waking-hours the mind is replenished by a multitude of thoughts which are so far voluntary that we do not try to expel them; even while we are actually occupied only with those which are brought under our intention and attention by acts of the will.

4. That hence it follows beyond doubt that even if the brain could think, it does so in these instances, under the jurisdiction of a force distinct from itself.

5. That this force is not a function of the brain, but of an agent acting on the brain. This agent by efforts of will educates the brain, calls it from potentiality into act, uses it as an instrument of his intentions, creates by it intellectual systems and ideal worlds, according to his choice and discretion, and finally reduces the brain in matters of moral judgment and choice to subjection and obedience, thereby establishing a moral law and government over the whole body. To say that all this is done by the brain of itself to itself, is to ignore the countless phenomena which cover the whole field of our intellectual activity, and to leave without solution the development of the brain in self-educated man. I am afraid we should flog a boy who accused his brain of his false concords and false quantities. We punish the whole agent for idleness, which is flagrant injustice, if no agent but the brain exists. To say that the brain develops itself, is to deny what the consciousness of all mankind affirms, and on which the whole procedure of justice, from the school to the Penal Code, is founded.

If there be a fact of human consciousness, it is that we possess a will, and that the activity of that will follows indeed the first intuitive dictates of the intellect; but precedes the whole series and ramifications of intellectual acts, on which the processes of thought, the attainment of knowledge, and the morality of men depend. Further, thought and will are functions of an agent distinct from the material brain; and the existence of an agent which we call "self"

or "I" is a fact of consciousness of the highest degree of certainty in human knowledge.

6. That this agent is neither intelligence nor will, but possesses both. It energizes in and through the brain in thought, and in union with thought by volition, as it also quickens the body with life. And yet life, intelligence, and will are all properties or faculties of a personal agent, who is in contact with matter, but is not material. And this personal agent the ancient world called "x"," or "anima," and we call "soul."

Once more to repeat the axiom laid down in the beginning, “the decision of mankind derived from consciousness of the existence of our living self or personality, whereby we think, will, and act, is practically worth more than all the arguments of all the logicians who have discussed the basis of our belief in it."

These facts of our consciousness are anterior to all logic. They form the premisses which are intuitively certain, and they acquire no intrinsic certainty from the syllogistic forms of reasoning which depend on them. To doubt the certainty of these internal facts is an irrational scepticism. It rejects the more certain upon the evidence of the less certain, and tries to rest the pyramid of human knowledge on its apex.

Such, then, is the old basis of metaphysical philosophy. It is founded on the intellectual system and tradition of mankind, and in its chief constructive principles, though often assailed, it has not been shaken. I know nothing in modern metaphysics nor in scientific reasoning to induce me to doubt the existence of the soul, or to attribute thought and volition to a material organism, except as a condition of its exercise in our present state.

I could as soon believe that the hand by automatic activity executed its almost inexhaustible variety of operations without the brain, as that the brain calculates the laws of comets or discusses metaphysics without an intellect distinct from matter. The cessation of thought and will with the cessation of life points away from matter to something beyond, that is, to something immaterial, or from the body to the soul. If it be said that the knife cannot detect it, it may be answered neither can the knife detect thought, or will, or life; and yet these exist by the acknowledgment of all; and are manifest by a threefold world of phenomena, vital, intellectual, volitional, altogether insoluble except on the old-world belief that in Man there is a Soul.

+ H. E. M.

VOL. XVI.

LL

OF

F the many German students, and even professors, of Greek history, who fought in the battles of Woerth or Wissembourg, of Metz or Sedan, we cannot doubt that more than one or two strengthened themselves for their stern duty, not only with the thoughts-common to our race -but with the very words of Tyrtæus:

τεθνάμεναι γὰρ καλὸν ἐνὶ προμάχοισι πεσόντα
ἀνδρ ̓ ἀγαθὸν περὶ ᾗ πατρίδι μαρνάμενον. *

And while thinking of these men, I have wished that I could hear from one of them how he-reading his Greek author in the light of actual life, and upon the very battle-field-would pronounce between the two renderings, each supported by high authority, ancient as well as modern, of the epitaph of Simonides on the Spartans who fell at Thermopyla. The epitaph, according to Herodotus, who is followed by Suidas, was this:

which I should translate

Go, tell the Spartans, friendly passer-by,
That we obeyed their orders, and here lie:

supporting myself by the authority of Mr. Grote, who translates *How fair his death who, in the foremost band, Falls bravely fighting for his native land!

