leaves are not always open, though they are the infallible means by which we know the integrity and continuance of our personality. When the leaves are open, the characters are not all legible; nevertheless, we continually repossess our past existence; and learn, by successive states, even to project ourselves into the future. It follows, from all this, that our personal life is a real thing, that we have open doors in the palace of our dwelling, and run through them to see, to taste, to admire, to comprehend.

On the ground of Personality erect the scheme of Individuality.

The simpler forms of individuality are seen in the percipient, voluntary, reasoning principles of brutes: but as there are two corporeities in man—a natural body and a spiritual body (1 Cor. xv. 44), so are there in brutes the animal tissue and the immaterial principle; but the immaterial principle seems used up in natural expenditure of brute life. Man, animal, bird, fish, plant, are all from one source: every one in its order, every life of its kind, but man according to a Divine Pattern. Leibnitz saith-"Les perfections de Dieu sont celles de nos âmes, mais il les possede sans bornes: il est un océan, dont nous avons reçu que des gouttes." 1 Between the instinct of a brute, not knowing itself; and the consciousness of man, determining itself from itself; is an impassable gulf. Individuality is the peculiarity of the individual man, whereby he is distinguished from the other beings of his kind. Individual is opposed to species, and person to nature. To put it more familiarly-the Hottentot, the Australian, the black fellow, and "swinked hedger," have common personality say-with the members of the British Association; but, individually, they are as distinct and separate as is the President from the Queen of Ethiopia.

The true life of this personality and individuality is in the spirit. The body, in itself, is only sensual except as elevated by the spirit. Flesh and spirit are contraries: exeept as flesh becomes formed and informed by endowment with soul so as to be able to receive spirit. Flesh, , and spirit, n, are in contrast (Gen. vi. 3; Isai. xxxi. 3; John vi. 63). Man ori

1 "Theodice "-the Preface.

ginated in a body of earth, specially fashioned and breathed into; and was thus the synthesis of two distinct elements. The outward, being more than a veil or covering for the inward, was penetrated in every part by the inner essence ; indeed, the relation may be called sacramental-the body being the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual mind; the two uniting to form human individuality. The spirit in man was not a portion of the Divinity, but man's spirit related to the Eternal Spirit as effect to cause. It is customary, in Scripture and in conversation, to speak of man as body and soul (Gen. ii. 7; 1 Sam. i. 26; Job iii. 20, x. 1 ; Ps. lxii. I; Prov. iii. 22; Matt. x. 28); but the more comprehensive expression is-body, soul, spirit (1 Thess. v. 23; Heb. iv. 12). Our fleshly life partakes of high character through the work of the spirit of life, and unites the soul with the spirit. Soul and spirit are, nevertheless, separable elements in man; yet there is no gulf between them-man has not three lives, but one life; not three persons, but one person; he is three natures in one person, a trinity in unity.

It may be said "soul, ?, is applied to the beast; " so it is, and means the person of the beast, not the beast as a person: and though we can only apply soul to man as person in the human body, nevertheless, the soul in beast and the sou! in man are in essential diversity. The brute has soul person, or a living nature, by that cosmical life which pervades all Nature. The body of man receives soul-not by cosmical, but by Divine life (1 Cor. ii. 11). The spirit is the power of self-consciousness, the soul is the place, the whole man its object. The spirit is that which comes from God, and is of God; it is the pneuma, or candle of the Lord in man, the power of progressive and improvable reason; but chiefly the power of will in selecting good or evil, true or false, right or wrong. Hence, we may say-The tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which was not to tempt but to try our parents, is the real criterion between man and beast: the probation of the spiritual faculty by obedience was an indication that only by the tree of life-only by consciousness of, and willing submission to Deity-could that of knowledge be rightly approached.

A Physician's Point of View.

355

Change and somewhat elevate the argument:-Man, to become conscious of himself, distinguishes himself from the outer world. Thus, becoming self-conscious, he is conscious also of others besides himself; that neither he nor they are original or self-existent, but derived and conditioned. This derived consciousness presupposes and renders essentially necessary an absolutely original unconditional self-consciousness-an eternal Self-Consciousness from which proceeds "the Divine Spark of the personal spirit into the dark stuff of naturalness, and preserves it there in still concealment until it is able to realise itself in the light-flame of human self-consciousness. "1 Herein are the roots of our consciousness of God: true reflection on ourselves, breaking through the crust of mere cosmical consciousness, leads up to Him in whom we live and move and have our being.

Look at the fact naturally and experimentally.

