Page:Lesbia Newman - Dalton - 1889.djvu/49

 guided by the soul, which is the man himself. He has a pen, he has a brain, he has a body, of which the brain and the hand are parts; but he is a soul.’

‘Yes, that’s clear,’ said Lesbia. ‘But, uncle, how do you regard disease of the body, especially of the brain, which hampers the soul’s action so much and so often?’

‘As I regard the walls of a gaol or the fetters which paralyse a prisoner’s action so much and so often,’ was the reply. ‘Is the prisoner no longer a man, because he is a man in irons? Is the soul no longer a soul, because its machine has got out of order and hampers it?’

‘But again,’ said Lesbia, ‘the body is temporary; it had a beginning we know and will have an end we know. May not the soul begin and end with it?’

‘This coat and trousers I am wearing,’ he replied, ‘had not only an ascertainable beginning and ending, but also can be, and every day are, put off and exchanged for other garments. But do I not still remain your Uncle Bristley, parson of Dulham, whether I am in coat, dressing-gown, or night-shirt? Why then shall I not be still the same person, when I shall have put off my suit of bones and muscles, etc., my earthly body?’

‘There seems to me a difference nevertheless,’ said Mrs Guineabush—‘kindly pass the mustard, will you?—that the body grows and decays. Are we to say the same of the soul?’

‘That question is more subtle, Mrs Guineabush,’ replied Mr Bristley, ‘but the answer is this:—The growth of the soul—that is, of the real person, need by no means end with the growth nor even with the death of the earthly body. Why should it? Do I not continue to live, even though I may have worn a shirt threadbare? I will go further, and say that it need not even have begun with the birth of the natural body. This body is but a vesture, soon made, soon destroyed, but I am not my body; I need