"in obedience to their orders," and by that of his great ancestor, Grotius, whom he so strikingly resembles in that sense of reality— of history and literature being the records of actual life-which marks the criticism of both, and who gives us

Nos hic esse sitos Spartæ dic, quæsumus, hospes,
Dum facimus prompto corde quod ipsa jubet.

And on the same side I may quote

Nos Lacedæmoniis refer hic, peregrine, jacentes,
Exhibito illorum vocibus obsequio.—Laur Valla.*

Annunzia a Sparta, o passeggier, che noi

Qui giacciam, fidi a quanto impone a' suoi.-Alessandro Mortara.

Stranger! to Sparta say, her faithful band

Here lie in death, remembering her command.-F. Hodgson.'

Stranger, the tidings to the Spartans tell,

That here, obeying their commands, we fell.-Wilson.

Tell the Spartans, passer-by,

At their bidding here we lie.-J. Riddell.

But, on the other hand, the Athenian orator Lycurgus (B.c. 330), followed by Strabo (B.c. 30), and by Diodorus Siculus (E.c. 8), read the last two words of the epitaph relóμevo voμípois: and Cicero, evidently following this reading, translates—

Dic, hospes, Sparta, nos te hic vidisse jacentes,

Dum sanctis patriæ legibus obsequimur :

and from the moderns we have

Wandrer sag' es in Sparta: Wir sind im Streite gefallen,

Haben gehorsam erfüllt unsers Landes Gesetz.-Christian von Stolberg.

Wanderer, bringe von uns Lakedämons Bürgern die Botschaft:
Folgsam ihren Gesetz liegen im Grabe wir hier.-Jacobs.

Go tell the Spartans, thou who passest by,

That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.-W. L. Bowles.

To those of Lacedæmon, stranger, tell,

That, as their laws commanded, here we fell.-J. Sterling.

And Bishop Thirlwall says that the inscription on the monument of Leonidas and his Spartans "bade the passenger tell their countrymen that they had fallen in obedience to their laws." Thus we see that at least from the time of Lycurgus to our own day there have been not only two meanings of which one great authority has preferred one and another another—but also two readings of the very passage to which such meaning is thus given. It will probably be admitted that the older text of Herodotus, which reads pipari, is the better Greek, and the more likely to give the original word of * This and the following versions, with the exception of that by Professor Wilson, are taken from Dr. Wellesley's Anthologia Polyglotta.

Simonides but still it may be said, with Gaisford, that we must ake ρήμασι as here equivalent to ρήτραις, the laws and ordinances passed by the Spartan kings and ephors in council: and if so, is not the meaning properly represented by the Athenian vouíuo, the Roman leges, or the English laws? I would reply that if it be granted that Gaisford's authority is conclusive as to the correspondence of pμaта and pηтpaι, and that the latter word represents the statute law of Sparta, still it was unwritten law, and the Spartan constitution was so essentially military that there was no such broad line of separation as in Rome or England between the laws which regulated the relations of citizens at home and the orders under which a war was carried on, and that in this place the true and appropriate rendering of the word—that which includes and conveys the most possible of the meaning of Simonides-is "orders," and not "laws." Let us test the point, not by reference to lexicons, or commentators, or traditional versions, but by the analogies of actual life. To do his Duty is the characteristic of the soldier and the sailor; and though this duty is something more and higher than mere obedience to orders, yet it is obedience to orders, and not to the laws, in which the outward and visible sign of duty consists. Take the famous signal of Nelson in going into action at Trafalgar— "England expects every man to do his duty." Here, though we should weaken, we should not destroy the meaning, if we were to substitute, "England expects every man to obey her orders;" but if we say "to obey the laws," is any meaning at all left ?—any meaning, that is to say, to the sailors to whom this signal was addressed? Or when, after the battle was over, Nelson, with his dying breath, said, "Thank God, I have done my duty," it is possible to substitute, "I have carried out the orders of my country," but surely not, “I have obeyed the laws." Again, when, at Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington rode into one of the squares of infantry, as its diminished numbers closed up to receive another charge of the French cavalry, and said, "Stand steady, lads; what will they say of us in England!" and the men replied, "Never fear, sir, we know our duty," is it conceivable that they meant "we know the laws of England?" There is a story of the Indian wars of the last generation which I remember, because my father-a Bengal civilian-used to tell it to his children as one of the great lessons of life, that a young officer, having been directed to take a gun up some precipitous height, came back, after many attempts, and reported that it was impossible: to which his colonel replied, "Impossible, sir! I have the order in my pocket: upon which the youth went back and got the gun up. Here, too, we could hardly substitute "law" for "order." The poet of the Crimean war, Sir Francis Doyle, felt the distinction, and chose the right word when he wrote—