Whole classes of products consist merely of carbon and hydrogen, yet every one has its own individuality. A chemist proves that a piece of graphite and a diamond are essentially the same, but we recognise their individuality by using the graphite to draw with, and the diamond as a jewel.

Regard the fact from a Physician's point of view.

Individual human peculiarities are special, frequent, distinct. We cannot tell why one has Addison's disease, and another suffers from ataxy; why this endures cancer, and that is plagued with writer's cramp; why ipecacuanha will make some sneeze, a grain of iodide of potassium iodise one person, a grain of grey powder salivate another, and opium produce colic in a third. Nor is that all-every stage and period of a man's life from infancy to old age has its special distinctive peculiar characters; and material and immaterial peculiarities are frequent and distinct as to light, heat, electricity, food, drugs. "We call these peculiarities, idiosyncrasies; we meet with some of them two or three or more times in twenty years, but others are so rare that a long life of varied and wide experience may have witnessed but one example. Some people are most delicate electrometers and magnetometers ; and I knew one such who became blind in a thunderstorm

1 "Christian Doctrine of Sin," vol. i. p. 81: Dr. Julius Müller.

eight years ago, and whose physical frame before and since that time was always contorted by electrical and magnetical disturbances long before the former are recognised by ordinary people, and when the latter have only been displayed by perturbations of the machinery for electric telegraphy. . . . With regard to food:-One person cannot take egg, in any shape or form; to another tea and coffee are poisons; some cannot eat flat-fish; others are put into cutaneous tortures by strawberries." Such facts as these compel the recognition of the individuality, for pathological and therapeutical purposes, of every member of the human family.

Daily experience shows that there are peculiar morbid tendencies. One man will sing over ghastly toil, another weeps with the infant in trouble. We are alike yet unlike. There are things common to all, yet in the innermost recesses of every life is something that has not been seen by the most earnest gaze. Emotions and feelings are often counted hypochondriacal, hysterical, nervous, unreal: because thorax, abdomen, limbs, excretions, are nothing wrong. Having weighed the patient, electrically examined the limbs, looked at the retina, marked the beatings of the pulse, and not found him wanting; he is told to go in peace. A deep unrest; a' failing power felt by him, not seen by the physician; a sense or dread of impending evil in brain or heart, weakness of intellectual grasp, averseness as to physical exertion; seem, when tested, to be delusive notions; for he can do all things well. He is urged to disregard these warnings, does disregard them; but they come from life's centre, and some terrible catastrophe, breaking down of the mind, heart ceasing to work, suicide, pour contempt on careful auscultation and scientific diagnosis.

The suffering man may have mistaken notions; and the unwise physician, following them, may lose his clue; but even morbid sensations and wrong notions are part of the disease itself, to be studied as a whole; and are a proof to the scientific pathologist of more than mechanical mysteries in many a disordered life. This leads the physician in his own

1 Dr. J. Russell Reynolds, "The Address in Medic..e to the British Medical Association at Norwich," 1874.

The Histologist and Schoolboy.

357

sufferings to some one who knows him well and has known him long; who knew his parents and their belongings; and would "hit out some common-sense line of treatment, the result of much experience and far-seeing; rather than commit himself to the care of the most highly trained graduate in medicine who could see his retina, trace his pulse, qualitatively and quantitatively examine his excreta, record his temperature, and bring to bear upon his case the last generalisation of the latest writer on his peculiar malady. While desiring all that the skill of the younger man might perform, he would prefer not to lose the wisdom and experience of the older friend." 1

"With regard to many diseases, we are in a position that might be described as somewhat like that of the physiologist and the schoolboy in combination, when they have found two birds' nests. The one-the histologist-shall examine the contents of one of the eggs of each nest, and apply all his microscopic powers on the cells that he shall find; he may call the chemist to his aid, and yet fail to give, after the most searching gaze and chemical analysis, even a guess as to the nature of the bird that would be developed by the simple application of warmth to another egg which he has not broken. The other the schoolboy-looks at the shell and decides in a moment that this will become a blackbird, and that the other will produce a lark. What the relation may be between the colour and the marking of the shells and the wonderful constitution of their contents, that shall determine the development of this bird or of that, we do not know. What is the difference between those contents we do not know, but let us remember a quite specific and wide difference does exist between them, although it is far too fine for any of our processes of investigation to demonstrate its nature." 2

If there is a speciality, an individuality, in the egg which escapes every process of investigation; one egg growing into a blackbird, another into a lark, no man being able to say, without seeing the shell, which it shall be; may we not safely conclude that man-differing from man in ten thousand

1 Dr. J. Russell Reynolds, "The Address in Medicine to the British Medical Association at Norwich," 1874.

2 Ibid.