vices might make them desire annihilation as preferable to future punishment, but persons of pure lives and pious dispositions. This experience is so different from the feelings entertained by ordinary persons, that I have been led to ascribe it to a very small development of the organ of the Love of Life in these individuals. A medical gentleman who was attached to the native army in India, informed me, that in many of the Hindoos the love of life was by no means strong. On the contrary, it was frequently found necessary to interpose force to compel them to make even moderate exertions, quite within the compass of their strength, to avoid death. That part of the base of the brain which lies between the ear and the anterior lobe, is generally narrow, measuring across the head, in such individuals. If there be an organ for the love of life, the vivacity of the instinct will diminish in proportion as the organ decays; so that age, which induces the certain approach of death, will, in a corresponding degree, strip 'him of his terrors. The apparent exceptions to this rule will be found in cases in which this organ predominates in size and activity, and preserves an ascendency over the other organs even in decay.

These ideas, however, are thrown out only as speculations, suggested by the facts before described. Whatever may be thought of them, it is certain that the Creator has bestowed moral sentiments on man, and arranged the whole of his existence on the principles of their supremacy; and these, when duly cultivated and enlightened, are calculated to withdraw from him the terrors of death, in the same manner as unconsciousness of its existence saves from them the lower animals.

1st, It is obvious that Amativeness and Philoprogenitiveness are provided with direct objects of gratification, as one concomitant of the institution of death. If the same individuals had lived here for ever, there would have been no field for the enjoyment that flows from the domestic union and the rearing of offspring. The very existence of

these propensities shows, that the production and rearing of young form part of the design of creation; and the successive production of young appears necessarily to imply

removal of the old.

2d, Had things been otherwise arranged, all the other faculties would have been limited in their gratifications. Conceive, for a moment, how much exercise is afforded to our intellectual and moral powers, in acquiring knowledge, communicating it to the young, and providing for their enjoyments also, what a delightful exercise of the higher sentiments is implied in the intercourse between the aged and the young; all which pleasures would have been unknown had there been no young in existence, which there could not have been without a succession of generations.

3d, Constituted as man is, the succession of individuals withdraws beings whose physical and mental constitutions have run their course and become impaired in sensibility, and substitutes in their place fresh and vigorous minds and bodies, far better adapted for the enjoyment of creation.

4th, If I am right in the position that the organic laws transmit to offspring, in an increasing ratio, the qualities most active in the parents, the law of succession provides for a far higher degree of improvement in the race than could have been reached, supposing the permanency of a single generation possessing the present human constitution.

Let us inquire, then, how the moral sentiments are affected by death in old age, as a natural institution.

Benevolence, glowing with a disinterested desire for the diffusion and increase of enjoyment, utters no complaint against death in old age, as a transference of existence from a being impaired in its capacity for usefulness and pleasure, to one fresh and vigorous in all its powers, and fitted to carry forward, to a higher point of improvement, every beneficial measure previously begun. Conscientiousness, if thoroughly enlightened, perceives no infringement of justice in the calling on a guest, satiated with

enjoyment, to retire from the banquet, so as to permit a stranger with a keener and more youthful appetite to partake; and Veneration, when instructed by intellect that this is the institution of the Creator, and made acquainted with its objects, bows in humble acquiescence to the law. Now, if these powers have acquired, in any individual, that complete supremacy which they are clearly intended to hold, he will be placed by them as much above the terror of death as a natural institution, as the lower animals are by being ignorant of its existence. And unless the case were so, man would, by the very knowledge of death, be rendered, during his whole life, more miserable than they.

In these observations, I have said nothing of the prospect of a future existence as a palliative of the evils of dissolution, because I was bound to regard death, in the first instance, as the result of the organic law, and to treat of it as such. But no one who considers that the prospect of a happy life to come, is directly addressed to Veneration, Hope, Wonder, Benevolence, and Intellect, can fail to perceive that this consolation also is clearly founded on the principle, that the moral sentiments are intended by the Creator to protect man from the terrors of death.

The true view of death, therefore, as a natural institution, is, that it is an essential part of the very system of organization; that birth, growth, and arrival at maturity, as completely imply decay and death in old age, as morning and noon imply evening and night, as spring and summer imply harvest, or as the source of a river implies its termination. Besides, organized beings are constituted by the Creator to be the food of other organized beings, so that some must die that others may live. Man, for instance, cannot live on stones, or earth, or water, which are not organized, but must feed on vegetable and animal substances; so that death is as much, and as essentially, an inherent attribute of organization as life itself. If vegetables, animals, and men, had been destined for a duration like that of mountains, we may oresume, from analogy,

that God,--instead of creating a primitive pair of each, and endowing these with extensive powers of reproduction, so as to usher into existence young beings destined to grow up to maturity by insensible degrees,-would have furnished the world with its definite complement of living beings, perfect at first in all their parts and functions, and that these would have remained, like hills, without diminution and without increase.

To prevent, however, all chance of being misapprehended, I repeat, that I do not at all allude to the state of the soul or mind after death, but merely to the dissolution of organized bodies; that, according to the soundest view which I am able to obtain of the natural law, pain and death during youth and middle age, in the human species, are consequences of departure from the Creator's laws,while death in old age, by insensible decay, is an essential and apparently indispensable part of the system of organic existence; that this arrangement admits of the succession of individuals, substituting the young and vigorous for the feeble and decayed; that it is directly the means by which organized beings live, and indirectly the means by which Amativeness, Philoprogenitiveness, and a variety of our other faculties obtain gratification; that it admits of the race ascending in the scale of improvement, both in their organic and in their mental qualities; and finally, that the moral sentiments, when supreme in activity, and enlightened by intellect, which perceives its design and consequences, are calculated to place man in harmony with it; while religion addresses its consolation to the same faculties, and completes what reason leaves undone.

If the views now unfolded be correct, death in old age will never be abolished as long as man continues an organized being; but pain and the frequency of premature death will decrease, in the exact ratio of his obedience to the physical and organic laws. It is interesting to observe, that there is already some evidence of this process having actually begun. About seventy years ago, tables of the

average duration of life in England were compiled for the use of the Life Insurance Companies; and from them it appears that the average duration of life was then 28 years —that is, 1000 persons being born, and the years of their respective lives being added together, and divided by 1000, the result was 28 to each. By recent tables, it appears that the average is now 32 years to each; that is to say, in consequence of superior morality, cleanliness, knowledge, and general obedience to the Creator's laws, fewer individuals now perish in infancy, youth, and middle age, than thus perished seventy years ago. Some persons have said, that the difference arises from errors in compiling the old tables, and that the superior habits of the people are not the cause. It is probable that there may be a portion of truth in both views. There may be some errors in the old tables, but it is quite natural that increasing knowledge and stricter obedience to the organic laws should diminish the number of premature deaths. If this idea be correct, the average duration of life should go on increasing; and our successors, two centuries hence, may probably attain to an average of 40 years, and then ascribe to errors in our tables the present low average of 32.*

SECTION III.

CALAMITIES ARISING FROM INFRINGEMENT OF THE MORAL LAW.

WE come now to consider the Moral Law, which is proclaimed by the higher sentiments and intellect, acting harmoniously, and holding the animal faculties in ubjection. In surveying the moral and religious codes of different nations, and the moral and religious opinions of different philosophers, every reflecting mind must have been struck with their diversity. Phrenology, by demonstrating the differences of combination of the faculties, enables us to account for these varieties of sentiment.

* See Appendix, No. IX.